ATHENS: It is a sound which has echoed down the centuries in neighbouring countries but which has not been heard here for 170 years — the call to prayer.

Every day, Muslim immigrants living in Athens gather in makeshift mosques in shops, basement apartments and garages.

Hidden from society and inconspicuous to a passerby, these unofficial places of worship in and around the downtown area draw thousands of Muslims for daily prayer.

Athenian Muslims, who include immigrants from nearby Turkey and Albania but also considerable numbers of Arabs, Indians and Pakistanis, were first promised a formal place of worship over 25 years ago.

But what the Greek government has long neglected, the approach of the 2004 Summer Olympic Games has restored.

Preparations for an Athens mosque, the first since the end of Ottoman rule, has finally become a priority, but deciding where to put it, however, in this overwhelmingly Orthodox Christian country, has turned the issue into a political dilemma.

Although numerous sites for the Olympics will be equipped with their own worship facilities for different religions, the government is keen on improving its relationship with neighbouring Muslim countries by opening the mosque and multi-million dollar Islamic centre while the world spotlight is on Athens.

A reason to speed up the project is the Olympic Games in 2004, Greek Foreign Minister George Papandreou said in a recent statement.

“We have to ensure that representatives of Muslim countries and Muslim spectators have the right to exercise their religious needs,” he said.

Some 12 million Muslims live in the European Union. Athens is the only capital in the EU without a mosque and has continuously come under fire from the European Commissioner for Human Rights for not having a cemetery for Muslims wishing to bury their dead in accordance with their own religious traditions.

The absence of a mosque has long been regarded as an oddity in a country which has traditionally seen itself as a cultural crossroads between Christian Europe and the Muslim world.

Overseers of the mosque, which is being funded by Saudi Arabia, hope that the Games will serve as an incentive to get the building off the ground and ready in time for next summer, but the mayor of the suburb selected is determined to pull the plug on the entire project.

“We do not understand why the mosque has to be built here. There are not even any Muslim immigrants living here and we will do everything in our power to stop the plans and convince the government that Peania is not the right place for a mosque,” said Peania Mayor Paraskevas Papakostopoulos.

The mosque should be built closer to downtown Athens where the majority of the city’s Muslims live, he argued, adding that the Peania municipal council has taken the case to the Council of State, Greece’s highest administrative court.

The government has set aside 35,000 square metres of land, some 20 kilometres north of the city centre and near Athens international airport for the project.

The project’s close proximity to the airport is yet another argument against the plan.

With the mosque’s minaret in full view from an aircraft, travellers initially arriving to Greece will think that they have entered a Muslim country, Papakostopoulos said.

The Foreign Ministry is determined to get the project off the ground and has said it will override any objections by the local council in Peania.

But even if the new Islamic centre and mosque are built in Peania, for the majority of Muslim immigrants who live near downtown Athens, it will be too far away for daily or even the weekly Friday prayers.

This is just for the Olympic Games, not for Muslims who live in Athens, argues Syed Mohammed Jamil, the president of the Pakistani Cultural Association. Nobody will go there, he says.

However, Ambassador Abdullah Abdullah of the Palestine Authority in Athens, insists Peania is an appropriate location and is confident that by the time the mosque is ready, public transportation from the city centre will have greatly improved.—dpa