Much ado about a minaret
Athens' Muslims have gone without a mosque for almost two centuries. With the Olympic Games due in 2004, Muslim prayer has become a highly-charged political issue. Iason Athanasiadis reports from Athens
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A car parked outside one of the few remaining historical mosques in Athens that date back to the Ottoman period
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Plans to build the first mosque in Athens next to Greece's main international airport have outraged members of the country's conservative Orthodox Church and set off a national debate on the place of Islam in the country.
"If you're coming to Greece on a plane, you will get the impression you are in an Islamic country," announced Father Epifanios, a Church spokesman, last week in reference to the proximity of the 50-metre minaret -- that will dominate the surrounding countryside -- to Athens' new international airport.
"How many minarets are there in Istanbul?" Abdallah Abdallah, the dean of Arab ambassadors in Greece, replied with a rhetorical flourish in a telephone interview with Al-Ahram Weekly. "But they don't call Turkey an Islamist country -- it's called secular."
Abdallah believes that, rather than the sight of a minaret giving out the wrong idea about the country's predominant religion, it will send out a message of peaceful coexistence at a time when civilisations are seen to be clashing more often than they harmonise.
"This will show the tolerance of the Greeks. It's the Greek and Arab civilisation that brought renaissance to Europe after the dark ages. The convergence of both cultures will bring about a positive outcome for future generations," says Abdallah.
Abdallah believes that the Saudi-funded project will start by autumn. "The Greek government gave its approval, the Arab side is ready for the construction and the Greek (Christian Orthodox) Church has even given its blessing," he said.
Until last week's outburst, Greece's Christian Orthodox Church -- which is explicitly mentioned in the constitution as the "dominant religion" -- had kept a low profile, saying the dispute concerns only the government and local authorities. But with negative comments about the mosque increasingly filtering into the Greek media, it seems as if a debate over the mosque has progressively driven the Church apart.
"We don't say no to the establishment of the mosque," spokesman Epiphanios said of the church's objections, but added: "The council says there are no Muslims in Peania ... The Church of Greece shares the fears and objections of these people." Peania's council has proposed that the mosque be built in western Athens instead, a working-class area hosting the bulk of the city's estimated 120,000 Muslims, roughly two per cent of the city's population.
Other church sources have muttered darkly that the cultural centre that will adjoin the mosque and teach Arabic and religious education will "serve other aims" than a mosque, apparently reflecting fears of political agitation by Muslims in an increasingly multicultural country.
Father Kfouri, a Lebanese Christian Orthodox priest who now lives in Greece, is ambiguous about the subject: "I don't have a problem that the minaret will be the first thing [visitors to Greece] will see but it would be even better if there could be a church alongside the mosque, to show the unity of religions," he said.
"What annoys people here is the possible exploitation of the mosque in a few years," Kfouri added, citing the closure of a Greek Orthodox Chalke seminary in Istanbul as "proof that they [Muslims] are the intolerant ones".
Other, more liberal voices, have spoken out in favour of the mosque. Father Chrysostomos Eustratiou, a priest who has spent time in Egypt's Greek Orthodox monasteries, welcomes the idea.
"When we have our churches in Cairo, why can't they have their mosque here? Where will they pray to God? In the streets?" he asks dramatically. "The Egyptian government allows us to take care of and maintain our churches and archbishopric in Cairo and Alexandria. Isn't it fair that our government do the same?"
Aside from drawing the ire of Greece's Christian conservatives, the decision to build an official mosque now has been criticised by the local and foreign press as a superficial move intended to appease the Olympic Committee. Greek Foreign Minister George Papandreou has observed that Athens is the only European capital without a mosque and is pushing hard for one to be built to accommodate the many Muslim athletes who will participate in the upcoming Olympics.
With the unholy row between the Greek Church and government threatening to emerge in the open, more details are being revealed about the church's vehement opposition to the mosque. A central demand was that the mosque not be situated anywhere in the town centre. Mosques currently are functioning only in parts of northern Greece, homeland of the country's native Muslim minority. Currently, Athenian Muslims are forced to make the 500-mile journey there for weddings, funerals and other ceremonies.
Joining the church in criticising the government's actions, Peania Mayor Paraskevas Papakostopoulos had announced that there is no need for a mosque in his town, since there is no Islamic community.
"We aren't against the building of an Islamic centre in Athens, but the choice made by the authorities does not help Muslims who live far away from Peania," he said, adding "the centre should be built in the western suburbs, where most of the Muslim immigrants live."
The residents of Peania, too, are furious. Embroiled in a dispute over the legality of the plans, the mayor and city council members are determined to pull the plug on the entire project. Municipal authorities point to a century-old deed, which they say proves the land belongs to Peania and not the central government. They have appealed to the Council of State, Greece's highest administrative court, and a decision is pending.
Accused of Olympic tokenism, after dragging its feet over the mosque for 25 years, the Greek Foreign Ministry has now adopted the project and will stop at nothing to see it realised by the opening ceremony of Athens 2004.
"Our political will is to push ahead with this project, and we are soon going to adopt a law on the centre's statutes," a diplomatic source has been reported as saying.
Local newspapers have also speculated that the Greek government is looking to curry favour with its Arab trade partners at a time when Greek companies are moving out of the saturated Balkans market and into the relatively untapped Middle East.
"Without the Olympics this would not be happening," said Moavias Ahmed, a Sudanese community leader.
No mosques have operated in Athens since Greece gained independence after four centuries of Ottoman rule in 1832. The mosques present at the time were treated with contempt by authorities and bitter citizens: demolished, converted into museums, storerooms and, in one case, turned into an open-air cinema.
At present, the only mosques available to Athens' Muslims are 22 spaces, mostly cramped basements packed every Friday for the weekly prayer by assorted Arabs, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and other immigrants. Rented out from suspicious Greek landlords at often exorbitant prices, these illicit mosques are the only places available for worship to the estimated 120,000 Muslim immigrants living in the Greek capital.
In Athens' oldest Arab coffeehouse, Al-Nil, regulars scoff at Abdallah's explanations that the location for the mosque was purposely chosen for its good transport links.
"In 50 years maybe, there will be people going out there to pray. But no one I know will pray there now," said one customer. Inside the dimly-lit, Sudanese- owned qahwa in the city centre, the exclusively male clientele smoke shisha and drink tea, coffee and alcoholic drinks. The televised call to prayer on the TV and an elaborate embroidery of the name "Allah" on the wall sit side-by-side with a well-stocked bar boasting everything from vodka and martinis to whisky and ouzo.
"They want to have Muslims praying outside the city," the customer continues, in between card-playing bouts.
"I've heard that there'll be a mosque," the owner concedes, "but no one has announced anything to us. We have no influence, so we can't express our opinion," he shrugs resignedly.
"This is done on purpose," he adds. "They don't want to have Muslims in Athens, especially in the centre.
"If they put the mosque in the centre, we would willingly pay for it out of our own pockets," ventures an Egyptian regular who earns his living as a night-time security guard. But they want to build it for purely prestige reasons and because the Olympic committee leaned on them to build a mosque for Muslim athletes. As for us, the Muslims who live here, no one thought of us."
In the meanwhile, Athens' Muslims are still awaiting an official place of worship, after more than 170 years.
