RESIDENTS of a suburb of Athens are fighting government-backed plans to build a mosque and Islamic cultural centre for the Greek capital before it stages the Olympic Games next year.
The suburb of Peania, north of Athens, took its case to Greece’s appellate court, the Council of State, in April.
“We are not racist,” Paraskevas Papakostopoulos, the Mayor of Peania, said. “We believe in freedom of religions. Our objections are based on the fact that the mosque is coming to an area where they didn’t get proper permission.
“If you’re coming to Greece on a plane, you will get the impression you are in an Islamic country,” he said, referring to the proximity of the new Athens international airport and the 50-metre (164ft) height of the building compared to those around it, which are limited to 11 metres.
Nevertheless, Abdullah Abdullah, the Palestinian envoy in Athens, said that he believed that the project would start by the autumn. “The Greek Government gave its approval, the Arab side is ready for the construction and the Greek (Orthodox) Church has even given its blessing,” he said.
Advertisement
Athens is the only European capital without an official mosque and there is pressure to provide one before the Games next summer, which will be attended by thousands of Muslim athletes and officials. Saudi Arabia, under a cultural initiative funded by King Fahd, has agreed to pay for the multimillion-pound project in Peania.
“We have the desire to proceed with the mosque,” Panos Beglitis, a Greek Foreign Ministry spokesman, said. “The Government and the Foreign Ministry have the political will to proceed. We will chase this to allow construction work to begin soon.”
If they succeed, the structure, which was approved in 1999, will be the first official mosque in Athens for nearly 200 years, since Greece gained its independence from the Ottoman Empire. About 110,000 Muslims reside in Greece officially.
Mr Abdullah said he understood that Greece had suffered under the Ottomans, and sometimes its citizens mistakenly linked that misery to Islam. “Our intention is to be close to those people and show them the positive side of our culture,” he said.