A Minnesota property developer has unveiled plans for a controversial ‘Muslim-friendly’ community.
Faraaz Yussuf hopes to build a town for around 1,500 residents on a former sod farm near the Twin Cities.
The community, dubbed Madinah Lakes, will be centered around a $15 million mosque and feature a mix of housing types and businesses.
However, the controversial project has hit a setback after opposition by the city of Lino Lakes, where the development has been proposed.
Officials have voted to enact a moratorium on the development which will stall any construction for year.
Opponents have raised concerns about population density and whether the land can support so much development.
However, Yussuf and supporters of the project claim that the opposition is motivated by Islamophobia.
This argument has reared its head again after some locals began raising questions about Yussuf’s background, which includes a conviction for fraud.
A Minnesota property developer has unveiled plans for a ‘Muslim-friendly’ community
Yussuf, who was formerly known as Faraaz Mohammed, was convicted of theft by swindle in 2013, the Star Tribune reports.
He admitted to writing unauthorized checks to himself totaling $20,000 while working as an accountant for a company called Forevergreen.
He took a plea deal which reduced the offence to a misdemeanor and has since claimed it was a wrongful conviction without elaborating on how.
And in October 2023, Minnesota company Royal Priesthood LLC sued him, claiming his company failed to complete renovations on a Minneapolis apartment building as part of a $62,000 contract.
Royal Priesthood owner Olaleye Olagbaju said Yussuf had lied about being a licensed contractor. He eventually got back $25,000 of his money.
Yussuf said he changed his name after struggling to secure work following his conviction. He has never been a licensed contractor in Minnesota.
However, he dismissed Olagbaju’s lawsuit as ‘frivolous’.
‘Lawsuits do happen in our industry, they are, in fact, so common that many attorneys dedicate their entire practice to the specialty,’ he said. ‘We are not immune from that reality.’
Faraaz Yussuf hopes to build a town for around 1,500 residents on a former sod farm near the Twin Cities
In November, KARE11 reported that Yussuf had been involved in a scheme to forge shipping receipts which he also refuted.
He told the Star Tribune he had accidentally passed on false information from his employer.
Yussuf purchased the plot for Madinah Lakes in March and set forth plans through his company Zikar Holdings which include homes, a soccer field, shops, restaurants, tennis courts and a 40,000-square-foot mosque.
The response was mixed, with some locals expressing concern the project could be exclusionary.
‘What is naturally going to happen is people will choose not to live there … This is almost segregation not by intent, but by choice,’ local Luke Walter said during a community meeting, local media reported.
A rendering of an apartment block in the planned Muslim town in Minnesota
Luxurious mansions like this one are also planned for the Muslim town
‘That’s 1,800 people living a certain way of life in a community within a community, and history has taught us over and over again that sort of division is harmful to a society.
‘We need organic integration. People should come here and be welcome to buy into developments; anybody should be welcome to come and build a religious building here.’
Yussuf then sued Lino Lakes alleging his project was being held up by anti-Islamic discrimination.
‘We have seen hundreds of people show up to every city council meeting or planning meeting,’ Jaylani Hussein, executive director of Minnesota branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, told CBS.
‘And in those meetings, people have continuously projected Islamophobic, anti-Muslim statements in why they do not want this project to move forward,’
Hussein added that while the allegations against Yussuf are serious, the project is only getting this much scrutiny due to Islamophobia.
‘I don’t think it would have mattered whether the developer had a past or not,’ Hussein said. ‘I don’t think that was the reason that they were trying to stop this project.’
But other residents expressed worries that valid concerns about Yussuf’s background were being dismissed as Islamophobia.
Yussuf also remains undeterred despite the moratirum which came into effect in August.
‘We plan to be part of the Lino Lakes community. We are not going anywhere,’ he said.
‘We face these battles in every city we go to. It just gives us a resolve to make the development a reality.’
Minnesota has a large Muslim population, with many Somalis fleeing to the Land of 10,000 Lakes while a civil war ravaged their home nation during the 1990s.
