Many residents of Hoover have made it clear that the do not want an Islamic school to be located in their city.

The Hoover Planning and Zoning Commission held a vote Monday on whether to approve a proposal to allow the Islamic Academy of Alabama to relocate from Homewood to a vacant office building in Meadow Brook Corporate Park in Hoover.

The commission voted 7-0 against the request to rezone the property and allow the school to relocate to the city.

While the zoning board voted no, the school still has the option to take the request to the Hoover City Council.

According to a report by 1819 news, many residents showed up to the board meeting a Hoover City Hall to voice their opposition to the plan, citing traffic and other concerns about the proposal.

“I see the traffic backed up every morning already,” John Padgett, a homeowner with the residential property closest to the location said at the meeting. “When they start, if you add a few hundred cars to that, it’s gonna be backed up past the stop sign,” questioning the results of the traffic study that said the school would have zero impact on current conditions.”

Traffic wasn’t the only concerns cited, as one new resident said he was worried about that will be promoted by an Islamic school.

“I was shocked to witness the land that gave us the King James Bible, supposedly a Christian nation, overwhelmingly being taken over. I witnessed in the United Kingdom, especially, in Manchester, Birmingham, London, that the multiculturism did not work,” the resident explained. “The Muslims did not assimilate. In fact, the Brits bent backwards to accommodate their demands over and over, again, to the level of feeling the second-class citizens in their own country.”

Despite the pushback, school spokesman Lucas Gambino told The Hoover Sun that “if the city is concerned about the potential number of students at the school, the school would be happy to put a cap on the number of students allowed and subject itself to reporting and audits by the city.”

Yaffee is a contributing writer to Yellowhammer News and hosts “The Yaffee Program” weekdays 9-11 a.m. on WVNN. You can follow him on X @Yaffee