Galery

1

Marina Nikolova

Muslim population in Athens is growing and the need to establish a formal place for prayer is essential, and building a mosque can only have positive consequences. That was the statement of three out of the six people invited to the debate organized by the British Council in Athens under the project IQ2 Debate which was attended by prominent journalists and professors from Greece and Great Britain. The other three participants supported the opinion that the mosque in Athens would bring not only good consequences.

The thesis that "only good can come out of building a mosque in Athens" was supported by the Oxford University Professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies Tariq Ramadan, the European University in Florence Professor Anna Triandafyllidou and Al Jazeera correspondent in Greece Chadi Ayoubi.

Across the table stood the writer and director of the think tank organization Centre for Social Cohesion Douglas Murray, the British author of the bestselling Londonistan and the journalist known for her polemic column in the Daily Mail newspaper Melanie Phillips as well as the  Moscow Institute for the Development of Financial Markets Professor and Cambridge University Associate Demetrios Floudas.

To get into the subject let us recall that a mosque will be built in Votanikos neighbourhood as it was announced in April 2010. The construction will be fully funded by the state. The pressure in the Greek society due to the economic crisis and the constant flow of immigrants and their integration issues result in strong opposition on how the society will respond to this initiative. Opinions differ: whether the mosque will help better integrate immigrants in society or it will lead to extremes such as in the case of Agios Pandeleymonas neighbourhood.

Chadi Ayoubi argued in support of good consequences of the construction of a Muslim shrine because religious expression is a basic right guaranteed by the constitution and Athens is not proper to be the only capital without a mosque. Ayubi noted that not only immigrants live in the capital, but also members of mixed marriages, employees in companies, Thracian Muslims, but equally important is the fact that there have never been cases of bigotry.

Prof. Anna Triandafyllidou pointed out the importance of placing the matter in the context of Athens. She made a brief retrospective presenting statistics on Muslim population in recent years and its social characteristics. Ms. Triandafyllidou said that according to data, Muslims were about 100,000 - 120,000 in 2007 but given the wave of immigrants in recent years it could be said that their number in Athens has increased to about 250,000 – 270,000 which makes about 2% of the population. The people who have been living in Athens for years are settled down, some have their own business while others are servants, artisans, said Triandafyllidou. The newcomers are mostly men, so now we are not faced with equality and integration issues relating to gender and integration of children in schools, said the University of Florence Professor. She explained that the new immigrants are mostly refugees from Afghanistan, Somalia, and Iraq, which means that they can not be sent back to their countries because there is war there.  

"The mosque is a matter of dignity, a factor of community, people gather there to help each other and jointly cope with difficulties. The first law for the construction of a mosque dates back to 1980 and this issue is in the limelight again over the last decade. Currently, there are 100 informal prayer rooms in Athens. I believe that building a mosque is good because it shows respect, which must be mutual and we must find things that unite us like the sense of solidarity. The change is irreversible and Athens is multicultural city, which is not a matter of politics," said Prof. Triandafyllidou, noting that Greece wants to integrate Muslims in the institutional framework.

Everyone in our Muslim countries says we want pluralism, dignity, rights and freedom, stressed Prof. Tariq Ramadan of Oxford University. Greek society has changed and there are Muslims who live here. There are people from many different cultures, different religions and they must live together and the only thing to do is look at reality and offer realistic policies, rigorous and open, said Professor Ramadan, who stressed that the Muslims who live in Greece speak the language and are loyal to the state. The Oxford University Professor said it is necessary to institutionalize the Islam in Greece and to train imams, and those who follow the services to be taught in Greek and services and teachings to be held in Greek.