Globe and Mail
January 3, 2011
Not too long ago, on a warm October evening, Nasir Prodan clambered down the five marble steps of an Athens basement to pray. He swayed through a swarm of about 50 Bangladeshis and knelt on the tenement's grimy green carpet trying to listen to the service as bystanders outside poured scorn and hostility on Islam.
That was just the start.
Fifteen minutes into the 8 p.m. prayer, roaring rioters took a crowbar to the makeshift mosque, shattering its window, then, tossing a flaming beer bottle inside. Mr. Prodan and his compatriots escaped unscathed. But as they put out the fire and returned to resume worship, rioters retaliated by padlocking them all inside.
“We were like trapped mice,” Mr. Prodan recalls. “It took police three hours to come and unlock us. It took me hours to calm down.”
The harrowing hate crime received little national attention. Three police officers were stationed 50 metres away, keeping watch over the now-battered and boarded-up building as Mr. Prodan and other Muslims walk past racist graffiti and the circle-and-cross insignia of a far-right organization known as Golden Dawn to attend daily prayer sessions.
Unlike any other European city, Athens has yet to build even a single mosque for its swelling population of Muslims, now estimated at about 750,000, about 10 per cent more than those in the city of London.
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