Muslims’ troubles in Walkersville parallel those in Frederick

The former president of the Islamic Society of Frederick this week said he sees parallels between that episode and the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community’s pending land purchase in Walkersville.

But one major difference, he said, is that more residents supported Muslims in 2000 than do today.

‘‘We have suffered similar injustice,” Khalil Elshazly, the Islamic Society of Frederick’s former president and a current member of its board of trustees, said. ‘‘For the most part, there was support from the public, and not from the government.”

Walkersville officials on Wednesday are expected to hold a public hearing and vote on whether to allow the Ahmadis, whose American headquarters are in Silver Spring, to use the Nicodemus Farm for yearly conventions for between 5,000 and 10,000 American Muslims.

An ordinance introduced in August could force the Muslim group to ask town commissioners to rezone the farm from agriculture to institutional, which is more difficult than obtaining a special exception from the zoning board of appeals, something the group is trying to do now.

The Islamic Society of Frederick sued the county in 2004, claiming religious discrimination. A judge later dismissed the suit, Elshazly said.

The society in 2004 built Frederick County’s first mosque next to Frederick Towne Mall, on Frederick’s Golden Mile — its third-choice site.

Vandalism struck the mosque several times earlier this year, and the society two months ago erected a fence to stop it, Elshazly said.

At the lengthy public hearing on the Buckeystown site proposal, before commissioners voted to deny the society access to county water and sewer, more than 30 people out of 48 who spoke supported the Muslims.

That has not been the case in Walkersville, where it has been at least two decades since town meetings attracted as many people, according to Burgess Ralph W. Whitmore.

Since August, when representatives of the Muslim group described their proposal at a public forum at town hall, residents attending town meetings have been mostly applauding whoever opposes it from the podium.

Edward Stockdale, who distributed copies of the group’s site plan for the farm at the Oct. 10 town meeting, said Tuesday that he is against welcoming the Muslim group ‘‘for the sheer magnitude of the facility” it wants to build.

Edward Marino is collecting signatures on a petition opposing the Ahmadis, according to Stockdale. Marino said at the meeting that he worried that Walkersville could become the ‘‘Mecca of America” if the town allows the Ahmadis to build the retreat center.

The Muslim group has a contract to buy David Moxley’s 224-acre farm, pending the town’s approval for the group’s proposed use of the land.

A proposed retreat center, which will include a building with two gymnasiums and 124 parking spaces, will also be used for three regional events per year, for between 450 and 1,000 people. About 20 Ahmadi families would use the center for weekly services.

Elshazly said this week that he is ‘‘a little disturbed” at Walkersville’s opposition to the Ahmadis.

‘‘I’d like to urge the citizens of Walkersville to welcome this project,” he said.

The Ahmadis held their convention this year at the Dulles Expo Center in Chantilly, Va.

According to Elshazly, it is not easy to find a place for Frederick Muslims to congregate. ‘‘It’s very difficult, as a Muslim community, to rent a place. The solution is to have your own place.”