Moxley hopes helicopter photos help case

Rejection of Muslim retreat center plans results in lawsuit against Town of Walkersville

A still photographer takes pictures from the backseat, images that will be enlarged later to provide a snapshot of how the carnival, and the number of people it attracts, affects the town.

Their point?

The annual carnival, which raises money for the Walkersville Volunteer Fire Company, attracts the same number people — about 4,500 — who would come to the Jalsa Salana, an annual Muslim retreat.

And if the Town of Walkersville can handle that many people for the annual carnival, it would have no problem handling a similar number of people who would attend a Muslim retreat.

And that is one of the reasons why David W. Moxley on Monday sued the Town of Walkersville in a U.S. District Court over the town’s decision not to allow the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community to build a retreat center on his farm for its annual retreat.

Moxley is seeking at least $16.5 million in damages under state law and unspecified damages under federal law from the town.

‘‘I believe that I need to protect the rights of both my family and the religious freedoms of the Ahmadiyyas,” Moxley said Monday at a press conference in Washington, D.C. ‘‘When the government usurps the laws and rights of individuals, it is those persons who have the ability to do something, it is their obligation and duty to stand up and correct the matter.”

Walkersville officials expected to meet in closed session Wednesday night to discuss the lawsuit filed Moxley, who claims they violated his civil rights by rejecting the Muslim group’s proposal to build their religious retreat center on his 224-acre farm. The town’s law firm, Severn, O’Connor and Kresslein of Frederick, will issue a press release following that meeting, Burgess Ralph W. Whitmore said Tuesday.

The town has budgeted $120,000 for legal fees in fiscal 2009, and some or all of it can be used for the town’s defense against the lawsuit, Whitmore said.

The Walkersville Zoning Board of Appeals voted Feb. 7 to deny the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community’s request for a special exception to use Moxley’s farm for religious purposes. The Silver Spring-based Muslim group wanted to hold an annual, three-day retreat called Jalsa Salana that attracts about 4,500 members and may eventually draw 10,000.

Moxley entered into a contract to sell the land to the Muslim group in 2007. The price, according to Moxley’s attorney, Roman P. Storzer, was $6.5 million. The contract was terminated on March 3. The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community declined to sue Walkersville after spending $450,000 in developing an application for the special exception, saying, in a June press release, ‘‘Participation in a lawsuit would be tantamount to a trespass on His hallowed ground.”

The group’s project leader, Syed M. Ahmad, could not be reached for further comment on Wednesday. Ahmad said in June that the group is not looking at other properties.

The appeals board faulted the Muslim group for not meeting most of the 14 zoning factors the board took into account for the special exception request. The board rejected much of the evidence submitted by the group in support of its request.

At the Washington, D.C. offices of Storzer’s firm, Storzer and Greene, Storzer and Moxley on Monday blasted the appeals board’s decision, and said discrimination against the Muslim group was behind it.

‘‘The hostility by the town residents against the idea of a Muslim group locating in their midst was palpable; it was substantial,” Storzer said. ‘‘These decisions were motivated by a desire to keep this Muslim group outside of the jurisdiction. And I think that the entire controversy can be summed up by one of the comments given to the town of Walkersville by one of the residents. It said, ‘I object [to] the Muslims coming to town for any reason.’”

Storzer said arguments against the special exception by Citizens for Walkersville, a grassroots group organized to oppose the sale, ‘‘were mere subterfuge” masking discriminatory motives.

‘‘That organization is headed by a couple of individuals that have made many discriminatory and hostile statements in the press, on the Internet, elsewhere,” Storzer said. ‘‘That organization hired certain professionals to make the arguments that there’s not enough resources, that the traffic would be impacted in the town of Walkersville, based on a three-day event annually. That argument is nonsense.”

Steven R. Berryman, spokesman for Citizens for Walkersville, said Wednesday that it was Moxley and Storzer, not the residents of Walkersville, who brought up religion at the Zoning Board of Appeals hearings earlier this year.

‘‘Any insinuation of religious intolerance is purely speculative on their part, and there is no substance in the written record whatsoever to substantiate that,” Berryman said.

Berryman said that the people that Citizens for Walkersville hired to speak against the Muslim group’s request ‘‘completely overshadowed the experts on Moxley’s behalf.”

‘‘Moxley’s experts were an embarrassment by comparison,” he said. The 68-page complaint filed in Baltimore also lists as defendants the Walkersville Zoning Board of Appeals, Walkersville Burgess Ralph W. Whitmore, Walkersville Commissioners Roger A. ‘‘Sam” Eyler Jr., Donald W. Schildt, Chad W. Weddle and Russell N. Winch and appeals board members Dan Thomas, Vaughn Zimmerman and Harold Roderuck.