Islam in Greece

[citation needed], predominantly in the area of Asea[4] Albanian immigrants to Greece are usually associated with the Muslim faith, although most are secular in orientation.

[5] The first immigrants of Islamic faith, mostly Egyptians, arrived in the early 1950s from Egypt, and are concentrated in the country's two main urban centres, Athens and Thessaloniki.

Since the collapse of the Warsaw Pact in Eastern Europe in the early 1990s, Albanian workers started immigrating to Greece, taking low wage jobs in search of economic opportunity, and bringing over their families to settle in cities like Athens and Thessaloniki.

In addition, the Greek Orthodox Church has donated 300,000 square feet (28,000 m2), worth an estimated $20 million, in west Athens for the purpose of a Muslim cemetery.

However, Kostas Gavroglou – Greece's education and religious minister from 2016 to July 2019 – said that the country's first state-sponsored mosque was likely to begin operations in September 2019.

[9] For prayers that are required to be performed in congregation, the Thessaloniki Muslim community meets inside apartments, basements, and garages for worship.

[9] In 2010, an unofficial mosque on the island of Crete was targeted in the night without any casualties, likely as a result of anti-Muslim sentiments in the Greek far-right,[11] but no suspects had been identified.

Being seen as a remnant of the former Ottoman Empire and culturally similar to an alien country (Turkey), many Turks do not show interest in the Islamic faith in order not to face discrimination by the Greek state.

[23] The Sharia law used to be mandatory among the Muslim citizens of Greece, a situation that stems from the Ottoman era and predates its reinforcement by the 1923 Lausanne Treaty.

After her appeal was accepted by the secular justice system of Greece, her win was overruled by the Supreme Court, stating that no one other than a Mufti has the competency to decide on the issues related to inheritance in the Muslim community.

[22] The ECHR found unanimously that the mandatory application of Sharia law on the Muslim minority was a violation of the European Convention on Human Rights, particularly Article 14 (prohibition of discrimination), by Greece.

As the Ottoman Empire was slowly losing its European territories, it lost most of Thessaly, which is central Greece today, due to this convention.

Greece and Turkey signed the convention, agreeing that all of the issues related to the personal status of minorities should be dealt with according to religious law and not the civil one.

Greek authorities, on the other hand, have waited for a long time to consider changing laws that address Muslim family matter until 2018, fearful that Turkey would call for amendments to the Lausanne Treaty.

Half of these Muslims are of Turkish origin followed by Pomaks and Roma, and the vast majority professes Sunni Islam, while around 10% are from the Sufi Bektashi order.

In one case after a divorce, when the woman applied for alimony for her child and herself, the jurisdiction was given to the Mufti from Xanthi in Western Thrace because the ex-spouses were Muslims, despite the fact they were both from Athens.

In another more recent case of 2007, the Supreme Court proclaimed that Muftis had many issues involving Muslims within their purview, given that Sharia law covers them.

[28] The aforementioned Greek citizen called Chatitze (or Hatijah) Molla Sali lived in Komotini, a city located in North-Eastern Greece in the region of ‘East Macedonia and Thrace’.

Then on 7 October 2013, the judgment was annulled by the Court of Cassation, stating that these kinds of issues related to inheritance should be dealt with within the community and by the Mufti according to Islamic law.

Finally, she appealed to the ECHR complaining about the application of Islamic law to her case, emphasizing that her husband's testament was written in accordance with the Greek Civil Code, which drew a lot of attention outside of Greece.

[30] The ECHR in its 2018 ruling, found unanimously that the mandatory application of Sharia law on the Muslim minority to be a violation of the European Convention on Human Rights, particularly Article 14 (prohibition of discrimination), by Greece.

The focus was put both on an individual and his or her right, and also on the position of Sharia law within the countries with a Muslim minority and within a broader European legal network and the ECHR.