ISTANBUL (RNS) — In early February, a few weeks before the beginning of Ramadan, Greece’s minister of migration and asylum, Thanos Plevris, announced a nationwide sweep to close down “illegal places of worship,” specifically mentioning more than 60 unregistered mosques that are operating in Athens. But as Islam’s holy month of fasting began on Feb. 18, Greece’s Islamic community has maintained a defiant tone. 

“If Plevris wants to make his Islamophobic plans, that creates sadness and distress to the Muslims, but they will not skip prayers because of an ultra right government,” Naim Elghandour, the president of the Muslim Association of Greece, told Religion News Service.

The crackdown on mosques, which, like houses of worship in many countries in Europe and the Middle East, must be registered with the Greek government, came as the Greek Parliament was in the process of passing a strict new immigration bill that human rights advocates say criminalizes organizations coming to the aid of migrants.

The focus on mosques was signaled when Athens police charged a Bangladeshi man who was in the country legally for opening a mosque in the neighborhood of Agios Nikolaos without a permit. Plevris invoked an immigration statute to deport the man immediately from the country.

“What happened in Agios Nikolaos will happen everywhere,” said Plevris, a member of the right-leaning New Democracy Party, in announcing the sweep. “All illegal places of worship will be shut down, with the parallel revocation of the legal documents of those who operate them. In cooperation with the relevant ministries, illegal mosques will be sealed and those involved will be deported.

“Those who do not comply with Greek legislation will automatically be deported,” Plevris declared. 

The Muslim association’s Elghandour was tried by Greek authorities in 2020 for operating the Al-Andalus mosque in Piraeus, Athens’ main port, without a license but was acquitted. The mosque had been the longest functioning mosque in the Athens area — active since 1989. 

More than half a million Muslims are believed to live in and around Athens, the majority of whom came to Greece in the last quarter-century as migrants, either from the Middle East or as laborers from the Balkans and Albania. Only one mosque has been legally recognized, however, so most gather in private homes, businesses and other venues for prayer. The new policy, Elghandour said, could leave hundreds of thousands under threat of deportation for practicing their religion. 

“Greek taxpayers, permanent residents are being threatened with deportation for praying in visible prayer halls, that’s irrational and dangerous for the wider society,” he said.

But Elghandour said that the crackdown could backfire on a government that depends on the good will of Muslims to enforce the law in migrant communities. In response to the new policy the members of many mosques and other Muslims across the country have ceased cooperating with law enforcement. If mosques are closed, he added, they will take their Ramadan prayers and gatherings to the streets. 

“The long-standing cooperation with the public security forces has ceased, as their presence was solely due to the mosques. Now that the mosques are being closed, there’s no need for cooperation,” he said. “We informed them that we would pray anywhere, without police surveillance, and they wouldn’t know where we would pray.

“We will perform congregational prayers in the squares and streets,” he added.

Barely a century ago, after hundreds of years of Ottoman rule, Greece’s native Muslim population worshipped in hundreds of mosques throughout the country. In the wake of the First World War and the Greco-Turkish war that followed, Greece’s Muslim population was largely sent to Turkey, with only small communities near the Turkish and Bulgarian borders allowed to remain under an agreement approved by the League of Nations. At the same time, nearly 1.5 million Christians expelled from modern-day Turkey resettled in Greece, in what is remembered as “the population exchange.”

Over a century later, the shadow of the exchange and Ottoman rule still haunts Greek policy toward migration and religious freedom.

“The most important thing to take in mind when talking about religion in Greece is that Muslims are, in the Greek perception… something that has to do with Turkey,” said Stavros Milichudis, chief editor of the Greek investigative NGO Solomon, which tracks migration and Human Rights issues, told RNS. “Turkey is the enemy, Turkey is dangerous, Turkey is the other. So I would say that this is the first thing that guides the relationship of Greece with Muslims.”

Greece’s constitution stipulates that “the prevailing religion in Greece is that of the Eastern Orthodox Church of Christ,” but the charter enshrines a right to religious freedom and equal treatment between the clergy of the “prevailing religion” and those of minority faiths.

“However, in reality, we find difficulties in achieving this,” explained Elghandour, pointing to the overwhelming number of requests to establish mosques that have been rejected by the Ministry of Education and Religious Affairs. 

According to Milichudis, the crackdown on mosques, like the immigration bill, flow from Plevris and the ruling New Democracy Party’s aim to make life in Greece difficult for migrants and anyone who associates with them. “He’s trying very actively to criminalize solidarity when it comes to NGOs, to volunteers, to other workers. He’s also targeting undocumented migrants and asylum seekers who lose their status.”