WASHINGTON, May 23: Among recipients of this year’s John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage awards is the mayor of a small American town who might have lost his re-election bid because he had defended the right of his town’s Muslims to establish a mosque against the objections of some residents and local politicians.

The Profile in Courage Award is presented annually to an elected official who has withstood strong opposition from constituents, powerful interest groups or adversaries to follow what he or she believes is the right course of action.

Palos Heights is a small town of 12,000 souls, 30 minutes from Chicago, with approximately 500 Muslim residents, professionals who worship at a large mosque in the town of Bridgeview, 15 minutes north of Palos Heights. Dean Koldenhoven was mayor of the town in 1997.

In April 2000, having outgrown its worship space in downtown Chicago, the Al Salam Mosque Foundation contracted to buy the Reformed Church building in Palos Heights, property which had been for sale for several years.

The purchase should have taken place as a simple real estate transaction, but developed into what Koldenhoven described in an interview earlier this month as “the ugly face of religious intolerance.”

“Because we’re a very small town, somebody in a church meeting heard that they had accepted an offer from an Islamic foundation and the word got out.

Then the actions started taking place, with residents appearing at City Council meetings and bringing up the subject. It sort of grew as it went,” Koldenhoven explained.

Koldenhoven says he was shocked in May 2000, when several residents raised the sale of the Reformed Church property, saying the city needed to take over the property for a recreation centre.

Five out of eight council members voiced what Koldenhoven called a “sudden need” to purchase the church. “This was no more than an attempt to hide their prejudice under a veil of hypocrisy,” Koldenhoven said.

As mayor, he knew the city had, after careful study, rejected an offer to purchase the property two years earlier.

“Some of the younger children from the Muslim community showed up at a council meeting and said, ‘Hey, I grew up here, I play with your kids, I play basketball in this building we’re in and now you don’t want me to worship.’ They were hurt and it was a very emotional moment.”

In early July 2002, Al Salam Mosque Foundation indicated it no longer intended to establish a mosque in Palos Heights. The City Council then moved to pay the foundation 200,000 dollars to cover its legal expenses and allow the city to purchase the church.

The mayor immediately spoke out against such an offer and wrote a letter of apology to the people of the Islamic community.

“I called it an embarrassment and an insult to them and encouraged them to proceed with the purchase of the church,” he explained.

“At the city’s next regularly scheduled meeting I delivered my veto message pointing out that ‘the government had ‘no’ place in this matter,’... The council did not override my veto. But the foundation chose not to proceed with the purchase,” he said.

But Koldenhoven was not re-elected. Since then, he and many spiritual leaders in Palos Heights have been active in a Christian-Muslim dialogue that continues today.