Palos Heights Mayor Supported Muslims

For the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, CRC News has prepared a series of stories about how the Christian Reformed Church and its members have responded – and what we have learned – in the last 10 years.

Dean Koldenhoven recalled the night in 2000 that he stared at the number of people who had unexpectedly packed into the city council chambers of Palos Heights, Ill., where he was the mayor.

He says he was shocked to see the anger on some of the faces of people, including a few with whom he attended a Christian Reformed church on Sunday.

Koldenhoven soon knew why so many had gathered. Rumors had hit the streets that a Muslim group wanted to buy and convert a former church into the city's first mosque. The people wanted to find out if this was true.

One of the council members told them that an Islamic group had expressed interest in purchasing the church to turn it into a mosque. Those words were like electricity, shooting through the chambers.

Although the issue wasn't on that night's agenda, people stepped to the microphone to speak, pleading with the council to keep the Muslims out of their Chicago-area city.

As they spoke, Koldenhoven found it hard to believe what he was hearing. Didn't the speakers realize that the United States Constitution guarantees freedom of religion, a freedom that includes moving into whatever community or neighborhood that members of the religion desired?

Since this happened in 2000, before the terrorist attacks ofSept. 11, 2001 and before the issue of people fighting to keep mosques out of towns and neighborhoods had turned into a controversial issue nationwide, Koldenhoven found the controversy hard to fathom.

But even if he could have foreseen the future, Koldenhoven says he would have felt the same way. For him it wasn't a religious issue; it was a matter of human freedom. In his opinion, Muslims had every right to buy the church building and turn it into a mosque.

"I kept order at the meeting, but person after person made it clear that they didn't want Muslims in their neighborhood." Koldenhoven said. "… I wondered what happened to what Jesus said about loving your neighbor."

The outcry slowly died down after that meeting when the Muslim group — Al Salam Mosque Foundation — decided to seek another location for the mosque.

This bothered Koldenhoven, and he let people know what he thought, criticizing the way in which the situation had unfolded. His position in favor of the mosque probably contributed to his defeat as mayor in the next election after serving only one, four-year term. He now works as a brick salesman.

Asked where his own tolerance and quest for common ground came from, Koldenhoven said it was a simple matter of growing up as a Dutch, Christian Reformed Church kid in an Irish-Catholic neighborhood on the south side of Chicago in the 1940s.

Living there was an eye-opening experience. He attended a Christian Reformed Church, but was surrounded by Irish Catholics. Native curiosity led him to try to understand elements of the Catholic faith from his friends in the neighborhood.

Eventually his family moved to a farm in the country. Even then, he remained interested in what others believed and how they worshipped. He attended a Christian school where he was taught about freedom of speech and of religion that was guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution.

He took this seriously and recalls being proud that he belonged to a country that provided and protected that kind of freedom.

In the years following the Palos Heights incident and especially as a result of the terrorist attacks ofSept. 11, 2001, Koldenhoven was a voice of tolerance and spoke to many groups about his beliefs.

With the help of the U.S. government, he helped to start an inter-faith dialogue in Palos Heights that lasted for many years. In 2002, he was the recipient of the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award, which he received in Washington  D.C.

He also became deeply involved in U.S. Department of State diplomacy projects that took him to Russia and the Ukraine to build a dialogue between Orthodox Christians and Baptists who were at odds.

While there, he presented the Russian people with a Russian-language edition of JFK’s best-selling, prize-winning Profiles in Courage at the U.S. embassy in Moscow. Kennedy’s book is about democracy and how a few U.S. senators crossed party lines or defied the public opinion of their constituents to do what they felt was right.

Koldenhoven says he is sad that people have continued since 9/11 to "spew hatred" against Muslims. "I'm watching the hotspots across the country and seeing that the same thing is happening" as happened in 2000 in Palos Heights, he said.

In 2010, when an Islamic group wanted to build a community center near the former World Trade Center, the issue became national news. Other cities also became embroiled in struggles to keep mosques from going up.

"This bothered me. The intolerance just wouldn’t go away," said Koldenhoven.

Although he is a target of criticism every time he speaks out, he has by no means remained out of the fray.

"You know, I often get asked to speak to young people in high school and college, and I tell them how important it is for each of us to stand up for the rights of others," Koldenhoven said.

"If you're in a group of five people and one person makes a derogatory racial remark or expresses religious intolerance, it is your duty to stand up to them and tell them what they have said is wrong. Because if you don’t do that, that person will go on repeating the remark. Also, by staying silent you’re just as guilty."

Koldenhoven says he especially agrees with the remarks of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the slain civil rights leader, who said: "In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."