The new Athens mosque

As Athens is probably the only European capital without a mosque for its 500,000 Muslim residents, discussions about constructing a purpose-built mosque started in the 1990s. A motley crew of "patriots" and "concerned Christians" have been mobilised by political entrepreneurs from across the political spectrum to frustrate the project as it was deemed by them to be unnecessary, undesirable and dangerous. 
It took two decades, until 2016 when the Greek parliament managed to approve the legal framework, allocate funds and give the go-ahead for the mosque to be constructed in the
periphery of the city. The approved mosque was not to have a minaret (there are unfathomable sensitivities about minarets) and was to be devoid of any meaningful architectural features that would link it with Muslim traditions, indigenous or foreign. Although originally, it was planned to occupy 800m2, for €1m, it eventually ended up to a fraction of the original - just 350m2, the size of a large apartment. Its construction took an unbelievable three years and its opening was postponed several times. While under 24/7 police surveillance, the mosque walls have been defaced by perpetrators who have not been arrested. This week, the mosque was finally opened for just one day for an inauguration ceremony only to be closed again until September as works, unbelievably, continue. The long-awaited building looks like a hideous, characterless, prefab box - a box that took decades to be conceived, designed and built.
From the early moments of the conceptualization of Greek nationalism, the genesis of the Greek nation came about within a framework of antagonism between Greeks and the Ottoman (Muslim) Turks. This meant that there were definite limits to who could and who could not be part of the new nation. Among the different communities that were to be integrated into the Greek nation Muslim populations were unambiguously outsiders, as their lack of
religious affinity constituted a clear and uncontestable marker of difference. Today, almost 200 years after the establishment of the Greek state the authorities keep on treating Islam and Muslims in Athens as a foreign body to be banished to the periphery of the city, expected to be content with a prefab concrete box similar to the ones that they use now (disused warehouses and garages and other makeshift spaces, often unsafe and not fit for purpose are the most common places of worship). 
Even the positive gesture of this government remains angst-ridden, and alienating, and has missed the opportunity to link the city's new Muslim residents to its Islamic past by creating a space that would draw on the country's rich Islamic cultural and aesthetic heritage.

 The long-awaited, ever-shrinking mosque may finally open its unwelcoming doors in September. What a missed opportunity! What a lack of vision!

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