A Texas man was indicted Thursday, accused of threatening to use violence to stop construction of a mosque that for two years has divided the community of Murfreesboro, Tenn., and has become a national barometer of anti-Muslim sentiment.
The United States Justice Department said the indictment was an aggressive stance in support of religious freedom and was intended as a warning to people who might resort to violence and other illegal activity to prevent the mosque or any other religious institution to operate.
“What we’re hoping is that this sends a very strong message to any would-be individual who would threaten a mosque or take an action that would result in an individual’s constitutional rights being violated,” United States Attorney Jerry Martin said Thursday afternoon.
A federal grand jury indicted Javier A. Correa, 24, of Corpus Christi, Tex., accusing him of violating the civil rights of members of the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro in connection with a long, threatening message he is said to have left on the center’s phone last September.
Amid a slew of threats and profanity was this sentence: “On Sept. 11, 2011, there’s going to be a bomb in the building,” according to the indictment. Mr. Martin would not say how investigators connected Mr. Correa to the crime but said the man had used a cellphone.
Charges include intentionally obstructing by threat of force the free exercise of religious beliefs and of using an instrument of interstate commerce to communicate a threat to destroy a building by means of an explosive device. The authorities said they were negotiating a surrender date with a lawyer for Mr. Correa.
The Justice Department has been investigating threats and violence against the Islamic community in Murfreesboro, which is about a half-hour southeast of Nashville, for almost two years. Leaders of the congregation have been building a 12,000-square-foot mosque and community center, hoping to open it before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan begins at the end of July.
Since the project began, the site has been repeatedly vandalized, construction equipment has been set on fire and residents have tried to block the project in court. The F.B.I. and other federal agencies are investigating a 2010 fire as a possible hate crime.
Opponents’ arguments have ranged from assertions that it would increase traffic and damage water quality in the growing city of about 100,000 to concerns that the new center would serve as a cover for radical Muslims and Islamic law.
Public hearings about its construction in 2010 turned into a trial of the validity of Islam, with residents arguing that the center was part of a plot to replace the Constitution with Shariah law. A protest and counterprotest drew nearly 800 people, and a local Republican candidate for Congress tried to link the center to the Palestinian group Hamas.
Still, the building permit was granted. Opponents filed suit in state court contesting it, and were handed a victory this month when Chancellor Robert E. Corlew III ruled that the Rutherford County Planning Commission did not give sufficient notice of the hearing.
County officials have appealed the ruling and construction is continuing, but officials cannot issue the final permits so the center can be used.
Since the ruling, local Muslim leaders and the Council on American-Islamic Relations have been working with the Justice Department, which has filed a brief in support of the mosque in that case, and are watching the permitting process carefully.