“We don’t want another Kosovo here close to Athens”
By Andrew Burroughs
BBC News, Athens
Plans for the first mosque in Athens since Turkish rule under the Ottoman empire have been given the go-ahead by the Greek parliament.
Over recent years immigration has brought hundreds of thousands of Muslims to the Greek capital.
But while freedom of worship is guaranteed by Greece’s constitution as a member of the European Union, proposals for a new mosque have proved controversial in a country whose population is 96% Greek Orthodox.
There are mosques dating from Ottoman times in the old part of Athens known as Plaka. The Fethiye or victory mosque dates back to 1458. But today these buildings are for tourists not for Muslim prayers. One is now a museum of Greek folk art.
Athens is the only EU capital without a purpose-built place of worship for its Muslim population.
Image: Greek “Sacred Band” helped drive out Ottoman MuslimsThe city’s 200,000 or so Muslims have been meeting in disused basements and whatever space the community can find.
Technically these buildings lack proper legal permission to function as places of worship, though the city authorities, aware of the problem, have allowed meetings to continue while a solution is sought.
Demonstrations
In the run-up to the Olympics, and under pressure to portray Greece as internationalist and conciliatory, the then socialist government chose a site for a Saudi-sponsored mosque and Islamic centre east of Athens to be visible from the international airport.
That provoked demonstrations by nearby residents of the staunchly conservative town of Peannia.
Today there’s a small Greek Orthodox chapel on site, built to commemorate the protests which thwarted the mosque proposal. On special occasions a bell is rung, and on the hilltop a cross now defiantly looks towards the airport.
“We are Orthodox Christians here,” says Angelo Kouias, a Peannia resident, involved in the protests. “We believe that when you arrive at the frontier of Greece it would be better to see a church to symbolise our country rather than a mosque.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/5190256.stm
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