The purpose of the Action is to provide a transnational and interdisciplinary approach capable of overcoming the segmentation that currently characterizes the study of relations between Christianity and Islam in late medieval and early modern Europe and the Mediterranean.

Over the last thirty years, some separate geographic and academic areas have been defined in this research field: the Iberian Peninsula, Italy, Central Europe and the Balkans, and Greece and the different islands of the Mediterranean.

These different geographical areas have been analyzed in isolation and have been further disjointed in a scientific context defined by the separation of disciplines and chronologies.

The intention of the Action is to mitigate this academic distortion by creating a common space for scientific exchange and reflection.

This space currently involves institutions from 31 different European and Mediterranean countries as well as around 100 senior and junior researchers coming from different disciplines (history, history of art, philology, anthropology, social sciences, history of the science, politics, etc.).

The creation of this network will help to provide a comprehensive understanding of past relations between Christianity and Islam in the European context through the addressing of three main research problems: otherness, migration and borders. Beyond the strictly academic realm, the Action also aims to revive diversity and Euro-Mediterranean relations in education, at a moment when Europe is at a cultural and political crossroads.

Working Groups

The Action has three Working Groups:

• WG1 The (imaginary) construction of the other,

• WG2 Migration and Identity – National Identities, Local Identities, Religious Identities, and

• WG3 Beyond Borders, that will act as platforms for thematic discussion.

The work methodology will be based on the interaction of the different traditions upon the discussion of common questions.

The general objective of the Action is the creation of a stable network of researchers working on late medieval and early modern relations between Christianity and Islam in Europe, in order to identify common questions and open a transnational and transdisciplinary debate on them that will generate findings that can be exported to the entire academic community and society at large.

The Action will hold 3 Training Schools focused on interdisciplinary methodological research about late medieval and early modern connections between Christianity and Islam in Europe and the Mediterranean. It is expected that this initiative will result in the creation of a transnational community of doctoral students.

This output will have a great long-term impact in the discipline due to its capacity to promote research models. For this reason, the Action will take a special care of the design and the implementation of the Training Schools.

The web of the Action intends to serve as a reference in the subject for scholars and the interested public.

Website: https://is-le.eu/

Nazi symbols and the logo of the Greek far-right political party, Golden Dawn, were spray-painted on the Muslim tombstones, and leaflets of the party littered the cemetery. The Golden Dawn leaflets bore the slogan, “Greece belongs to the Greeks.” “This kind of attack in Greece is not happening for the first time, and it will not be the last… This attack is a very good indicator and part of the rising Islamophobia and racism in Europe and Greece in recent years” Ali Huseyinoglu of Trakya University’s Balkan Research Institute, who hails from Western Thrace, told Anadolu Agency…The attack was reported just after the last Sunday’s European Parliament (EP) elections in Greece, according to Huseyinoglu.

Underlining that in that election Greece’s Friendship, Equality and Peace Party (FEP) won the support of ethnic Turks living in the country, Huseyinoglu said this attack may have carried out in response to the party’s success.

According to data from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), of 128 hate crime incidents recorded by Greek police in 2017, only 46 resulted in prosecutions, and a mere six resulted in sentences. Decrying the lack of deterrents against Islamophobic attacks, Huseyinoglu said: “Such Islamophobic attacks are likely to continue because there are no effective sanctions or effective judicial mechanisms.”

Source: Anadolu Agency

Greek authorities said on Friday that Athens would open its first official mosque probably by September when the 850,000 euro ($967,000) construction project is completed.

Although there are mosques in other parts of Greece, the capital has not had a formal mosque since it drove out occupying Ottomans in 1833, and the few that are left have been repurposed. Plans to build a mosque began in 1890 with an act of parliament, but all fell through, including one timed for the 2004 Olympics.

More than 200,000 Muslims from countries including Pakistan, Syria, Afghanistan and Bangladesh live in the Greek capital, according to Muslim groups. Greece has its own Muslim community which represent about 2% of the population who live mainly in the north where they have their own mosques. Efforts over the years to build a mosque in Athens sparked protests from fringe groups on the far right; a short distance from the mosque, graffiti scrawled on a wall read “Islam Out”.

Source: Reuters

They called on member states and policymakers to play a more active role in the fight against Islamophobia and strengthen legal procedures on the issue.

The project reviews dominant anti-Muslim narratives and compares counter-narratives in eight EU members states of France, Germany, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Portugal, Greece, and the U.K.

It outlines 10 counter-narratives that must be prioritized in Europe.

Continue reading at: Anadolu Agency

Masjid Usman, as a handwritten sign taped beside the entrance reads, is actually registered as a library. At least 200,000 Muslims live in Athens, but of the 120 prayer spaces in the city, only three have been able to navigate a complex maze of legal restrictions to register as mosques. The rest, like Masjid Usman, operate as libraries or cultural centers — instead of as nonprofit places of worship that enjoy a range of legal protections in Greece — and could one day be shut down if authorities decide to enforce the law.

But last month, Greek authorities announced a contract had been awarded for the construction of a state-funded, properly registered mosque — the first since the nation’s independence from the Ottoman Empire nearly 200 years ago. The mosque, expected to cost about $1 million, will have capacity for around 300 worshippers and is being built in a former naval repair yard in the Votanikos neighborhood of Athens, west of downtown.

“We have been hearing about this for decades,” said Malik, who serves as the makeshift mosque’s treasurer, “and if it happens, if it actually gets constructed, it would be great. It would allow us to feel like we can have an open presence here.”

Arab diplomats in Athens have been trying to get permission to build a mosque since the 1970s, and for more than a decade the Greek government has been trying to find space for such a facility, but anti-immigrant groups and the powerful Greek Orthodox Church have hampered the efforts…Not all bishops have been so critical. Bishop Bartholomew I of Constantinople has repeatedly called for a mosque to be built in Athens.

Still, the issue of a mosque has become a rallying point for xenophobic groups in the country such as Golden Dawn, a now-banned political party whose members tried to firebomb a Bangladeshi mosque in the city, stabbed to death a Pakistani immigrant and led several violent protests over the years against the Votanikos district mosque project. The new state-funded mosque will not meet all the needs of the large Muslim community in Athens. But, said Malik, it would be “an important step towards making us feel like we belong here.”

Source: Religious News Service (RNS)