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Islam in Greece
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- This article is about Islam in Greece in general. For information regarding the only explicitly recognized minority in Greece, see Muslim minority of Greece.
Islam in Greece is represented by a number of autochthonous and immigrant communities.
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The indigenous Muslim population in Greece is not homogeneous; it consists of different ethnic, linguistic, and social backgrounds which often overlap.
The Muslim faith is the creed of several autochthonous ethnic groups living in the present territory of Greece, namely the Pomaks, ethnic Turks, certain Roma groups, and Greek Muslims, who embraced the Muslim faith mainly in the 17th and 18th centuries. The country's Muslim popuplation decreased significantly as a result of the 1923 population exchange agreement between Greece and the new Turkish Republic, which also uprooted approximately 1.5 million Greeks from Asia Minor.
The term Muslim minority (Μουσουλμανική μειονότητα) refers to an Islamic religious, linguistic and ethnic minority in western Thrace, a part of north-east Greece. In 1923, under the terms of the Treaty of Lausanne, the Muslims living in Greece were required to immigrate to Turkey; whereas, the Christians living in Turkey were required to immigrate to Greece in an "Exchange of Populations". The Muslims of Thrace and the Christians of Istanbul and the islands of Gökçeada and Bozcaada (Imvros and Tenedos) were the only populations not exchanged. For more information on this community, see Muslim minority of Greece.
The fact that the Muslim minority in Greece remains while the Greeks from Istanbul and the islands of Gökçeada and Bozcaada have been forced to move to Greece by the Turkish government has been noted by human rights groups and riled up nationalistic sentiment in some corners of Greek society. Similar sentiments prevail in respective parts of Turkish society about the current situation of the Greek Muslims in western Thrace, who are usually considered ethnic Turkish.
Most autochthonous Greek Muslims consider themselves ethnic Turks. Relics of the Ottoman Empire, this community resides mainly in Western Thrace, where they were allowed to remain under the terms of the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne. In the town of Komotini, it makes up almost 40 percent of the total population. There is also a vibrant Turkish community in the town of Xanthi where it makes up 23 percent of the population. There are also Muslim and Turkish Muslim communities residing in some of the Dodecanese islands which, as part of Italy between 1912 and 1947, were not subjected to the exchange of the population between Turkey and Greece in 1923. They number about 4,000 most of whom espouse a Turkish identity and speak Turkish. The community is strongest on the island of Kos, and in particular the village of Platanos.
The Pomaks are mainly located in compact villages in Western Thrace's Rhodope Mountains.
While the Greek Roma community is predominantly Greek Orthodox, the Roma in Thrace are mainly Muslim.
The first immigrants of Islamic faith, mostly Palestinian Arabs, arrived in the early 1970s from the Middle East, and are concentrated in the country's two main urban centres, Athens and Thessaloniki. Since 1990, there has been an increase in the numbers of immigrant Muslims from various countries of the Middle East, as well as from Pakistan, India and Bangladesh.
The majority of the immigrant Muslim community, which numbers around 150,000 people in total, resides in Athens. In recognition of their religious rights, the Greek government approved the building of a mosque in July 2006. In addition, the Greek Orthodox Church has donated 300,000 square feet, worth an estimated $20 million, in west Athens for the purpose of a Muslim cemetery.[1][2]
- Olympic city to build first mosque, BBC, Tuesday, 29 October, 2002, 13:19 GMT.
- Mihenk Dergisi, a Turkish language magazine for the Turkish community in western Thrace.
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