Last Saturday, January 24, 2025, I was on Tulsa Beacon Weekend with Jeff Brucculeri. The weekly public affairs show, sponsored by the Tulsa Beacon newspaper, airs every Saturday from noon to 1 pm on AM 970 KCFO. Jeff and I talked about the City of Tulsa's incoherent response to homelessness and a bit about the Broken Arrow zoning case involving a proposed mosque. It was a fun conversation, and the time flew by. As part of the discussion of homelessness, I mentioned City of Hope Outreach, a ministry to street people led by Jon Maust. City of Hope seeks out and works with the homeless who don't go to the shelters.

We have a simple, but life-changing mission: Identify those members of the homeless community who desire to put the streets behind them. We Connect those individuals with a local church and a mentor in order to Equip them with the tools and assistance needed to fully reintegrate; and then Follow Through with them until their reintegration is complete.

As I said on the show, if the City of Tulsa were serious about addressing homelessness, the committee that's deciding how to spend the $75 million taxpayers approved would include people who work with the homeless and understand the root causes, people like Jon Maust of City of Hope and Steve Whittaker of John 3:16 Mission. Instead, that money is going to provide employment for gender-studies majors in non-profit organizations. Bruce and Leta Wilbanks of the Marriage and Family Initiative were Jeff's guests in the first half hour of the show, and they spoke about upcoming marriage-related events coming up over the next month or so. We recorded on Thursday the 22nd, so I was safe and burrowed in at home when the show went out on Saturday. With all the preparations for last weekend's snow storm, I neglected to get word out about this in time so you could listen live; sorry about that. Although the episode has already aired, you can listen again until this coming Saturday via the KCFO app and the KCFO website. Click this link, then click Tulsa Beacon Weekend. (The most recent episode of Joe Riddle's Old Time Radio Theater is also on the app for your listening enjoyment.) Here's a direct link to the audio of the episode.
- January 27, 2026 at 10:24PM
BatesLine on Tulsa Beacon Weekend: Homelessness, Broken Arrow mosque
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A flock of very aggressive petition circulators have been accosting shoppers in parking lots over the last month or so, trying to meet the signature requirement to put State Question 836 on the Oklahoma ballot. The deadline for signature collection is in the next few days. They call SQ 836 an initiative petition for open primaries, but that isn't accurate. Texas and other states have open primaries by virtue of the fact that they don't have party registration for voters. In Texas, each election year you decide before the primary date in March whether you will take the Republican, Democrat, or some other party ballot, and that limits you to that party for the rest of the year, but you could choose to take a different party's ballot the following year. SQ 836 would set up a jungle primary, in which all voters (all who bother to show up) would choose from all candidates of all parties in a single primary. If no candidate gets a majority of the vote, the top two candidates, regardless of party, would advance to a runoff. The only difference between this and the City of Tulsa's non-partisan elections is that party labels could appear on the ballot. Under the SQ 836 system, the general election (really a runoff) would only offer the voters two choices. There would be no third-party candidates, no independent candidates, no option even for a protest vote against the top two. It's a bad idea that sounds very small-d democratic. An example of how it goes wrong is the governor's race in Louisiana in 1991: Several reasonable candidates (including incumbent governor Buddy Roemer) split the majority of the vote in the primary, so that the top two to advance to the general were Edwin Edwards, a crooked former governor who had lost the 1987 election, who had already been tried for corruption, and who would later serve time in prison for racketeering, extortion, money laundering, mail fraud, and wire fraud, and David Duke, a former Klan Grand Wizard. There was a popular bumper sticker at the time that read, "Vote for the Crook. It's important." Because it was a top-two runoff, voters had no other options, no independent or third-party candidates to choose from, no way to cast a protest vote. Wikipedia's description of that election:

The first round primary gubernatorial contest included Roemer, Edwin Edwards, David Duke, and Eighth District Congressman Holloway who all ran in Louisiana's open primary. Roemer was wounded by his mistakes as governor, while Edwards and Duke each had a passionate core group of supporters. Roemer placed third in the primary. One of the contributing factors to his defeat was a last-minute advertising barrage by Marine Shale owner Jack Kent; Marine Shale had been targeted by the Roemer administration as a polluter, and Kent spent $500,000 of his own money in the closing days of the campaign to purchase anti-Roemer commercials.

Had Holloway not run, Roemer likely would have finished second and given voters a sensible choice in the runoff. The SQ 836 system is very sensitive to spoiler candidates, who, with some dark-money backing, could win enough support to take out all the reasonable choices in the race. Average voters who have been seduced by SQ 836 believe that they'll have as many choices as they do today. But nothing is static, and these changes will push parties to return to the proverbial "smoke-filled rooms." As a strategic matter, parties would develop private processes to select a party-backed nominee to represent the party on the ballot, in order to avoid splitting the majority party's vote among several candidates and allowing the other party to win with a tiny minority. To enforce this unity, parties would have to impose penalties on any party member who files for office without the party's endorsement. This is the system used in the UK; the nomination process is entirely private. SQ 836 is a massive, two-page-long constitutional amendment, an awkward add-on that would be called "Article 3A." That link will take you to the actual language that the petition-backers wants to stick into the Oklahoma Constitution. The details of Oklahoma's election processes are currently set out in statute, where they can be adjusted by legislation over time. SQ 836 would write processes in stone. Even if you wanted something like SQ 836's system, but saw some minor changes you'd want to make, you wouldn't have the power. This massive constitutional amendment is generic, developed by its out-of-state promoters, and it doesn't plug in neatly to the language used elsewhere in Oklahoma's constitution. It even has a severability clause, for pete's sake, which means the authors of SQ 836 expect that some aspects of it will be thrown out by courts; who knows what will survive? Voters and candidates will have to live with uncertainty while challenges move through the courts, and whatever does survive court challenges will be extremely hard to change however mutilated it may be. Backers say we need this because there are too many elections decided in Republican primaries because no Democrats, Libertarians, or independents bother to file for office. There's an obvious remedy that doesn't require a constitutional amendment: File for office, and be sane enough to appeal to voters. Back in the 1970s, when my family lived in Wagoner County, there were many county offices that were decided without any input from my parents, who were rare registered Republicans in that heavily Democrat county. That was the norm all over Oklahoma as recently as the 1970s, but the situation has completely flipped, without the help of constitutional amendments that change the election system. Republicans started running for those offices, and voters, who were already voting for Republicans over the loony leftist Democrats at the Federal level, started voting for Republicans at the county and local level. 1964 was the last time that Oklahoma gave its electoral votes to a Democrat, but it wasn't until the 2000s that Republicans gained majorities in the legislature, and it was the 2010s before the GOP became dominant in county government. There's a lot more that could and has been said. OCPA has a lot of material on SQ 836 on their website. OCPA has also set up a website to urge Oklahomans NOT to sign the 836 petition: DeclineToSign.com If you signed the petition for SQ 836 and have come to regret it, there is a way to rescind your signature. There is a form from the Secretary of State's office that you will need to fill out, then sign in front of a notary public (UPS Stores and banks usually have a notary), then submit in person or by mail to the Secretary of State's office in Oklahoma City. Withdraw of Signature Affidavit - Statewide Petitions - oksos2025.pdf. Here are the instructions:

1. Please provide your name, address and county information, as it appears on your voter registration record.
2. Must identify and state the petition number and state question number for signature removal [Petition Number 448, State Question 836]
3. Along with the date the petition was signed
4. Execute/Sign your affidavit, in witness of an Oklahoma Notary Public (only handwritten, original signatures are accepted).
5. Notary public must fully execute their witness statement accordingly.
6. Then, please mail or deliver in person your original (copies are not accepted), fully executed affidavit to:

Oklahoma Secretary of State Exec/Leg Division - Statewide Petitions Oklahoma State Capitol Bldg. 2300 N. Lincoln Blvd., Ste. 122 Oklahoma City, Oklahoma 73105

No Republican elected official has come out in support of SQ 836. David Holt, a former Republican state senator who now serves a part-time non-partisan position as chairman of the Oklahoma City Council, is its most prominent supporter.
- January 21, 2026 at 01:54AM
SQ 836: Just say no to jungle primaries
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By now you've heard that the application to rezone a parcel for a mosque from Agricultural to Commercial General was denied by the Broken Arrow City Council by a vote of 4-1. Broken Arrow city councilor Justin Green moved to deny the mosque rezoning, seconded by Lisa Ford, supported by Mayor Debra Wimpee and David Pickel. Vice Mayor Johnnie Parks was the lone vote for the mosque rezoning. @Snarkio_ on X has a clip of the vote. Here is the 4-hour livestream of the Broken Arrow City Council meeting. This link is cued to the applicant's rebuttal following public comment, which is followed by council discussion and the vote. Councilor Lisa Ford asked to cut off the public hearing and proceed to council discussion and a vote. At Ford's request to stop public comments, there were shouts about freedom of speech from the audience. I'm not sure which side these people were on. Based on many years of attending zoning hearings, I'm amazed that the council allowed comments to go on for hours. Typically there are not only time limits for individual speakers but an overall cap on comments on either side of an issue. Thirty minutes each side would be generous. At that point, the applicant's representative explained why the mosque has joined NAIT, but also stated (to my surprise) the mosque would not hesitate to disengage from NAIT if the federal or state government required that. He said that Islamic Society of Tulsa is also part of NAIT, with a local board that runs the programs, raises funds for operating the mosque, but "NAIT's role is custodial, very minimal role," that he characterized as asset protection, continuity -- the property can't be sold, the mosque remains a place of worship, "because that's what the donors have funded this for," and legal stability: "When the founders pass away, there's no dispute on where the mosque goes.... But so far it is the only nationally-established support org [for mosques] that is similar to any church structure." As I mentioned in the post about NAIT's ownership of the proposed mosque site, national control of the property of local religious congregations is a problem for Christian churches, too. What happens when the national organization is taken over and taken in a completely hostile direction? Do local leaders have the freedom to leave and keep the property? I started writing more about this, but it belongs in a separate post. The applicant's representative defended the changes that were made after the planning commission hearing, in response to public concerns. He also stated that the architect recommended getting the zoning approval before proceeding with costly engineering work on stormwater, sewage, and site preparation. This is the typical sequence; no point in spending money on engineers if you won't be able to build there. At 3:56:15, She made a few comments, followed by Councilor Justin Green, who offered a few thoughts and put forward the motion to deny the application. Here's what Councilor Ford had to say on Facebook after the meeting:

Tonight I cast a vote that I knew would not make everyone happy, and I want to be clear about why. My decision was not about religion, hate, or disagreement with anyone's beliefs or way of life. I know and respect many good people on all sides who call Broken Arrow home. As a City Councilor, my responsibility in development cases is to evaluate the proposal itself. This was a rezoning request, and the questions are always the same: Does it meet city requirements? Is the infrastructure adequate? Does it align with our comprehensive plan and ordinances? In this case, it did not. Because of that, the only responsible vote was no. That decision would have been the same regardless of who brought the proposal forward or what type of project was proposed for that property. Broken Arrow should always be a place where all citizens can enjoy their families, freedoms, and quality of life. This vote was based solely on zoning, infrastructure, and long-term planning--not on people or religion. I also want to thank everyone who reached out. I personally responded to every email, phone call, and message. Your civic engagement matters, and your voices are valued. Lastly, thank you to law enforcement, the fire department, and city staff who put in extra time and effort to ensure this special City Council meeting ran smoothly. Your professionalism and dedication to our community do not go unnoticed. Special thanks to OFFICER Gibson and OFFICER Keech for taking care of me tonight.

From Mayor Debra Wimpee, commenting on Councilor Ford's remarks:

I couldn't have said it better. Thank you Lisa Ford for BA City Council Ward 2. Broken Arrow is--and should always be--a community where all citizens can enjoy their families, freedoms, and quality of life. This vote was based solely on the facts and feasibility of the proposed project, not on people, religion, or any particular way of life. I'll also add I have dear friends who are Muslim, so again this vote was not about the particular place of assembly as many tried to make it on both sides. I will add a reminder our municipalities run on sales tax revenue, we are unlike any other state in that aspect. So my first desire would be to have commercial on any piece of property that available. However, even straight commercial development on this site would not be appropriate at this time, as the surrounding infrastructure--particularly directly in front of the property--is not sufficient to support any project currently. Logistics of last night's meeting...I could not be more proud of our city team and public safety departments for your incredible efforts to accommodate our citizens and to keep everyone safe. The behind the scenes efforts were most impressive! Finally thank you to NSU for hosting last night! Your partnership in all things BA is truly appreciated.

- January 14, 2026 at 07:41AM
Broken Arrow mosque rezoning denied
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On Monday, January 12, 2026, the Broken Arrow City Council will consider a zoning amendment that would allow construction of a development that would include the Tulsa area's fourth mosque and the first in a Tulsa suburb. Many citizens are upset about it and want to see the council deny the application, but it's important to understand the technicalities of the zoning process and what discretion the City Council has. The City Council does not have to accept the recommendation of planning staff and can weigh many different factors when deciding to change the zoning ordinance. On the other hand, the appearance that the decision was arbitrary and capricious or illegally discriminatory can expose the council to lawsuits, and a legal judgment against the city would be repaid from the sinking fund, which would be replenished by a property tax increase. Here is a description of municipal zoning powers from an article on the Oklahoma Bar Association website:

There are some very basic legal standards to consider when advising a planning commission, governing body or private client. One of the most important is that the Oklahoma Supreme Court has consistently held that unless a zoning decision of a municipality is found not to have a substantial relation to the public health, safety, morals or general welfare or to constitute an unreasonable, arbitrary exercise of the police power, its judgments will not be overturned by the district court. Also, courts may not substitute their judgment for that of the municipal legislative body. The court's duty will be to determine whether the restriction on the use of the property is a reasonable exercise of power under the zoning statute. When the validity of a legislative classification for zoning purposes is fairly debatable, legislative judgments must be allowed to stand.

One significant case upholding this principle is Clary v. Oklahoma City, in which the Oklahoma Supreme Court affirmed the district court's ruling that upheld the city's decision to deny rezoning a single-family home in a residential area for commercial use, finding the question of appropriate zoning as "fairly debatable" and therefore within the city's discretion. On December 18, 2025, the Broken Arrow Planning Commission voted to recommend approval of the zoning change and the conditional-use permit for a place of assembly, file number 25-1766. (Video of the meeting is available here. After public comment, the discussion among the planning commissioners starts about four-and-a-half hours into the meeting. The vote is at about 4 hrs. 50 mins.) The proposal would rezone a 15-acre parcel on the east side of Olive just south of the Creek Turnpike from AG (Agricultural) to CG (Commercial General) and FD (Floodplain), and then would grant a conditional-use permit to allow a place of assembly on a CG-zoned parcel. The two issues are separate, but the second issue is dependent on the first: The zoning change could be granted and the conditional-use permit denied. The Planning Commission voted 4-1 to recommend the rezoning to CG (Robert Goranson, Jason Coan, Jaylee Klempa, Jonathan Townsend voting yes, Mindy Payne, voting no). The conditional-use permit passed 3-2, the three men (Goranson, Coan, Townsend) voting yes and the two women (Klempa and Payne) voting no; Goranson added a stipulation against broadcasts and announcements on the exterior of the facility (public safety excepted) to his motion to approve the Conditional Use Permit. From the Planning Commission agenda item:

BAZ-002469-2025 is a request to change the zoning designation of 15.08 acres from AG (Agricultural) to CG (Commercial General) and FD (Floodplain). The property is located approximately ½ mile north of Tucson Street (121st Street) and just east of Olive Avenue (129th E. Avenue). The Creek Turnpike and its interchange with Olive Avenue is north of this property. The proposed development will have access from Olive Avenue. This property is Comprehensive Plan Level 6, which supports a rezoning to CG. The proposed development includes a commercial retail center along the frontage of the property, the Islamic Center in the center portion. The rear portion of the property is partially floodplain and is planned for a retention pond and vacant land. A Conditional Use Permit for a place of assembly is also a part of this item for consideration. Parking requirements for places of assembly are 1 parking space per 4 seats in assembly area or 1 per 100 sq ft in meeting area without seats. The conceptual development layout details 726 total parking spaces, however, the final number will be determined and approved in the site plan review process for both the Islamic Center and the retail development.... According to FEMA's National Flood Hazard Layer, the rear portion of the property features an area of 100-year flood plain. That area is planned to remain undeveloped currently. All developments will follow floodplain development requirements as set forth by the City of Broken Arrow and FEMA.

All surrounding properties are currently zoned AG. Immediately to the south is Walnut Grove Church, pastored by David Ingles, founder of the Oasis Radio Network. The other surrounding parcels are vacant and wooded. The driveway to The Property Event Center is right across the street. City planning staff, who review each zoning amendment, recommended approval of the proposal.

Recommendation: Based upon the Comprehensive Plan, the location of the property, and the surrounding land uses, Staff recommends that BAZ-002469-2025 and SP-002526-2025 be approved subject to the property being platted. Reviewed by: Jane Wyrick Approved by: Rocky Henkel

The Broken Arrow Comprehensive Plan Future Development Guide Map designates the parcel as Level 6, Regional Employment/Commercial, while the areas to the south are Level 3, Transitional. The conceptual site plan, which is not binding in any way, shows the existing pond remaining, with a septic field next to it. The 20,700 retail strip along 129th East Avenue is shown as "future," while the 23,764 sq. ft. mosque is "Phase 1." The description of Level 6:

Level 6 represents an opportunity to develop regionally significant and highway oriented commercial and employment nodes in Broken Arrow. The Level 6 classification is for a mixture of medium to high intensity commercial and employment uses in the vicinity of major transportation corridors. Nodes along Elm Place, Aspen Avenue, and Kenosha Street, as well as key interchanges along the Broken Arrow Expressway and the Creek Turnpike, are all appropriate areas for Level 6 development. Typical uses could include large shopping centers, big box retailers, commercial, automotive, and office/employment centers.

The Future Development Guide Map shows a half-mile-wide, 2.5-mile-long swath of Level 6 along the Creek Turnpike, extending to both sides, from Florence (111th Street S.) at about 121st East Ave to Elm Place (161st East Ave). This area already includes a Walmart Supercenter, Regal Warren Theater, Reasor's, and a collection of fast-food restaurants. The obvious intention is to have a continuous corridor of car-oriented sales-tax generating businesses along this high-capacity corridor to serve and encourage residential development on Broken Arrow's south side. I've outlined the site of the proposed mosque development in red. The Transportation Plan Map shows a frontage road that would parallel the turnpike on the south side and allow more of the corridor to be developed commercially; it would likely cut through the property. This road has been cited as a reason to deny the rezoning. (If Broken Arrow wants the possibility of building this road in the future, they had better begin acquiring the right-of-way.) While there is a church just to the south, it is in the Level 3 transition area, and not in Level 6, and it is well south of the proposed frontage road. Those subtle differences would warrant somewhat different treatment. At the Planning Commission meeting, State Sen. Christi Gillespie, a member of the Broken Arrow City Council prior to her election to the State Senate last year, argued for denial based on land use planning, transportation planning, and economic development concerns. She posted video of her remarks on Facebook. Gillespie reminded the planning commissioners that the staff recommendation for approval did not bind their freedom to exercise their own judgment. The same thing is true for the City Council: The Planning Commission has made a recommendation for approval, and the City Council has the discretion to deny. Gillespie pointed out that, "Everything we depend on in Broken Arrow to have quality of life depends on sales tax." The Olive (129th East Ave) exit is the first BA exit on the Creek Turnpike when coming from the west, which makes it a strategic location for highway-visible retail businesses to capture dollars from south and east Tulsa residents. Regarding the conditional use permit required to allow a place of assembly on the site, Gillespie noted that there would be three places of assembly within a quarter-mile -- Walnut Grove to the south and The Property Event Center to the west, making three large parcels at this key exit that would not be generating sales tax. The future "measly 20,000 square foot strip center would not begin to offset sales tax lost to this development. Honestly, the applicant -- they acted that they didn't even want to do it, and it wasn't even their idea." I suspect either their land-use attorney or BA planning staff suggested adding the retail strip to the drawing to improve the application's chances for approval. Gillespie reminded the commissioners that Broken Arrow has a precedent for not permitting concentrations of places of assembly. A commenter on Gillespie's video named Clint Babb stated that when a church sought to occupy the former Reasor's on the east side of Elm south of New Orleans (101st St.), the city council denied their application, despite the church including a strip of small shops across the frontage of the building. The city had invested a considerable amount of money into reviving the vintage 1980s retail node now known as New Orleans Square, and they didn't want to see yet another large retail space (originally a 72,000 sq. ft. K-Mart, which opened in 1979) at the intersection occupied by a non-sales-tax-generating use. The septic field shown on the concept drawing, and no plan to connect to the city sewer system, was another red flag for the state senator. Finally, Gillespie called attention to the Creek Turnpike frontage roads shown on the Comprehensive Plan. This proposed development wouldn't allow that road to be built. If the frontage road is blocked, there will be no access from Olive to any business that wants to locate on the S side of the highway; it will have to be accessed from Tucson (121st Street South), putting traffic pressure on that road and on the 121st Street & Olive intersection. Gillespie concluded: "My goal is to ensure we have a common-sense economic development plan for my district. This development does not comply with the Comprehensive Plan, nor does it make business sense for the inevitable growth between Aspen and Olive. It's for these reasons that you have no choice but to vote no." This case against the zoning proposal is not a pretext to discriminate against a particular religion but stands on its own based on the city's interest to encourage and not impede retail development along this strategic corridor. Sen. Gillespie said that even if it were her own church proposing to build on the site, she would oppose it for the reasons stated. It's been too long ago to find the case, but circa 1991, when Christ Presbyterian Church sought to plant a satellite campus in Broken Arrow, they attempted to rent space in the retail strip on the NE corner of Aspen and Albany (145th East Ave. and 61st St.). The city rejected their permit because a church in that location would have made the cocktail lounge at the Holiday Inn (now the Clarion) illegal because of spacing requirements around a church.
- January 09, 2026 at 07:14PM
The Broken Arrow mosque zoning case
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A concerning aspect of the proposed Broken Arrow mosque is its ownership. In a later entry, I'll get into the technicalities of the zoning amendment process and the grounds on which the Broken Arrow City Council might plausibly deny it, but the organization that owns the land is a topic that we explored almost 20 years ago here at BatesLine, in connection with the hostility endured by an anti-terrorist Muslim immigrant from Pakistan from the leaders of Tulsa's Islamic community. The 15-acre property on the east side of Olive Street (129th East Avenue) just south of the Creek Turnpike has been owned by the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT) since 2014. The Islamic Society of Tulsa (IST) purchased the land from the Clarence E. Brooks Trust for $625,000, then later in 2014 transferred the title to NAIT, "to have and to hold said described premises unto GRANTEE as perpetual trustee (in Waqf)." NAIT is also the owner of record of the former Robert Louis Stevenson Elementary School at 46th and Irvington, which is now home to a mosque and Peace Academy (a private school). The property on which the Muslim Student Association mosque at 4th Place and Florence sits is owned by the University of Tulsa; by contrast, the neighboring religious student ministry buildings on the same block are owned by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Tulsa and the Wesley Foundation, respectively. September 19, 2014 Journal Record story about the construction of Masjid as-Salam mentions plans for a future Broken Arrow mosque:

The mosque serves about 1,000 Muslims each week, roughly double 1999 levels. Siddiqui said holiday activity now exceeds capacity, leading the Islamic Society to buy 15 acres in Broken Arrow for future development.

A 2006 controversy over claims of American Muslim support of international terrorism called public attention to Tulsa Muslim connections to an influential network of Islamic organizations. Jamal Miftah wrote an op-ed, published in the October 29, 2006, Tulsa World, condemning terrorism in the name of Islam and calling on Islamic leaders in the US to join in that condemnation. He noted the complicity of some American Muslim organizations in financing worldwide terror:

Even mosques and Islamic institutions in the U.S. and around the world have become tools in [Al-Qaeda's] hands and are used for collecting funds for their criminal acts. Half of the funds collected go into the pockets of their local agents and the rest are sent to these thugs.

For his courage, he was confronted at the Islamic Center of Tulsa by the imam and the leader of the operating council and banned. The situation received national attention. That conflict came to mind recently when Helen Pluckrose called upon liberal and reforming Muslims (that is, those who believe in freedom of conscience and don't demand the conversion or subjugation of all humans to Islam) to speak out against violent behaviors by their co-religionists. I called her attention to Miftah's experience to explain why more Muslims don't speak out. I encourage you to read through that entire category of BatesLine articles, which expanded to include Gov. Brad Henry's barely-camouflaged attempt to give Islamic leaders in Oklahoma a special seat at the state government table. As the story developed we learned that the Islamic Society of Tulsa is affiliated with NAIT and ISNA, part of a network of organizations that increasingly dominate Muslim community life in the US. Critics say that the organizations have roots in the Muslim Brotherhood and that significant funding from Saudi Arabia through these organizations has worked to shape the practice of Islam in America after the image of the strict Wahhabi sect of Sunni Islam. The name of one particular Tulsan illustrates the close connections between various national Muslim organizations and the Tulsa Muslim community: Mujeeb Cheema. At the time, Cheema was executive director of NAIT. He is currently listed as a board member of NAIT. Cheema is also currently on the board of the American Halal Institute. He was an incorporator of the Islamic Society of Tulsa at its founding in 1997. In 2003, as chairman of the Islamic Society of Tulsa, he hailed the construction of the Muslim Students Association mosque on the University of Tulsa campus as possibly "the first building constructed on an American college campus for the specific purpose of serving as an Islamic mosque." In 2006, the NAIT website said about itself (emphasis added):

The North American Islamic Trust (NAIT) is a waqf, the historical Islamic equivalent of an American trust or endowment, serving Muslims in the United States and their institutions. NAIT facilitates the realization of American Muslims' desire for a virtuous and happy life in a Shari'ah-compliant way. NAIT is a not-for-profit entity that qualifies as a tax-exempt organization under Section 501(c) (3) of the Internal Revenue Code. NAIT was established in 1973 in Indiana by the Muslim Students Association of U.S. and Canada (MSA), the predecessor of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). NAIT supports and provides services to ISNA, MSA, their affiliates, and other Islamic centers and institutions. The President of ISNA is an ex-officio member of the Board of Trustees of NAIT. NAIT holds titles to mosques, Islamic centers, schools, and other real estate to safeguard and pool the assets of the American Muslim community, develops financial vehicles and products that are compatible with both the Shari'ah (Islamic law) and the American law, publishes and distributes credible Islamic literature, and facilitates and coordinates community projects.

A February 8, 2004, front-page feature story in the Chicago Tribune recounts a battle over the Bridgeview, Illinois, mosque, which was founded in the 1950s by Palestinian immigrants, but taken over by newcomers, funded by Kuwaiti donors and Saudi and UAE governments, and deeded to NAIT in the 1980s, over the objections of long-time members. (Here is the article on Newspapers.com: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3)

Beitunia farmer Khalil Zayid arrived in 1939 and rented a room along 18th Street in the heart of the Arab community on the South Side.... Like many in the Islamic world at the time, Zayid and the other Beitunia immigrants practiced a form of Islam that allowed Muslims to socialize freely. They viewed their religion as an important part of life, but not all of life. Men and women could mingle. The women wore short sleeves and did not cover their hair. The men sometimes ran liquor stores even though many Muslims believed Islam forbade selling alcohol. While they wanted to succeed in America and fit into society, they also wanted a place of their own to practice their religion and hold on to their culture. But in all of Chicago, there was no real mosque or official religious leader for Arab Muslims. In 1954, about 30 families from Beitunia, including Zayid's, decided that something needed to be done. They formed the Mosque Foundation and started raising money for a formal place of worship. Zayid stepped forward to become the group's first prayer leader, holding services in a storefront. He had no formal Islamic training, but he considered himself a religious man.... Most of the Beitunia immigrants who had dreamed of their own mosque are now gone. The congregation's first prayer leader, Khalil Zayid, worshiped there until he died in 1988. He was never allowed to lead prayers at the new mosque. Many of the early leaders' children attend other mosques or pray at home. Leila Diab, the daughter of a founder, rarely prays in Bridgeview. She said she tried to meet with Sheik Jamal several years ago, but he insisted that she cover her hair, and she refused.... Sheik Jamal and other [Bridgeview] mosque leaders still pursue a controversial agenda. In March 2002, the mosque hired a new assistant prayer leader--the same man who had run the local office of an Islamic charity until it was closed by the federal government for alleged terrorism ties. Even a few board members questioned whether he should have been hired so quickly. At a prayer service last May, Sheik Jamal raised $50,000 for Palestinian activist Sami Al-Arian, a former professor at the University of South Florida who is charged with being the U.S. leader of Palestinian Islamic Jihad. To rally donors, the sheik called Israel "a foreign, malignant and strange element on the blessed land." Al-Arian denies the charges against him. Oussama Jammal, the mosque president, defended the fundraising for Al-Arian. "We raised for his legal defense. That's allowed under U.S. law," he said. "If people were against this, they wouldn't have paid." In December, at an Islamic conference in Chicago, Sheik Jamal said that Muslims should not listen to contemporary music and that women should not travel long distances without chaperones. He also praised Sayyid Qutb, whose writings helped lay the foundation for Muslim Brotherhood beliefs. The mosque remains so conservative, several former leaders said, because more and more mosque officials are Brotherhood members. Mosque leaders declined to comment on the Brotherhood, but director Bassam Jody noted that most of the mosque's 24 directors belong to the Muslim American Society--a group with strong ties to the Brotherhood. The mosque vice president runs the society's local chapter.

Stephen Schwartz, an academic, a journalist, and a follower of Sufism, testified in 2003 before the Senate Homeland Security subcommittee about the spread of Wahhabi influence in the American Muslim community through NAIT and related organizations:

Wahhabi-Saudi policy has always been two-faced: that is, at the same time as the Wahhabis preach hostility and violence against non-Wahhabi Muslims, they maintain a policy of alliance with Western military powers -- first Britain, then the U.S. and France -- to assure their control over the Arabian Peninsula. At the present time, Shia and other non-Wahhabi Muslim community leaders estimate that 80 percent of American mosques are under Wahhabi control. This does not mean 80 percent of American Muslims support Wahhabism, although the main Wahhabi ideological agency in America, the so-called Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) has claimed that some 70 percent of American Muslims want Wahhabi teaching in their mosques.1This is a claim we consider unfounded. Rather, Wahhabi control over mosques means control of property, buildings, appointment of imams, training of imams, content of preaching -- including faxing of Friday sermons from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia -- and of literature distributed in mosques and mosque bookstores, notices on bulletin boards, and organizational solicitation. Similar influence extends to prison and military chaplaincies, Islamic elementary and secondary schools (academies), college campus activity, endowment of academic chairs and programs in Middle East studies, and most notoriously, charities ostensibly helping Muslims abroad, many of which have been linked to or designated as sponsors of terrorism. The main organizations that have carried out this campaign are the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), which originated in the Muslim Students' Association of the U.S. and Canada (MSA), and CAIR. Support activities have been provided by the American Muslim Council (AMC), the American Muslim Alliance (AMA), the Muslim American Society (MAS), the Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences, its sister body the International Institute of Islamic Thought, and a number of related groups that I have called "the Wahhabi lobby." ISNA operates at least 324 mosques in the U.S. [as of 2003] through the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT). These groups operate as an interlocking directorate.

In a 2002 Q&A with National Review, Schwartz had this to say about Wahhabist influence over American mosques (emphasis added):

Unfortunately, the U.S. is the only country outside Saudi Arabia where the Islamic establishment is under Wahhabi control. Eighty percent of American mosques are Wahhabi-influenced, although this does not mean that 80 percent of the people who attend them are Wahhabis. Mosque attendance is different from church or synagogue membership in that prayer in the mosque does not imply acceptance of the particular dispensation in the mosque. However, Wahhabi agents have sought to impose their ideology on all attendees in mosques they control.

How many mosques are held in trust by NAIT is hard to determine. The list on their website is empty. NAIT's self-proclaimed role as a guarantor would allow it to step in should local mosque leadership choose to reject Wahhabism and embrace a more liberal, American-flavored version of Muslim life. This is a similar dynamic to that of liberal Christian denominations who owned local church property; conservative congregations seeking to leave a liberalizing denomination like the Presbyterian Church USA and the Episcopal Church, because of their objections to the denominations' embrace of left-wing ideology and rejection of the Bible, were forced either to abandon their long-time homes (e.g., Falls Church, Virginia) or to pay a hefty ransom to retain the facilities built with the sacrificial gifts of local members (e.g., Tulsa's Kirk of the Hills). Discover the Networks has detailed and lengthy articles on the North American Islamic Trust and its parent organization, the Islamic Society of North America, carefully and precisely documenting their connections to terrorist-linked organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood and the Holy Land Foundation.

A financial subsidiary and "constituent organization" of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT) was founded in 1973 in Indiana by members of the Muslim Students Association of the U.S. & Canada. NAIT is a tax-exempt nonprofit endowment that not only subsidizes the construction of new mosques in the United States, but presently claims to hold the mortgages on more than 325 existing mosques, Islamic centers, and Islamic schools in 42 states. Some sources indicate that NAIT holds the mortgages to about 27% of all U.S. mosques, which is roughly consistent with the Trust's own claim; other sources place the figure much higher, at somewhere between 50% and 79%. Because NAIT controls the purse strings of these many properties, it can exercise ultimate authority over what they teach and what activities they conduct. Specifically, the Trust seeks to ensure that the institutions under its financial influence promote the principles of Sharia Law and Wahhabism.... At the 2007 trial investigating allegations that the now-defunct Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development had engaged in the illegal financing of terrorism, both NAIT and ISNA were named as "unindicted co-conspirators" and as "entities who are and/or were members of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood." Prosecutors presented copious evidence that ISNA had used NAIT to divert funds to leading Hamas officials like Mousa Abu Marzook, and to a number of Hamas-run institutions (such as the Islamic University of Gaza and the Islamic Center of Gaza, the latter of which was founded by the late Hamas leader Ahmed Yassin). The designation of NAIT as an "unindicted co-conspirator" was upheld in 2009 by a federal judge, though that judge ruled against the previous public disclosure of the designation. Many media outlets have repeatedly mischaracterized this as a lifting of the designation.

There is one non-NAIT mosque in Tulsa: The Tulsa Islamic Foundation, located on 61st Street east of Mingo, is a Shia mosque affiliated with Imam Mahdi Association of Marjaeya and Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani of Najaf, Iraq.
- January 04, 2026 at 07:23PM
NAIT: Owner of Broken Arrow mosque land
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KJRH ran a story today on Jasmine "Jazzy" Smith, an 18-year-old Oklahoman who is undergoing treatment in Florida for conditions related to Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome:

TULSA, Okla. -- An 18-year-old Oklahoma singer whose life revolved around performing is now fighting for her health after a rare connective tissue disorder left her nearly bedridden.... "When I was a dancer, cheerleader, I always dislocated things, subluxed my knees, shoulders, and then subluxed my neck," Smith said. "Then after like a few months, it just all I started regressing really badly, and I was noticing really weird brain patterns." Doctors eventually diagnosed her with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, a rare connective tissue disorder that can affect nearly every system in the body. Months ago, her health collapsed completely. She endured long hospital stays, severe head and spinal pain, multiple daily seizures, and days without sleep.... In Florida, doctors diagnosed Cervical Cranial Instability, a malformation, and Intracranial Hypertension -- conditions linked to Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome that increase brain pressure and cause regressions to systems in her body.

The news story describes it as rare, but at a prevalence of 1 in 3,100 for the most common type, hypermobile EDS (hEDS), there's a decent chance that someone in your world has Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (a disorder affecting the formation of collagen in the body). At that prevalence, there could be around 1,300 people in Oklahoma with EDS. The effects vary and for many are not as severe as Jazzy Smith has experienced. Because collagen is everywhere, seemingly unrelated symptoms -- joint hypermobility, headaches, tachycardia, allergic reactions to foods (mast cell activation disorder) -- may all be downstream of the same root cause, but doctors who are unaware of EDS may just try, unsuccessfully, to treat the individual symptoms. Recently we met someone who had worked in the medical field and had EDS symptoms, like frequent shoulder dislocation and tendon rupture as a side effect of Cipro (see note below), but had never heard of EDS. There needs to be more awareness. Tulsa is blessed with at least one doctor, David Chorley at Axis HealthCare in Bixby, who understands EDS, and there are online communities like EDSOK - Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome Oklahoma, which can help you find EDS-aware specialists and resources for learning to live with EDS. An EDS patient named Deborah Cusack has developed a nutritional approach, called the Cusack Protocol, which "focuses on improving connective tissue integrity and function through a combination of supplements targeting specific cells involved in collagen production and tissue repair. NOTE: People with EDS are one class among several who are at risk for tendon rupture and other severe side effects from the fluoroquinolone family of antibiotics, which includes ciprofloxacin (marketed as Cipro and generic ciprofloxacin), ciprofloxacin extended-release (marketed as Cipro XR and Proquin XR), gemifloxacin (marketed as Factive), levofloxacin (marketed as Levaquin), moxifloxacin (marketed as Avelox), norfloxacin (marketed as Noroxin), and ofloxacin (marketed as Floxin).
- January 01, 2026 at 06:34PM
Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome not as rare as you might think
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