A Question of Basic Rights? : Zoning: Designers and religious leaders are asking if the City Council went too far by restricting the size and design of a mosque in a Granada Hills neighborhood.

As Los Angeles sprawls ever more chaotically across hills and valleys, fights over ugly mini-malls and mammoth high-rises are commonplace. But now a quarrel over the design of a San Fernando Valley mosque has raised questions about how far local officials should go in regulating design.

Scarcely had the City Council required that the mosque limit its membership in its first year to 250 and be built Spanish style--without traditional domes or minarets--to fit the Granada Hills neighborhood, when designers and religious leaders expressed grave concern about the ruling’s effects.

“We had design police with Hitler and Stalin who produced the ugliest architecture we have, and I don’t believe the City Council should be dictating design and style,” said Bouje Bernkopf, president of the San Fernando Valley chapter of the American Institute of Architects. “Design is a process of thought just as speech is a process of thought, and the U.S. Constitution guarantees freedom of speech and therefore freedom of expression.”

Keith Atkinson, director of public communications for the California Churches of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, said he did not understand how the council could limit the mosque’s membership. Mohammed Mohiuddin, president of the Islamic Center of Northridge, said the Muslim community had sought permission for up to 550 members.

“It appears that the council may have intruded on the protection of religious freedom,” Atkinson said, “and we would find that a very disturbing and a dangerous precedent.”

The council voted 10-0 to approve the mosque but imposed 44 conditions--according to city officials the most restrictions ever placed on a house of worship here. Mayor Tom Bradley on Monday called the council’s action “an affront to religious freedom” and called on the Cultural Affairs Commission to develop guidelines for designing religious buildings.

Several limitations attempted to satisfy traffic concerns. Worshipers are barred from parking on Encino Avenue in front of the mosque and must employ a traffic control officer on Fridays, the Muslims’ holy day. The Islamic Center of Northridge expects to complete the $1.8-million, 18,000-square-foot structure within a year.

When it opens, it will join many houses of worship that have overcome neighborhood objections. When members first proposed the Hsi Lai Buddhist Temple in Hacienda Heights 10 years ago, residents showed up before County Supervisors to object to its size.

Last year, after 2,000 people visited on the Temple during the Chinese New Year, residents complained about illegally parked cars and traffic on Hacienda Boulevard. The county later put up no parking street signs. The Buddhists acknowledge there were misunderstandings with neighbors over the site, which includes the largest Buddhist monastery-temple complex in the Western Hemisphere.

“We didn’t talk to the neighbors very much in the beginning,” said Anthony Yang, project architect. “People said we were putting up a huge monster temple with architecture that wouldn’t meld into the neighborhood.” Today, both sides agree there are fewer complaints.

When the Sikh Study Circle sought to build a $1.5-million domed temple in the Los Feliz area in 1987, some residents complained that the 300 or so Sikhs, who had worshiped in an old restaurant, brought noise and parking problems to the area.

A Sikh leader conceded that fistfights had occurred at the temple due to an internal dispute, but said that dissension had ended. The council approved the project but required the Sikhs to soundproof windows, build an eight-foot fence and not meet outdoors.

Dr. Fred Register, recently retired conference minister of the United Church of Christ in Southern California, said that residents increasingly “would prefer not to have any religious buildings around. . . . It’s always on the assumption that it will increase traffic and cause property values to depreciate. I don’t think there’s any evidence for that.”

Mohiuddin said that as far back as 1978 the council rejected the Islamic Center’s plan to transform a Northridge home into a mosque, saying it would create traffic problems.

Now worshiping in a Northridge house, the Muslims spent a year seeking a site and another preparing for hearings before four city agencies. After Bradley’s comments, congregation leaders said they may re-seek permission to build a small dome and minaret.

The Valley mosque is one of about 30 in the Los Angeles region, including traditional structures with domes and minarets in Claremont, Riverside and Walnut, said Dr. Maher Hathout, former director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council. Although Islam requires no special form for houses of prayer, architects have built mosques with domes and minarets since the 13th Century, he said.

Harvey J. Fields, senior rabbi at Wilshire Boulevard Temple, said he understood some of the Granada Hills neighbors’ worries. “But when you begin to demand of churches, synagogues and mosques that they all look alike, we are in a sense . . . getting out a signal that this society is somehow to be homogenized rather than an expression of what America really is, and that is a great pluralistic society.”