Not-so-new News About the Northridge Mosque

There was a very bitter dispute in the Sunni Muslim community in Granada Hills recently. The dispute was mainly over how the mosque's finances should be handled, and who should be in charge of the mosque. Theology wasn't part of it. But the parties to the dispute were likening each other to the Taliban, protesters started demonstrating outside the mosque during services and called the imam a devil, the mosque leaders hired private security, allegations of battery were made, a death threat was allegedly made on the phone, lawsuits were filed, fun things like that. Sometimes it's harder to tell what's worse - fights about money or fights about God.

The judge ordered the mosque to hold an election for the board, and that election happened July 15 of this year. Since the imam, the incumbent board members, and almost all of their supporters boycotted the election, the challengers won by a landslide. Incumbents got between 2 and 5 votes each, while the challengers got between 992 and more than a thousand votes each.

One of the reasons many of the incumbents' supporters abstained was that they did not believe that a ruling from a secular court was valid in disputes between Muslims. So though this dispute was more about finance than religion, it was someone's religion that made their loss blatant.