Despite Irving's Anti-Muslim Resolution, the Suburb's Immigrant Population Thrives

Less than a mile from D/FW Airport, brand-new street signs proclaim the names of two newly paved streets snaking through acres of raw dirt -- the corner of Al Razi and Al Hazen. In the distance, the first new house in the Al Hamra subdivision soars up off the ground in a forest of lumber roaring with saws and air compressors on a Friday morning.
You can tell already it's going to be a whopper. Ten feet higher and the chimneys will get clipped by the big planes coming in low to land at the airport.

I drove out here on a slate-gray Friday morning because John Danish, a longtime Irving City Council member and chairman of the Dallas Area Rapid Transit board, told me this was what I needed to come see if I wanted to get what was going on in Irving. I had called him first thing that morning after reading a story in the paper about an ugly Irving council meeting the night before.

Danish was one of a four-vote minority on the City Council to vote against a resolution sponsored by the mayor of Irving to defend America against a takeover by Islamic Shariah law. Muslims residents crowded the council chamber to denounce the resolution as an expression of Islamophobia. The resolution endorsed a bill now in the Texas House that would make it illegal for Texas courts to use "foreign laws."

Irving Mayor Beth Van Duyne, sponsor of the anti-Shariah resolution, has been on Fox News and talking to Glenn Beck lately about the danger of a Shariah takeover of America. She is one of a cadre of Texas politicians gleaning political points lately by figuratively setting fire to the homes of immigrants, all the while blinking her eyes vacantly and denying that she means anyone any harm.

Read more: http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/unfairpark/2015/03/despite_irvings_anti-muslim_immigrant_population_thrives.php