ATHENS: Greece's
leftist government on Friday said an official mosque in Athens, over a decade
in the making, would open by September to satisfy a longstanding demand by tens
of thousands of Muslims in the capital. "We hope the first prayer will be
in September," Education Minister Costas Gavroglu said after inspecting
the nearly-completed complex that can accommodate some 350 people. The mosque's
imam, Zaki Mohammed, said construction had been completed but staff required
for its operation would be hired after national elections on July 7.

Athens is the
only European capital without an official mosque. The project began in 2007
amid strong opposition from the influential Orthodox Church of Greece and
nationalist sentiment against neighbouring Muslim Turkey. Greece was under
occupation by the Ottoman Empire for centuries. There have been several laws
passed on creating an official mosque in Athens since 1890.

Supervised by the
Greek state, the minaret-less mosque is situated in the industrial area of
Eleonas, near a refugee camp. There are an estimated 300,000 Muslims in the
greater Athens area. Mosques in Greece were repurposed or demolished following
the 1821 war of independence from the Ottoman Empire. The only officially
sanctioned mosques in the country are in the northern border region with Turkey
where up to 150,000 members of a Muslim minority live. Elsewhere in the
country, Muslims - many of them refugees and migrants - pray in improvised
sites in flats and basements. - AFP