“You can’t in the name of freedom of speech slander a faith of 1.8 billion people. We all have free speech and I respect that. It is something that we had been missing for decades in Muslim countries before the Arab Spring . Actually this movie was a test by the West for Muslims after the Arab spring.

Speaking to Alyunaniya, he said the  reason the Muslim Association of Greece hasn’t planned any demonstrations, is that “even though in a democracy we have every right to protest, we wanted to state our position in a civilized way, we don’t want to create tensions in a country that is also ours suffering from an economic crisis. We respect the hard times Greece is going through.”

It is worth noting that during the press conference eminent figures like known theologians and sociologists stated their positions while a message of the Secretary of the Ministry of Religious Education Giorgos Kalatzis was read.

In his message, Kalatzis stated that even though he was aware of the movie released he is not amongst the people who even bothered to watch it as it was simply an act of provocation aimed at dehumanizing a belief.”

He added, “Muslims and Christians in Greece have been living harmoniously together  in Greece and nobody had the right to insult their religion. We strongly condemn that.”

While the press conference was organized for the purpose of the anti-Islamic film in response to questions concerning problems Muslims in Greece face, Greek-Egyptian El-Ghandour said that Muslims in Greece feel as “second class citizens” then they have no places for worship and no place to bury their dead. “Greek Muslims have no other option but to use basement apartments, garages and warehouses for worshipping,” he said.

As for the phenomenon of the increasing racist attacks, he said that it’s not only the Muslims being attacked but also the Christians from Egypt.”

In a comment already stated a few months ago on Alyunaniya, El-Ghandour called the Greek PM a racist who said should be especially sensitive to the issue since he comes from a family of Greek migrants who once lived in Egypt.

Prime Minister Antonis Samaras has adopted a tough line against illegal immigration during his pre-electoral campaign referring to migrants as “the conquerors of Greek society”.

The Greek Parliament has approved a controversial plan to build a taxpayer-funded mosque in Athens, the only capital in the European Union without a state-funded mosque. The plan which has been stalled calls for renovating an existing state building  on a disused navy base in the industrial district of Votanikos near the center of Athens.

After NATO launching wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, an uncontrolled refugee and immigrative stream flooded Greece. At the same time Greece signs a destructive agreement with EU (Dublin II) where Greece is ordered to keep those refugees and immigrants (most of them Muslims) away from the rest of EU. The Muslim population that lived here was not prepared to live what happened after this.

The governments did not take any serious measures to control this flow, either they drew an effective immigrant policy; they were just observing the phenomenon. The result is that today we have hundreds of thousands of wandering souls, people that cannot go back or forth, cannot have a work permit, do not want to stay in Greece, and a Muslim community that is being accused just for being Muslims. The major issues of the Muslims in Greece instantly became part of the immigration problem without any second thought.

Several political parties in order to attract more votes decided to mix two different issues into one: Suddenly the permanent Muslim population has to pay the consequences of the non-existing immigrant policy of Greece. Why really the permanent residents of Athens must go through this? Seems like a collective punishment simply because the uncontrolled refugee stream has Muslim religion. Additionally the populist political parties started to spread Islamophobic threats to the public although Greece has never faced any extreme incident coming from Muslims.

Islam is a religion of 1,8 billion worshippers and was always respectful to the other religions, especially the Greeks should recognize that, since all Christian Orthodox Patriarchs are established and located safely in Muslim Countries since ever. Greece’s human policy on the contrary, is trying to become intolerant of the Muslim residents because the voted governments failed to face the uncontrolled refugee wave that was caused by the NATO wars. A vicious circle with humans in the middle. Humans with values, hopes and success in all walks of life in Greece.

The Muslims of Greece have always offered voluntarily to support the efforts of each government to draw an effective immigration policy. This is not a matter that can be solved by a community alone, especially when this community did not participated in generating this matter. Our country cannot solve this without the full support of EU that is also responsible for this situation. The immigration policy of Greece needs solidarity and common efforts if we really need to have a solution. So far the political world did not work towards the solution, only used vote attracting tricks.

The Muslims of Athens have the right to pray, to marry, to be buried in dignity, as citizens according to our constitution. The effort of the Muslim Association of Greece is the establishment of  a public – official Athens mosque, belonging to the Hellenic democracy with an official academic imam and a Muslim Cemetery that will ensure that the Muslim citizens of Athens, a city of five million people will consider Muslims as equal citizens of this society in all aspects.

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Anna Stamou is responsible for Public Relations at the Muslim Association of Greece and wife of head of the Muslim Association. She studied business administration at Mediterranean College