ATHENS: Greece'sleftist government on Friday said an official mosque in Athens, over a decadein the making, would open by September to satisfy a longstanding demand by tensof thousands of Muslims in the capital. "We hope the first prayer will bein September," Education Minister Costas Gavroglu said after inspectingthe nearly-completed complex that can accommodate some 350 people. The mosque'simam, Zaki Mohammed, said construction had been completed but staff requiredfor its operation would be hired after national elections on July 7.
Athens is theonly European capital without an official mosque. The project began in 2007amid strong opposition from the influential Orthodox Church of Greece andnationalist sentiment against neighbouring Muslim Turkey. Greece was underoccupation by the Ottoman Empire for centuries. There have been several lawspassed on creating an official mosque in Athens since 1890.
Supervised by theGreek state, the minaret-less mosque is situated in the industrial area ofEleonas, near a refugee camp. There are an estimated 300,000 Muslims in thegreater Athens area. Mosques in Greece were repurposed or demolished followingthe 1821 war of independence from the Ottoman Empire. The only officiallysanctioned mosques in the country are in the northern border region with Turkeywhere up to 150,000 members of a Muslim minority live. Elsewhere in thecountry, Muslims - many of them refugees and migrants - pray in improvisedsites in flats and basements. - AFP