Australian town council votes against building Islamic school

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
An Australian town council on Tuesday unanimously rejected a contentious proposal to build a 1,200-student Islamic school, citing infrastructure concerns. Mayor Chris Patterson of Camden said the decision had nothing to do with religion but was based on the impact on traffic and loss of agricultural land. "It is a site issue, clearly a site issue," Patterson said after the vote. "We said all along religious issues, nationalistic issues, will not be entered into." More than 200 residents attended the council meeting amid heightened security, and applauded after the vote. The Quranic Society, a Sydney-based Muslim group that planned to bankroll the proposed school, was not represented at the meeting.