COMMENTARY: Greeks in Athens Must Show Respect toward Its Muslims

Scores of activists in Athens last week taunted hundreds of Muslims, as they gathered to pray. There is no Muslim mosque in Athens, so Muslims tend to hold their prayer services at cultural centers or community halls, private apartments, or outdoors.

While Muslims prayed in Athens, some Greeks shouted obscenities, threw eggs at them, and waved Greek flags.

Greeks should know better than to take part in these hateful child-like activities, which show a disrespect toward Islam. Because some Muslim extremists in predominantly Muslim countries perform barbaric acts against Christians does not give Greeks the right to perform hateful acts against Muslims.

There are an estimated one million Muslims living in Greece. Most of them live in the northeastern part of the nation in the Greek region of Thrace, near the Turkish border. About 200,000 Muslims live in Athens.

With a significant increase in the number of Muslim immigrants living in Greece during the past decade, anti-Muslim sentiments have also increased. In fact, according to a survey conducted by the European Union, Greece has a higher negative attitude toward Muslims than any other country in Europe.

Greece's extremely negative attitude toward Muslims is generally encouraged in the rhetoric of Orthodox clergy -- thus making it an ongoing problem -- due to the power of the Greek Orthodox Church.

The Greek Orthodox Church has argued that the people of Athens are not ready for accepting the site of a minaret in the center of a Christian Orthodox country. Moreover, the predominance of the Greek Orthodox Church makes many Greeks consider non-Orthodox individuals as fundamentally non-Greek.

The only Muslim cemeteries -- as well as mosques -- in Greece are in Thrace. Muslims are discouraged from using municipal cemeteries, and only a few have done so. Muslims in Greece usually have burials in Thrace or in other countries.

Although attempts by Muslims to build a mosque in Athens have been met with opposition by local residents and some Greek Orthodox priests in the past, the present Archbishop of Athens supports the construction of a mosque. At the same time, the Greek government has approved its construction and has set aside a site close to the center of the city where the mosque will be built.

Construction of the mosque in Athens has not yet begun, but will probably begin within the next few months.

Once construction of the Athens mosque is completed, it would behoove the people of Athens to view this mosque as a godsend -- a capstone structure that will enhance Christian-Islamic relations and assimilation in the city that gave birth to democracy.