WASHINGTON, 3 January 2007 — A plan to build a mosque in a Houston, Texas, suburb has turned an apparent misunderstanding into a neighborhood dispute, with community members warning the place will become a terrorist hotbed and one man threatening to hold pig races on Fridays just to offend the Muslims.

Craig Baker protested the proposed building of a mosque next to his property by holding pig races and selling sausages. Nearly 100 people showed up to catch the races last Friday.

Baker, 46, is at odds with the Katy Islamic Association who plans to build a mosque, community center and school near his property.

The problem started when the group asked Baker to remove his cattle from their newly bought land. Baker agreed but mistakenly thought the Muslims also wanted him off the land his family has lived on for more than 100 years. The rumor spread.

Baker, who makes marble and granite fixtures for kitchens and bathrooms and also owns livestock, said he got so mad he put up a sign announcing the pig races.

The association says it’s all a misunderstanding and that they never wanted Baker off the property.

Many neighborhood residents claim they have nothing against Muslims and are more concerned about property values, drainage and traffic. The 11-acre property is sandwiched between a pricey subdivision and Craig Baker’s business.

The situation has become so tenuous, that a local committee has formed to buy another property and offer to trade it for the Muslims’ land.

“The neighbors have created havoc for us and we didn’t expect that,” Kamel Fotouh, president of the 500-member Katy Islamic Association, told local reporters.

Fotouh vowed to press ahead with plans for a mosque on the 11-acre site, as well as a community center that would offer after-school activities, housing for senior citizens, a fitness center and an Islamic school.

Baker’s attempt to offend missed its mark, Fotouh told a reporter. Muslims do not hate pigs, he said; they just don’t eat them.

“I don’t care if he races, roasts or slaughters pigs,” Yousef Allam, a spokesman for the group a local reporter.

Late last month, Baker conceded to local reporters that the Muslims probably aren’t after his land, but he said he had to go through with the pig races because “I would be like a total idiot if I didn’t. I’d be the laughingstock now because I’ve gone too far.”

Allam said the association never meant to imply it wanted Baker to move. “If we somehow communicated that to him, then we apologize,” he said.

Katy, population 13,000, is a mix of middle-class bedroom-community neighborhoods and small farms on Houston’s western edge and boasts of being the hometown of Oscar-winning actress Renee Zellweger. It is 70 percent white and 24 percent Hispanic.

The Houston metropolitan area has about 170,000 Muslims, according to the Islamic Society of Greater Houston, and among their many mosques is one built in Houston by former NBA star Hakeem Olajuwon.

The Islamic association bought the land in Katy in September for $1.1 million. It said the overall cost of the project has not been determined.

The reaction has not been all negative. Fotouh said one man came to the mosque on a Friday afternoon and apologized for his neighbors. “He moved me, really,” Fotouh said. “The sense of fairness, the sense of standing by the underdog.”