Greek police say unknown attackers have placed a severed pig’s head and painted anti-Muslim slogans outside an Islamic studies center in Athens.
Nobody has been arrested over the pre-dawn attack Friday, at a building that also functions as a Muslim prayer center.
The attackers sprayed an obscene slogan against Islam on the sidewalk outside the building, daubed a Christian cross on the door and threw paint at the walls.
The attack was discovered by worshippers going to Friday prayers.
Bigotry targeting Jews and Muslims has increased in Greece in recent years, which also saw the meteoric rise of a Nazi-inspired far-right party. Golden Dawn entered Parliament in 2012, but all its lawmakers now face trial for running a criminal organization that used violence to spread and impose its beliefs.
The saga of the Athens mosque, the realization of which has been delayed for years and seemed a settled issue last November, continues. Work for the construction of the Muslim temple has been blocked again, this time by political maneuvers and an appeal presented by a university teacher, two navy officials, a cultural association and the ultra-conservative bishop of the Metropolitan Seraphim of Piraeus, all of whom are against the presence of the worshipping place in the Greek capital, the only one in Europe still without a temple for its more than 200,000 residents of Muslim faith.
On Thursday, New Democracy‘s candidate for Athens mayor, Aris Spiliotopoulos, was accused of toeing his party’s ultra-nationalist line by Gavriil Sakellaridis, main opposition party Syriza’s runner for the same position.
After yet another attack on government plans to construct a mosque in central Athens, Greece’s neofascist Golden Dawn party has asked for a national vote on the issue.
