Opening up to minorities: Greece embraces its Muslims with measures, including allowing construction of mosques

Sarah Waheed

After decades of entrenching the negative mental image of Islam among most Greeks, due to the massacres the country suffered at the hands of Turkey, which still raises a painful memory for the Greek people, the Greek state has been keen for several years to reintegrate Muslims into Greek society once again, through several attempts, to re-improve the image of Islam again, and to change European thinking towards it.

New mosques

“Permitting the establishment of mosques” is one of the multiple attempts of the Greek state to reintegrate Muslims into Greek society. After decades of patience for the Muslim community in Greece, the first government-licensed mosque opened in June 2019, which represents a sign of hope for half a million Greek Muslims.

The first formal mosque is located in Athens with a rectangular building, and although it does not look like traditional mosques from the outside in anything, the city’s Muslims will be able to pray in a formal mosque.

The call to prayer was officially lifted at the Athens Mosque in September 2019, after construction work on the 850,000-euro ($ 967,000) project was completed.

Although there are mosques elsewhere in Greece, the capital has not had a formal mosque built since the Ottomans’ departure in 1833, while the few mosque buildings that have remained from that era have been used for other purposes.

The plans to build a mosque in Athens go back to 1890 through a parliamentary procedure, but all efforts yielded nothing, including the construction of a mosque that was planned in 2004 in conjunction with the Olympic Games.

University enrollment and the army in Greece

Muslims have recently known an openness to Greek society, which was reflected in their entry to universities and the army, as Muslim minority youth have become, in recent years, prefering Greek universities over Turkish universities, especially after the Greek government allocated to minority students the rate of entry to Greek universities up to 0.5%.

Moving to the capital to work

In 2019, according to Euro News, Greece has improved the situation of Muslims in the Greek state, including the capital, Athens, whose Muslims belong to many nationalities, and they are not only Turks.

The report stated that there are many political, economic, social and religious factors that control the fate of Greek Muslims, explaining the exodus of a large portion of Greek Muslims to the capital, Athens, for work and residence, and this openness was not available before.

Demanding the appointment of muftis

Among the many demands that Greek Muslims have advocated over several years is the freedom to choose “muftis”, especially after Greece was responsible for their appointment.

But in 2017, Greek Minister of Education, Research and Religious Affairs Costas Gavrouglou confirmed at the time that there were legal amendments being made by the Greek government regarding the Muslim minority in Greece.

He explained that the amendments will take into account Islamic rules and Greek civil laws, saying that his country wants to follow a respectable policy towards the Turkish Muslim minority, stressing the need to discuss the issue of minority selection for their muftis within the framework of this policy.