An Islip zoning board voted 3-1 to ban overnight boarding at an approved all-boys Muslim school on a waterfront Bay Shore campus — the same property where a Catholic boarding school operated for roughly 50 years. If religious liberty means anything, it means the same rules apply regardless of which faith is knocking on the zoning board's door.
The United American Muslim Association bought the 13-acre property in June and plans to run an Islamic-education school serving grades 7 through 12, plus early childhood programs and community activities. Tuition runs between $750 and $1,250 a month. The town's zoning code expressly permits parochial schools in the district. The board even acknowledged that in its decision, released Thursday. The fight was never about whether the school could open — it was about whether 120 students could sleep there.
The board ruled they cannot, reversing the Building Division's earlier interpretation that boarding was a permitted accessory use. "The property owner has not demonstrated that the proposed residential boarding component satisfies the requirements" of town code, the board wrote.
Here is what makes that ruling impossible to swallow at face value: the property hosted a Catholic boarding school from the 1920s until 1972. The 73,000-square-foot main building later housed Catholic priests and sat empty for decades. A dormitory on this campus is not some novel imposition on the neighborhood — it is the restoration of a use the property held for half a century. The question writes itself: if a Catholic order repurchased this campus tomorrow and proposed reopening a boarding school, would Islip's zoning board have spent five hours getting grilled by furious residents before reversing course? Would the Building Division's interpretation have been overturned?
Hundreds of locals packed the July meeting, and it grew raucous enough that some were escorted out. The New York Post reported that some residents espoused Islamophobic views. But the loudest public argument was noise. "I don't care what religion the school teaches, it could be Jewish, Catholic, whatever — we just don't want it — imagine the noise of 120 school children day and night," one resident identified only as Barbara said. Fair enough on its face — except the campus sits next to a senior living community, and the previous boarding use apparently generated no such furor for the decades it operated. What changed is who moved in.
Several board members had previously indicated the dorm complied with town law, making the reversal a shock win for opponents. The United American Muslim Association did not respond to a request for comment.
The founders didn't draft the First Amendment so local zoning boards could play favorites between faiths. When a use is permitted for one denomination and suddenly becomes impermissible for another on the exact same land, the code isn't doing the talking — politics is. Islip residents who oppose the dorm on pure land-use grounds should have to make that case under a rule applied with complete indifference to the applicant's creed. Anything less is a test the town fails.
