Muslims have won a lawsuit granting them the right to build a mosque in a town in New Jersey.

Unusually, they had the backing of influential evangelical Christians including Southern Baptists.

District Judge Michael A Shipp ruled in favour of the Islamic Society of Basking Ridge and against the township of Bernards, The Christian Post reports.

Planners in Bernards rejected the mosque application in 2015.

Judge Shipp ruled this to be a violation of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act which codifies some "narrow" exceptions such as a nondiscrimination provision.

Shipp said the planning refusal constituted "impermissible discrimination on the basis of religion".

The victory of the Islamic Society of Basking Ridge came with the support of two key evangelical Christian groups, who defended the group on the basis of freedom of religion.

The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention and the National Association of Evangelicals were two several faith-based and civil rights groups that signed an amicus brief in support of the Muslim group last May.

Top Southern Baptist Russell Moore, president of the commission, said that for Baptists, defending this cause was essential.

"What it means to be a Baptist is to support soul freedom for everybody," he said.

Some Southern Baptists criticised this stance, fearing a proliferation of mosques would encourage the rise of a violent, radicalised Islam. 

The original rejection of the Muslim group by Bernards planners was unanimous, and met with enthusiastic cheering from locals at the time.

Moore said: "Brothers and sisters, when you have a government that says 'we can decide whether or not a house of worship can be constructed based upon the theological beliefs of that house of worship,' then there are going to be Southern Baptist churches in San Francisco and New York and throughout this country who are not going to be able to build."

The amicus brief wrote in support: "A Muslim mosque cannot be subjected to a different land-use approval process than a Christian church simply because local protesters oppose the mosque," adding that "defendants have improperly applied different legal standards to a mosque simply because it is a mosque."