Posted on 03/03/2006 5:20:08 PM PST by voletti
Although the steady immigration of Muslims to Athens continues - mostly economic migrants from the Middle East and Asia - the city remains the only capital in western Europe without an Islamic place of worship
IN a small, cold and decrepit apartment in central Athens, scores of Muslims trip over each other to find a space to pray as rain drips onto their heads from the leaky roof.
The stairwell is in darkness and there is grime in every corner. But for these faithful, there is no other choice.
About 130 makeshift mosques like this - windowless, airless basements or rooms in warehouses - are all these Muslims have until the Greek capital’s first mosque is erected.
“On Friday, many people come here for prayer, it’s a very old and congested place. We are afraid a slab is going to fall on us, and it’s raining (inside),” said Monjur Moshed, an immigrant from Bangladesh who was in the crowded apartment.
A mosque has long been planned for the estimated 150,000 Muslims living in Athens but has been held up over objections from the powerful Orthodox Church, and the public.
Studded with minarets two centuries ago, Athens has not had a functioning mosque since the end of Ottoman rule in the early 1800s. The only working mosques are near the Turkish border in the northern Greek prefecture of Xanthi, home to a Muslim minority of some 120,000, remnants of the Ottoman empire.
Although the steady immigration of Muslims to Athens continues - mostly economic migrants from the Middle East and Asia - the city remains the only capital in western Europe without an Islamic place of worship.
Decades of waiting: Muslims say holidays and funerals pose the most problems as thousands of people spill out onto the city’s streets, a sight they fear will create resentment among neighbours.
“As people gather here, at some point they end up outside in the street to hold religious festivals. I believe surely in this environment there could be a problem with the community,” said Tahir Ali Shah, a Pakistani Muslim doctor.
Government plans for a mosque and an adjoining Islamic cultural centre date back to 1979, with funding pledged by Saudi Arabia. Officials say the government remains committed to building the mosque, but admit it is a sensitive issue.
Opposition from the Greek Orthodox Church, coupled with resentment after some 400 years of Ottoman rule and past political rivalries with mainly Muslim Turkey, have created reservations among Greeks, who are 95 percent Orthodox.
The plan seemed close to materialising when the capital hosted the 2004 Olympic Games - authorities promised a mosque and Islamic centre would be built for Muslim athletes. A site was chosen 35 km (21 miles) outside the city after the Orthodox Church expressed displeasure over the prospect of a minaret rising on the Athens skyline. But construction in the town of Paiania, near the international airport, never began.
Not in our town: Incensed by the project, the town’s residents built a large wooden cross on the land allocated for the mosque. A small Orthodox chapel has also appeared on the site.
Paiania Mayor Paraskevas Papakostopoulos said residents are angry that the site is on a hill, meaning the mosque will be visible from afar and seen by visitors flying into the airport.
“It spoils the religious and cultural character of our region, as well as all of Greece,” he said. “It’s not pleasant to enter a country and the first thing you see is a mosque.”
He said residents also did not want thousands of worshippers congregating in their town.
“Our residents look at it as a foreign object in their area, that is being forced on them without anyone asking their opinion,” he said.
The Orthodox Church, which had long opposed the mosque, has recently softened its stance. But although it gave its approval to the mosque, it still opposes the cultural centre.
It says recent attacks by suspected militants in European capitals have fuelled its concerns that the Islamic centre may incite fundamentalism.
“The Church of Greece does not find this centre necessary for the worship needs of the Muslim community in Athens, it thinks that it may operate, as European experience has shown, as a hotbed of extreme fundamentalist views,” said Haris Konidaris, spokesman for the Orthodox Church of Greece.
Greece has not experienced attacks by foreign militants in years. Its worst foreign attack was in 1988 when Arab guerrillas killed nine people and injured about 80 on a cruise ship near Athens.
Muslims say Paiania is too far away for a community mainly based in central Athens but their options are limited. reuters
Try building a Protestant church in Saudi Arabia.
You mean, an orthodox one in this case?
Forget churches, even mosques from certain sects (the ahmediyas for e.g.) are unwelcome in mordorabia.
And as "the first" it will make Athens a very holy city for all Muslims. One they can claim as their own.
BTW, I find it quite interesting that the Greeks were ever convinced to let any Moslems in, or that any Moslems would want to go to Greece.
These guys fought an exceptionally nasty war with the other parts of the Ottoman Empire back in the 1800s ~ which they won.
There were population exchanges at that time, and after WWI, and all were nasty ~ which always happens when you move a wartorn and impoverished civilian population around.
They will have to wait till Saudi Arabia allows the first CHURCH to be built in their country BEFORE Greece will allow a mosque two built in Athens... well, that is what my friend the Greek Cypriot says.
Regarding your addition to the title of this article, you assume that the Greeks, who have perhaps suffered more than any other people in history at the hands of Islam, and who are the creators of Western Civilization, will stand for the kind of crap that passes for the reasonable, free exercise of religion and political thought, in Paris.
Most definitely not.
If this is a culture war, then let's fight like it is.
NO mosques get built in the west until churches and synagogues can be built in Moslem countries.
Ditto for cultural centers. etc.
Fine--you can have your mosques. But tolerance is a
two-way street!
This is a cultural war. The fact that we pretend it isn't doesn't change that fact.
Are there any mosk-free states in the U.S.?
There will tbe plenty of places for Muslims to worship in Europe after they have taken over and converted all of the Churches and Temples to Mosques.
Interesting. Thanks for posting.
Try building one in Egypt, where ten percent of the population is Christian. It's even forbidden there.
"Are there any mosk-free states in the U.S.?"
Alaska?
Darn, always knew we shudda taken over Greenland...
Try building ANYTHING related to Jesus Christ in Saudi Arabia.
Not the first time the Greeks -- in pagan or Christian times -- have stood for Western civilization against the barbarians
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