Posted on 04/23/2003 11:28:53 PM PDT by Cronos
ATHENS, April 19 — In a squalid tenement that reeks of garbage, up a dark staircase flanked by graffiti, the Muslims in the center of this teeming European capital find a place to pray.
The layout of the apartment does not really work: only the first few dozen people who arrive for a prayer service get spots with a view of the imam. The rest end up around a corner or on the opposite side of a wall from him, and merely hear his voice.
But at the end of the service, they drop coins into a plastic bucket, readily contributing to the $700-a-month rent for their wretched haven.
"It's really bad here," Wajahat Athar said after the 2 p.m. service on Friday, when Muslims typically visit mosques to pray in groups.
"But if we want to pray together, we have no other choice," said Mr. Athar, 29, a Pakistani immigrant.
Unlike perhaps any other European city of a comparable size, Athens has yet to establish even one proper mosque for its growing population of Muslim immigrants, who cram instead into makeshift spaces that barely make do.
That was supposed to be remedied, or on its way to being remedied, by now. Nearly two years ago, the Greek Parliament authorized a mosque for Athens, and Greek government officials pledged to help bring one into existence.
But ground has not been broken, and considerable discord dogs the project, prompting doubts among Muslims here about whether it will come to be. On Wednesday, local officials in Paeania, a suburb of Athens that was chosen for the mosque, will meet to try to block the plan.
The plan was a response to earlier objections by the Greek Orthodox Church to a mosque within Athens itself. "The people are not yet ready for accepting the site of a minaret in the center of a Christian Orthodox country," said Bishop Epifanios Economou, a spokesman for the church, in a telephone interview. An overwhelming majority of Greeks belong to the church, which wields considerable political clout.
The lack of progress on the mosque reflects the difficulties that Greece, a country of emigrants until the last few decades, is having as it adjusts to newcomers in general and Muslims in particular.
At least one million of the roughly 11 million people in Greece today were born elsewhere. Most of these immigrants live around Athens, and by conservative estimates at least 100,000 are Muslims from Asian, African and Middle Eastern countries.
Their presence taps into certain resentments among Greeks, who associate Islam with Turkey and with centuries of domination by the Ottoman Empire. According to Muslim leaders here, no mosque has operated in the Athens area since Greece gained independence in the 1830's.
"We're enemies with the Turks, and that shadow hangs over Muslims," said Dr. Olga Tsakiridi, a professor here who is not Muslim but works with a Muslim advocacy group. "It's a special kind of racism," she said, adding that it survives in a country where impassioned critics of the war in Iraq often claimed that the United States was persecuting Muslims.
Muslims in Greece note that there are Roman Catholic and Protestant churches in Athens, and they say the choice of Paeania for the proposed mosque is a clear-cut example of discrimination.
"Are you aware, geographically, of where this mosque will be built?" asked Panayote Dimitras, the spokesman for the Greek branch of Helsinki Monitor, a human rights group. "Near the airport."
"Are you aware of where most Muslims live in Athens?" Mr. Dimitras continued. "Downtown."
"If you were to take your car and drive leisurely when there's no traffic, it would take half an hour to reach it," he said. "But if you tried at midday Friday, which is around prayer time, it would take an hour."
In Greece, a place of worship cannot be established without permission from the Ministry of Education and Religious Affairs, which signed off on the Paeania plan.
A spokesman for that ministry referred a reporter to the Foreign Ministry, where a spokesman in turn referred a reporter to his supervisor. That supervisor did not respond to a telephone message.
Muslim leaders say they have been asking for permission for a mosque in Athens for more than 25 years.
They said the Greek government yielded, to the extent that it did, only after it won its bid to be host for the 2004 Olympic Games and realized that the absence of a mosque for Muslim athletes might be an embarrassment. Olympic organizers now say that prayer rooms in the Olympic Village may suffice.
Without a mosque, Muslims in Athens have rented stadiums for holiday gatherings and have illegally converted dozens of apartments and other spaces into prayer rooms. They have also nursed a growing anger.
"When George has a church across the street from his flat, why shouldn't I have a mosque across the street from mine?" said Mehmet Imam, the president of Filotita, a Muslim group here.
Many of the Muslims who prayed with Mr. Athar on Friday afternoon had come from only blocks away, but they had to know where they were going because no sign or symbol marked the illegal spot.
If they were lucky enough to catch a glimpse of the imam, it was against a backdrop of wet laundry strung on a line outside the tenement's foggy, cracked windows.
"It is very strange," Samir Kadhum, 30, an Iraqi immigrant, said as he left the Friday service.
"We want just one suitable place in the center of the city," Mr. Kadhum said. "Just one."
Sounds like they should tear this place down.
If its really bad, these guys are welcome to leave. How well would a Christian be treated in Saudi Arabia where its illegal to possess a Bible?
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