JEDDAH, 30 August — Islam is not a new craze in Greece. It was in existence there when the Ottomans ruled Greece around 200 years ago. Long ago Salonica was famous as the Islamic city of minarets and is still one of the outstanding reminders of the early Muslims in Greece. There are around one million Muslims in Greece. Approximately 400,000 of Greek Muslims are located in the north, and the rest of them are of different nationalities chiefly located in Athens.
Nowadays Muslim communities in Athens as well as the Greek Muslims in north are being ignored by the Greek government. The 600,000 Muslims who live in Athens, like many who live in European countries, face difficulties in practicing their religion. However, Muslims in Athens have a very serious problem. Up until now, they have neither a spacious mosque nor Islamic centers. Muslims living in other European countries, however, do have mosques and Islamic centers.
Most of the Muslims of Greek nationality have been isolated in the north to avoid any Islamic impact in the main cities. Muslims in the north belong to several ethnic groups, including Greek, Albanian, Bulgarian, Macedonian and Turkish. During the centuries-long Ottoman khilafat (Islamic caliphate), most people learned to speak Turkish simply because it was the official language. Later, under Greek rule, all Turkish speakers were lumped together as "Turks." Most of them were deported and those who remained were subjected to religious and social persecution. The expulsions and persecution continue to this day.
In their time, Muslims in Greece erected 3,771 Islamic structures, including 2,336 mosques, hundreds of which have now been demolished. Only a few score remain and many of those are in a serious state of disrepair. The biggest concern is the conditions of Muslims in Athens who come from different countries such as Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan. Only a few people of this huge number of Muslims can attend Friday and Eid prayers because they don’t have mosque big enough for them.
On my last visit to Athens recently I found only two apartments, which are not considered mosques, in the city of Athens. One of them is about a small flat located near Omonia Square and the more spacious one is a basement apartment enough for only 150 worshipers near Kifisias Street. The last one is called the Arabian Culture Center.
"We are not allowed to build any mosque here, it is just a cultural center and we are performing only the Isha (evening) prayer here every night, because it is the most appropriate time for the workers and employees to attend prayers after a long day of work", said Wael Muhammad Khaleel, the center director. Any Muslim visitor to Athens would probably find a real difficulty to get to those two mosques or let’s say two prayer areas which are lost in the big city.
The only bright hope for Muslims in Athens to have their own mosque is the next Olympic Games 2004. The Greek government is discussing the feasibility of building a mosque for Muslims by the beginning of the Olympics. However, the problem will remain still outstanding as the location of the mosque will be around 160 kilometers from Athens which will make it very difficult for the Muslims to attend the five prayers there or even Friday prayer.
The Greek government became more alert and concerned with the Muslim community and its issues after joining the European Union which suggests the religious freedom. The Saudi and Kuwaiti embassies are trying their best along with some other Islamic international organizations to own a convenient land to build the future mosque, said Ibraheem Mansour, the Kuwaiti ambassador. Greeks seem to be very reluctant to accept the concept of building a mosque for Muslims in Athens.
There is no any free Islamic school until now. There are only two private schools, the Lebanese and the Libyan. The high fees of those two schools are only affordable by a few Muslims who have to fork out tuitions of their children, said Sheikh Khalid Al-Maghrabi, a Moroccan Friday prayer leader (imam) at the Islamic center.
"Moreover, books on Islam are very rare and not available in most of the main book stores and public libraries of Athens. So that Greeks knowledge about Islam is very poor," an Egyptian Muslims bookstore keeper said. "We hope that countries such as Saudi Arabia would send some prominent and well-educated Islamic scholars to activate the Daawa work here, " Ezzuldein Ahmad, a Sudanese Muslim who works as a clerk at the Saudi Embassy in Athens, said. "Most of the Friday sermons are neither very inspiring nor informative because of the orators’ lack of Islamic knowledge and experience," he added.
