CORCORAN: The changing of the guard at the tomb of Greeces unknown soldier.
For tourists, its just another holiday snap -- but Greeks look beyond the viewfinder, to a ceremony re-enforcing passionately held ideals of Hellenic identity.
A fusion of nationalism, history and the triumph of the Christian Orthodox faith over Islam.
Modern Greece was only created in 1830, following the expulsion of the hated Muslim Ottoman Turks -- driven out after 400 years of occupation.
Today, the guards still wear the uniform of the war of liberation that struggle, and a suspicion of Islam, still deeply ingrained in the national psyche.
The Ottoman Turks may be long gone, but Greece is now facing a Muslim challenge of a very different kind. During the past decade more than a million mainly Muslim -- migrants have moved to Greece, and now comprise nearly ten percent of the population. Their presence here is providing a real challenge to the notion of what it actually means to be Greek.
Music
CORCORAN: For years, Athens has been one vast construction site as the Greek capital races to meet the Olympics deadline. But while the Games will be Greek, Mayor of Athens, Dora Bakoyannis acknowledges that many of those doing the work are not.
CORCORAN: Would the games have been possible without this massive influx of migrant labour?
BAKOYANNIS: Well probably not but they were here before the construction.
CORCORAN: The pre-occupation with the Olympics has masked an extraordinary social transformation.
No one really knows the exact figure, but with a population of only 11 million, Greece has absorbed more than one million migrants since the early 90s.
The foreign workers have streamed in through Greeces porous borders over land and by sea.
First came huge numbers of Albanians then Arabs, Kurds, Pakistanis and others most of them Muslim. Hundreds of thousands of illegal arrivals were granted amnesties and given work visas, to do the jobs few Greeks would take, for a fraction of the wages. Its a remarkable turnaround for a nation thats most valuable export was once its people.
BAKOYANNIS: Of course, in the past ten years, having ten percent of our people having immigrants coming back to Greece from sending immigrants to becoming an immigrant receiver country is a radical change.
Music
CORCORAN: Mayor Dora Bakoyannis proudly proclaims that she is the first woman to run Athens in the 3,000 year history of the capital.
Today she reopens a renovated park a precious commodity in this concrete jungle.
Her task is Herculean in scale. Not only must she contend with the Olympics, but with a sprawling metropolis that is home to more than a third of the entire population of the country.
BAKOYANNIS: Greece is on a cross place of the world we are
the last European country we are very close to Asia we are very close to the Arab world.
Arabic music
CORCORAN: And this is part of the New Athens the tourists dont see. Down on the teeming Migrant Street theyre not so upbeat.
Music
CORCORAN: For ten years, Pakistani Tasavow has been struggling to build a new life here.
That means labouring for 25 Euros a day and running the gauntlet of police.
PAKISTANI: They see you as a foreigner -- they shout, Come here wanker! They shout at you as if youre a dog, as if youre not a person, thats how the police behave towards you. Its a terrible situation especially for the foreigners.
SECOND MAN: (points out police car) Look, the police just came here and tried to grab someone without any provocation!
Music
CORCORAN: With the Olympics looming and fear of terrorism paramount, Greek officials are understandably anxious about security, and the potential for local Islamic communities to be infiltrated by terrorists.
But if theres been a crackdown these workers say theyve hardly noticed being a Muslim in Greece has always been enough to warrant special attention.
PAKISTANI: Yeah, it might be the case that things are getting a bit more rough here because of the Olympic Games and Al Qaeda -- theyre just more strict on your papers now, always checking them.
CORCORAN: Weve had the riot cops show up, why are they here?
PAKISTANI: I dont know -- maybe because they saw there were a lot of foreigners gathered together.
BAKOYANNIS: After September 11th there was a problem with police around the world with Muslim people.
We were very careful here in Greece because we knew, and lived together, with Muslims for years. We knew that terrorism and Muslim religion has very little to do with each other.
CORCORAN: While they may not be suspected as terrorists, Greeces Muslim migrants complain that they have no chance of being accepted as citizens. According to the human rights group Helsinki Monitors those who meet the all requirements for Greek citizenship seem to have their applications lost by the bureaucracy.
CORCORAN: So how tough is it for a young migrant here, a non-European migrant to become a Greek national, to carry that Greek passport?
VALLIANATOS: It is almost impossible. I hardly know anyone -- I mean we are not talking about war refugees we are talking about migrants. The normal term in the Greek language is very pejorative lafrometanasis which is someone who is, who is a mistake himself and of course we argue that there is no human life which is a mistake.
PAKISTANI: Ive got some papers -- as Ive been here for ten years I could be a Greek citizen. But they told me no.
CORCORAN:. Why not? What do they tell you ? Why cant you become a Greek citizen?
PAKISTANI: Well maybe if I married a Greek girl and changed religion, from a Muslim to a Christian, then I would be able to get Greek citizenship.
ORTHODOX CHANTING
CORCORAN: In Greece, the powerful Orthodox Church takes on the self anointed role as keeper of the national identity, in a country that officially at least, is 98% Orthodox Christian.
Two years ago the Church passionately opposed a Government decision to remove the religious status from ID cards.
But today in an Athens parish, Father Geronimos Nikolopoulos welcomes baby girl Aglaia to the fold, her identity assured.
CORCORAN: . How do you define being Greek? What is a Greek?
PRIEST: (Laughs) Well in Greece, we regard Greeks as the ones who are baptised. So during the years of the Turkish occupation we lived 400 years under the Turkish occupation -- whoever was baptised was a Greek. Whoever was not baptised was a Turk.
That is why all the Greek families baptise their children.
You cannot find a Greek child that is not baptised.
CORCORAN: Greece is the only European Union nation that outlaws attempted conversions by any other church or religion.
CORCORAN: So those people who are not baptised -- immigrants in your eyes, in the churchs eyes, are they Greek?
PRIEST: No they are not Greek-- they come from the countries of the Balkan peninsula or from the Arabic countries.
Music
CORCORAN: There have always been Muslims in Greece. Tucked away in northeast region of Thrace live communities of ethnic Turks, Pomacs and Gypsies -- 120,000 Muslims in all many clinging defiantly to the old ways.
For many Greeks, the minarets of Thraces 287 mosques stand as bitter monuments to what is still referred to simply as The Catastrophe.
In 1923 Greece and Turkey ended years of fighting with a massive population exchange. More than a million Orthodox Christians were deported to Greece from Turkey, while hundreds of thousands of Muslims went the other way.
Journalist and community activist Cemil Kabza says the exchange excluded his people the Muslims of Thrace.
CEMIL: It is our home because our fathers, our grandfathers were born here, we were born here, we grew up here.
We used to live here for -- I dont even know for how many centuries, and we will continue living here, we would like to stay here, we are not going to move to anywhere.
Music
CORCORAN: These days, theres a spring in the step of the dancers villagers say such cultural gatherings were banned up until a year ago.
Music
CORCORAN: For decades, the treatment of Thraces Muslims was viewed as a barometer of often tense Greek/Turkish relations.
But theres been a diplomatic thaw; Turkeys Prime Minister recently passed through here the first such visit in half a century.
And today, a Turkish diplomat is guest of honour at the village festival.CORCORAN: If I ask you the question,
do you consider yourself, Greek, what do you say?
CEMIL: My answer is quite basic, my ethnic origin is Turkish, I believe, and my religion is Muslim and I am a Greek citizen.
Music
CORCORAN: Life here is slowly improving. Muslims now study at their own minority schools and can finally get access to government jobs and university places.
Despite the official goodwill many Muslims say they still endure a legacy of extraordinary discrimination that denies them passports or Greek national identity. In the cemetery of a local mosque, amid centuries old headstones of local holy men, we meet three of Greeces non-persons.
AYHAN SALIOGLU: We have been here many generations. We were born here, we are here -- were Thracians.
Music
CORCORAN: For years, a controversial law enshrined in the Greek Constitution stated that a person of non-Greek ethnic origin who left Greece could be stripped of nationality.
About 60,000 mainly Muslim Greeks were targeted their passports and ID cards cancelled. They say their only crime was to work or study overseas, to pursue opportunities denied them in Thrace.
AYHAN SALIOGLU: I was born here, I grew up here. I went to primary and junior high here. My parents have Greek nationality. We dont understand how this can happen.
I think its being from another religion -- thats what the problem is.
CORCORAN: 34-year-old Ayhan Salioglu, went to senior high school and university in Turkey, before returning home in 1992 to find himself a non-person.
AYHAN SALIOGLU: When you dont have papers, it means that you are not a person -- its like youre an animal. You come and go, but you cant do you anything for your children, or for yourself or your family. Its like you dont exist you dont exist.
CORCORAN: The citizenship law was revoked in 1998, after enormous pressure was applied by the European Union.
Ahyan finally had his identity card returned a couple of months ago. It gives him the status of a guest worker. But he still doesnt have a passport.
AYHAN SALIOGLU: Im thankful that at least I have this paper, but the gentlemen beside me dont even have that -- and there are many, many of us. There may be three of us here, but there are more than 3000 of us altogether.
BAKOYANNIS: I told you we have a minority in Thrace -- they are Muslims, but they are Greeks. They are Greek citizens, so they have their own culture but they have the Greek conscience.
CORCORAN: Do they have equal rights?
BAKOYANNIS: Of course they have equal rights Greek citizens have equal rights everywhere.
VALLIANATOS: You know, this is not a country that takes very seriously any religious difference. This is a Greek Orthodox predominately, mighty proud country. So all these people have to rather hide their religious affiliation. See, we love to think they are in Thrace and have their 287 mosques or something and we feel comfortable about them being there and we dont realise that there are many more here.
Music
CORCORAN: And on the streets of Athens, one Thracian Muslim is now, quietly building links between his people and the new migrants.
As President of Greeces Muslim Federation, Mehmet Imam organises shelter for new arrivals at 19 refuges around the city.
MEHMET IMAM: What the state continues to do is to put Greeces Muslim Communities in ghettos -- it puts them out of sight.
CORCORAN: With not a single official mosque in Athens, dozens of underground prayer halls have sprung up for the devout.
Greek officials claim there are only about 100,000 Muslims in the city.
Mehmet and the Helsinki Monitors humans rights group say the real number is nearly half a million -- a politically sensitive demographic the Government wants to ignore.
MEHMET IMAM: There are 450,000 Muslims residing permanently in greater Athens. Of those, 200, 000 would go to mosques and pray and want their own spaces. The others might be indifferent but theyre still Muslim.
Music
CORCORAN: In the Plaka tourist district of Athens the imposing presence of the Acropolis dominates the skyline. But just above the souvenir shops is another, more recent relic of Greeces history one of the few remaining symbols of Islam in the capital.
Music
MEHMET IMAM: This is from my grandfather -- a mosque thats
left here in Athens. Its the only mosque left here in the greater Athens area and its been reduced to a museum.
CORCORAN: Not a single mosque has been built in the city since Greeces independence from the Muslim Ottoman Turks 174 years ago.
This is now the only capital in the European Union without an official mosque or Islamic cemetery. The bodies of Muslims who die here are shipped 800 kilometres to Thrace for burial, or interred illegally in Athens.
MEHMET IMAM: I feel an injustice, a barbarism against my culture and any Muslim would feel the same way.
CORCORAN: Stung by criticism that visiting Muslims would have nowhere to pray during the Olympics, Greeces Parliament approved construction of a mosque in Athens.
But the site selection managed to outrage both Muslims and Christians alike.
Here, in the outer suburb of Peania, is where the Government wants to build a 30,000 square metre Islamic school and mosque to be funded by Saudi Arabia.
But the plans have been thwarted by Dr. Athanassios Papageorgiou and other local residents whove quite literally seized the high ground, erecting a seven metre cross on the site, and invoking memories of Ottoman Muslim invaders of centuries past.
DR. PAPAGEORGIOU: This is the cross -- its our symbol and defence -- and this is what we decided to put here. This is where we consider the new invasion will happen.
CORCORAN: Dr. Papageorgiou points out that not a single Muslim lives within kilometres of the site near the new Athens Airport. And that visitors arriving for Greeces Olympics would have been confronted by the vision of a 67-metre high mosque minaret.
DR. PAPAGEORGIOU: I think that every visitor who comes here will think that they are visiting a Muslim country and not Greece!
CORCORAN: The residents, backed by the Orthodox Church have launched legal action to block construction, fearingDR. PAPAGEORGIOU: Were not scared of any terrorist action, the mosque will attract Islamic terrorists, but because these are the laws of international Muslim fundamentalism, as theyve proven recently through Muslim immigration into Europe, what happened there can happen here too. Were scared of that. Let them prove the opposite.
BAKOYANNIS: The Greek Parliament passed a law and said that the mosque will be there at this certain, this concrete place. There are some people who disagree but thats why we invented democracy.
CORCORAN: Mehmet says the idea was to shove Greek Islam out of sight. Infuriated, hes now calling on Muslim countries to boycott the Games.
MEHMET IMAM: Thats why we made the call that if other Islamic countries want to support the Muslim community here in Greece then they should not participate in these Olympics.
Music
CORCORAN: Mehmet used to run this café in central Athens as a migrant drop-in centre, until he says, police harassment forced him to close a year ago. He now uses the café to store copies of the Koran, which he distributes to the Muslim community. Marginalised, Mehmets prepared to take help from anywhere, including the Embassy of Iran.
MEHMET IMAM: Our association works with the Embassy and even if you open the book you can see it says on the inside that this is a donation from the Cultural Centre of Iran.
CORCORAN: Muslims in Greece come from a diverse range of backgrounds but increasingly they seek solace in their common faith the one factor that they claim singles them out for discrimination.
So far, Greece has been spared the Islamic extremism and terrorism thats grown out of other European Muslim communities.
While Mehmet Imam preaches conciliation and walks away from confrontation, the next generation of Greek Muslims may not.
Reporter: Mark Corcoran
Camera: Ron Ekkel
Editor: Simon Brynjolffssen
Producer: Vivien Altman
For tourists, its just another holiday snap -- but Greeks look beyond the viewfinder, to a ceremony re-enforcing passionately held ideals of Hellenic identity.
A fusion of nationalism, history and the triumph of the Christian Orthodox faith over Islam.
Modern Greece was only created in 1830, following the expulsion of the hated Muslim Ottoman Turks -- driven out after 400 years of occupation.
Today, the guards still wear the uniform of the war of liberation that struggle, and a suspicion of Islam, still deeply ingrained in the national psyche.
The Ottoman Turks may be long gone, but Greece is now facing a Muslim challenge of a very different kind. During the past decade more than a million mainly Muslim -- migrants have moved to Greece, and now comprise nearly ten percent of the population. Their presence here is providing a real challenge to the notion of what it actually means to be Greek.
Music
CORCORAN: For years, Athens has been one vast construction site as the Greek capital races to meet the Olympics deadline. But while the Games will be Greek, Mayor of Athens, Dora Bakoyannis acknowledges that many of those doing the work are not.
CORCORAN: Would the games have been possible without this massive influx of migrant labour?
BAKOYANNIS: Well probably not but they were here before the construction.
CORCORAN: The pre-occupation with the Olympics has masked an extraordinary social transformation.
No one really knows the exact figure, but with a population of only 11 million, Greece has absorbed more than one million migrants since the early 90s.
The foreign workers have streamed in through Greeces porous borders over land and by sea.
First came huge numbers of Albanians then Arabs, Kurds, Pakistanis and others most of them Muslim. Hundreds of thousands of illegal arrivals were granted amnesties and given work visas, to do the jobs few Greeks would take, for a fraction of the wages. Its a remarkable turnaround for a nation thats most valuable export was once its people.
BAKOYANNIS: Of course, in the past ten years, having ten percent of our people having immigrants coming back to Greece from sending immigrants to becoming an immigrant receiver country is a radical change.
Music
CORCORAN: Mayor Dora Bakoyannis proudly proclaims that she is the first woman to run Athens in the 3,000 year history of the capital.
Today she reopens a renovated park a precious commodity in this concrete jungle.
Her task is Herculean in scale. Not only must she contend with the Olympics, but with a sprawling metropolis that is home to more than a third of the entire population of the country.
BAKOYANNIS: Greece is on a cross place of the world we are
the last European country we are very close to Asia we are very close to the Arab world.
Arabic music
CORCORAN: And this is part of the New Athens the tourists dont see. Down on the teeming Migrant Street theyre not so upbeat.
Music
CORCORAN: For ten years, Pakistani Tasavow has been struggling to build a new life here.
That means labouring for 25 Euros a day and running the gauntlet of police.
PAKISTANI: They see you as a foreigner -- they shout, Come here wanker! They shout at you as if youre a dog, as if youre not a person, thats how the police behave towards you. Its a terrible situation especially for the foreigners.
SECOND MAN: (points out police car) Look, the police just came here and tried to grab someone without any provocation!
Music
CORCORAN: With the Olympics looming and fear of terrorism paramount, Greek officials are understandably anxious about security, and the potential for local Islamic communities to be infiltrated by terrorists.
But if theres been a crackdown these workers say theyve hardly noticed being a Muslim in Greece has always been enough to warrant special attention.
PAKISTANI: Yeah, it might be the case that things are getting a bit more rough here because of the Olympic Games and Al Qaeda -- theyre just more strict on your papers now, always checking them.
CORCORAN: Weve had the riot cops show up, why are they here?
PAKISTANI: I dont know -- maybe because they saw there were a lot of foreigners gathered together.
BAKOYANNIS: After September 11th there was a problem with police around the world with Muslim people.
We were very careful here in Greece because we knew, and lived together, with Muslims for years. We knew that terrorism and Muslim religion has very little to do with each other.
CORCORAN: While they may not be suspected as terrorists, Greeces Muslim migrants complain that they have no chance of being accepted as citizens. According to the human rights group Helsinki Monitors those who meet the all requirements for Greek citizenship seem to have their applications lost by the bureaucracy.
CORCORAN: So how tough is it for a young migrant here, a non-European migrant to become a Greek national, to carry that Greek passport?
VALLIANATOS: It is almost impossible. I hardly know anyone -- I mean we are not talking about war refugees we are talking about migrants. The normal term in the Greek language is very pejorative lafrometanasis which is someone who is, who is a mistake himself and of course we argue that there is no human life which is a mistake.
PAKISTANI: Ive got some papers -- as Ive been here for ten years I could be a Greek citizen. But they told me no.
CORCORAN:. Why not? What do they tell you ? Why cant you become a Greek citizen?
PAKISTANI: Well maybe if I married a Greek girl and changed religion, from a Muslim to a Christian, then I would be able to get Greek citizenship.
ORTHODOX CHANTING
CORCORAN: In Greece, the powerful Orthodox Church takes on the self anointed role as keeper of the national identity, in a country that officially at least, is 98% Orthodox Christian.
Two years ago the Church passionately opposed a Government decision to remove the religious status from ID cards.
But today in an Athens parish, Father Geronimos Nikolopoulos welcomes baby girl Aglaia to the fold, her identity assured.
CORCORAN: . How do you define being Greek? What is a Greek?
PRIEST: (Laughs) Well in Greece, we regard Greeks as the ones who are baptised. So during the years of the Turkish occupation we lived 400 years under the Turkish occupation -- whoever was baptised was a Greek. Whoever was not baptised was a Turk.
That is why all the Greek families baptise their children.
You cannot find a Greek child that is not baptised.
CORCORAN: Greece is the only European Union nation that outlaws attempted conversions by any other church or religion.
CORCORAN: So those people who are not baptised -- immigrants in your eyes, in the churchs eyes, are they Greek?
PRIEST: No they are not Greek-- they come from the countries of the Balkan peninsula or from the Arabic countries.
Music
CORCORAN: There have always been Muslims in Greece. Tucked away in northeast region of Thrace live communities of ethnic Turks, Pomacs and Gypsies -- 120,000 Muslims in all many clinging defiantly to the old ways.
For many Greeks, the minarets of Thraces 287 mosques stand as bitter monuments to what is still referred to simply as The Catastrophe.
In 1923 Greece and Turkey ended years of fighting with a massive population exchange. More than a million Orthodox Christians were deported to Greece from Turkey, while hundreds of thousands of Muslims went the other way.
Journalist and community activist Cemil Kabza says the exchange excluded his people the Muslims of Thrace.
CEMIL: It is our home because our fathers, our grandfathers were born here, we were born here, we grew up here.
We used to live here for -- I dont even know for how many centuries, and we will continue living here, we would like to stay here, we are not going to move to anywhere.
Music
CORCORAN: These days, theres a spring in the step of the dancers villagers say such cultural gatherings were banned up until a year ago.
Music
CORCORAN: For decades, the treatment of Thraces Muslims was viewed as a barometer of often tense Greek/Turkish relations.
But theres been a diplomatic thaw; Turkeys Prime Minister recently passed through here the first such visit in half a century.
And today, a Turkish diplomat is guest of honour at the village festival.CORCORAN: If I ask you the question,
do you consider yourself, Greek, what do you say?
CEMIL: My answer is quite basic, my ethnic origin is Turkish, I believe, and my religion is Muslim and I am a Greek citizen.
Music
CORCORAN: Life here is slowly improving. Muslims now study at their own minority schools and can finally get access to government jobs and university places.
Despite the official goodwill many Muslims say they still endure a legacy of extraordinary discrimination that denies them passports or Greek national identity. In the cemetery of a local mosque, amid centuries old headstones of local holy men, we meet three of Greeces non-persons.
AYHAN SALIOGLU: We have been here many generations. We were born here, we are here -- were Thracians.
Music
CORCORAN: For years, a controversial law enshrined in the Greek Constitution stated that a person of non-Greek ethnic origin who left Greece could be stripped of nationality.
About 60,000 mainly Muslim Greeks were targeted their passports and ID cards cancelled. They say their only crime was to work or study overseas, to pursue opportunities denied them in Thrace.
AYHAN SALIOGLU: I was born here, I grew up here. I went to primary and junior high here. My parents have Greek nationality. We dont understand how this can happen.
I think its being from another religion -- thats what the problem is.
CORCORAN: 34-year-old Ayhan Salioglu, went to senior high school and university in Turkey, before returning home in 1992 to find himself a non-person.
AYHAN SALIOGLU: When you dont have papers, it means that you are not a person -- its like youre an animal. You come and go, but you cant do you anything for your children, or for yourself or your family. Its like you dont exist you dont exist.
CORCORAN: The citizenship law was revoked in 1998, after enormous pressure was applied by the European Union.
Ahyan finally had his identity card returned a couple of months ago. It gives him the status of a guest worker. But he still doesnt have a passport.
AYHAN SALIOGLU: Im thankful that at least I have this paper, but the gentlemen beside me dont even have that -- and there are many, many of us. There may be three of us here, but there are more than 3000 of us altogether.
BAKOYANNIS: I told you we have a minority in Thrace -- they are Muslims, but they are Greeks. They are Greek citizens, so they have their own culture but they have the Greek conscience.
CORCORAN: Do they have equal rights?
BAKOYANNIS: Of course they have equal rights Greek citizens have equal rights everywhere.
VALLIANATOS: You know, this is not a country that takes very seriously any religious difference. This is a Greek Orthodox predominately, mighty proud country. So all these people have to rather hide their religious affiliation. See, we love to think they are in Thrace and have their 287 mosques or something and we feel comfortable about them being there and we dont realise that there are many more here.
Music
CORCORAN: And on the streets of Athens, one Thracian Muslim is now, quietly building links between his people and the new migrants.
As President of Greeces Muslim Federation, Mehmet Imam organises shelter for new arrivals at 19 refuges around the city.
MEHMET IMAM: What the state continues to do is to put Greeces Muslim Communities in ghettos -- it puts them out of sight.
CORCORAN: With not a single official mosque in Athens, dozens of underground prayer halls have sprung up for the devout.
Greek officials claim there are only about 100,000 Muslims in the city.
Mehmet and the Helsinki Monitors humans rights group say the real number is nearly half a million -- a politically sensitive demographic the Government wants to ignore.
MEHMET IMAM: There are 450,000 Muslims residing permanently in greater Athens. Of those, 200, 000 would go to mosques and pray and want their own spaces. The others might be indifferent but theyre still Muslim.
Music
CORCORAN: In the Plaka tourist district of Athens the imposing presence of the Acropolis dominates the skyline. But just above the souvenir shops is another, more recent relic of Greeces history one of the few remaining symbols of Islam in the capital.
Music
MEHMET IMAM: This is from my grandfather -- a mosque thats
left here in Athens. Its the only mosque left here in the greater Athens area and its been reduced to a museum.
CORCORAN: Not a single mosque has been built in the city since Greeces independence from the Muslim Ottoman Turks 174 years ago.
This is now the only capital in the European Union without an official mosque or Islamic cemetery. The bodies of Muslims who die here are shipped 800 kilometres to Thrace for burial, or interred illegally in Athens.
MEHMET IMAM: I feel an injustice, a barbarism against my culture and any Muslim would feel the same way.
CORCORAN: Stung by criticism that visiting Muslims would have nowhere to pray during the Olympics, Greeces Parliament approved construction of a mosque in Athens.
But the site selection managed to outrage both Muslims and Christians alike.
Here, in the outer suburb of Peania, is where the Government wants to build a 30,000 square metre Islamic school and mosque to be funded by Saudi Arabia.
But the plans have been thwarted by Dr. Athanassios Papageorgiou and other local residents whove quite literally seized the high ground, erecting a seven metre cross on the site, and invoking memories of Ottoman Muslim invaders of centuries past.
DR. PAPAGEORGIOU: This is the cross -- its our symbol and defence -- and this is what we decided to put here. This is where we consider the new invasion will happen.
CORCORAN: Dr. Papageorgiou points out that not a single Muslim lives within kilometres of the site near the new Athens Airport. And that visitors arriving for Greeces Olympics would have been confronted by the vision of a 67-metre high mosque minaret.
DR. PAPAGEORGIOU: I think that every visitor who comes here will think that they are visiting a Muslim country and not Greece!
CORCORAN: The residents, backed by the Orthodox Church have launched legal action to block construction, fearingDR. PAPAGEORGIOU: Were not scared of any terrorist action, the mosque will attract Islamic terrorists, but because these are the laws of international Muslim fundamentalism, as theyve proven recently through Muslim immigration into Europe, what happened there can happen here too. Were scared of that. Let them prove the opposite.
BAKOYANNIS: The Greek Parliament passed a law and said that the mosque will be there at this certain, this concrete place. There are some people who disagree but thats why we invented democracy.
CORCORAN: Mehmet says the idea was to shove Greek Islam out of sight. Infuriated, hes now calling on Muslim countries to boycott the Games.
MEHMET IMAM: Thats why we made the call that if other Islamic countries want to support the Muslim community here in Greece then they should not participate in these Olympics.
Music
CORCORAN: Mehmet used to run this café in central Athens as a migrant drop-in centre, until he says, police harassment forced him to close a year ago. He now uses the café to store copies of the Koran, which he distributes to the Muslim community. Marginalised, Mehmets prepared to take help from anywhere, including the Embassy of Iran.
MEHMET IMAM: Our association works with the Embassy and even if you open the book you can see it says on the inside that this is a donation from the Cultural Centre of Iran.
CORCORAN: Muslims in Greece come from a diverse range of backgrounds but increasingly they seek solace in their common faith the one factor that they claim singles them out for discrimination.
So far, Greece has been spared the Islamic extremism and terrorism thats grown out of other European Muslim communities.
While Mehmet Imam preaches conciliation and walks away from confrontation, the next generation of Greek Muslims may not.
Reporter: Mark Corcoran
Camera: Ron Ekkel
Editor: Simon Brynjolffssen
Producer: Vivien Altman