This never works the other way, of course. Islamic Tolerance Alert from Balkanalysis.com (thanks to Insubria):
When government officials in Macedonia recently proposed rebuilding a church that once stood on the city’s central square, they received an abrupt warning: for the Islamic Community (IVZ), the recreation of Sveti Konstanin & Elena, destroyed in the 1963 earthquake, should guarantee them their own right to build a mosque in the prominent downtown area.According to a report from A1 Television, among its other ambitions the IVZ is most keen on rebuilding the Burmali Mosque, destroyed in 1925, a year after the official dissolution of the Ottoman Empire but 12 years after the Ottomans were finally expelled, following a long period of bloody crackdowns on the Christian populations of Macedonia. A Royalist Yugoslav army house was built over it. Today the area is near a pedestrianized street where modern cafés cater to locals and international guests, considered to be one of the nicest modernization efforts in the city in recent years. Resurrecting a mosque in the area would certainly change the ambience.
Interestingly, it appears that the whole building frenzy is part of the larger issue of creating an “urban plan” for Skopje. The government has announced it will put forward an international tender for coming up with a “solution” to this issue, which it says will involve architects, planners and officials from the Ministry of Culture. However, the religious dimensions of the urban upgrade means that the authorities are playing with fire. While building an Orthodox Church is largely an exercise in decoration in a country where few attend church regularly, building a mosque, frequented five times a day by groups of Muslims likely to be “commuting” across the bridge from the “other” side of the river, is not. Considering current demographic and social trends, such religious one-upsmanship cannot lead to a long-term victory, to put it mildly, for Christendom in Macedonia.
Read it all.
"Given this fact, why are they even listening to what Muslims want?"
Why, for that matter, is the entire West listening to what Muslims want?
"Why are Muslims being allowed to build mosques without building permission?"
A little something happened on the way to the 21st century: Politically Correct Multiculturalism (PC MC). That's the short answer to your questions.
The long answer:
Ingredients of PC MC, in descending order of importance:
1. Reverse Racism: the white West is the source of all major bad things in the world; Third World peoples -- and Muslims most of all -- never do major bad things; and if they seem to do major bad things, it's only "understandable reactions" to Western "oppression" and "interference"
2. Fear
a) Suppressed Fear of Muslims: a semi-conscious and usually ill-informed fear of the hairtrigger volatility of Muslims and the sudden, unpredictable, horrific violence they are capable of -- this fear because ill-informed having the perversely paradoxical effect of actually strengthening the PC MC censorship of all criticism against Islam, for aforementioned fear of Muslims, as well as for the following fear:
b) Fear of the West going down the "slippery slope" toward Genocide: if we give in to the fear of Muslims that lurks in our heart, we will go down that "slippery slope" unto genocide, so we must -- at ALL COSTS! -- avoid the camel in the room: i.e., the real source of that which is terrorizing us: Islam (never mind that this fear is eminently rational)
3. Misguided Ethics, Disordered Values: basically flawed tiles interlocked in the complex mosaic of modern Western Progress, whereby our beneficial values of tolerance and diversity and human rights have almost inextricably included deformed axioms leading to our currently suicidal deference and "respect" for Islam.
Okay, the West was all these years under the perception that Serbia is evil, which is why the 1999 bombing of Serbia was done and why the West attempts to separate Kosovo from Serbia, while doing nothing about Srpska in Bosnia. After all, we all knew about Milosevic, right?
But in this case, we are talking Macedonia. So what is it now - the Serbs prompting the evil Macedonians to build a church, without building a mosque? And what are Muslims doing there in the first place? Aren't they supposed to all be in Kosovo, Albania and Bosnia? How is it that there are enough of them in a Macedonian city to demand building a mosque?
On top of that, the most Shariah-like aspect to this is that the demand for this mosque is coming up as a result of a church being built, rather than the religious needs of the local ummah. The fact that it's intended as a demonstration of Islamic supremacy is clear from the demand that it be built in the city center, as opposed to an area where Muslims are congregated.
Memo to the Macedonian authorities (granted I don't know how dhimmi or not they are) - just say NO!!!
Cantor
Do you think that multi-culturalism is a problem in former Communist Eastern Europe, like Macedonia, Serbia, Bulgaria, et al? How about Russia? It's a good explanation, but is there any evidence to suggest that it's as ubiquitous as global warming?
Who do these Muslims in Macedonia think they are? Macedonia is not a sharia-law state. It is a secular state, and has a clear Christian majority (even if mostly nominal) in its population.
According to my (2001) edition of Patrick Johnstone's "Operation World", a guide to praying for the nations, Macedonia had around two million people. Of those, around 63 % were Christians, overwhelmingly Orthodox; there were also Catholics and Evangelicals. And all Christian groups were increasing rather than decreasing.
Meanwhile, 25 % of the population were Muslims and the other 12 % were listed as nonreligious (mostly because of the effects of a generation or two of officially atheist communist rule).
The CIA factbook online, based on the 2002 census, gives the Christian percentage at 'Orthodox' 64.7% ('other Christian' .37 %) and the Muslim percentage at 33% (this increase in the Muslims is probably mostly due to a recent influx of Albanian Muslims from Kosova, or may be due to 'secular' Muslims re-identifying, with the removal of Communist suppression of religion).
Simple fact: at least for the moment, the identifying Christians in Macedonia, whether nominal or active, have a clear majority. The Bible Society in Macedonia, established in 1994, has been actively supporting all Christian communities, for example, by supporting two new translations of the Bible in modern Macedonian, and by providing children's scriptures to be given away at summer camps run by the Orthodox church - see story from 2006, 'finding Jesus by the lakeside' :
http://www.biblesociety.org/index2.htm
(I'll bet that what happens at those Orthodox Christian children's summer camps at Lake Ohrid is sweet, fun, and peaceful; very, very different from the 'brainwashing for war', the training in hate and aggression, that happens inside the jihad training camps for child soldiers, that have appeared in places as far apart as 'Palestine' and Pakistan!).
A previous president, Boris Trajkovski, was a practising protestant Christian, who quoted from the Bible in his inaugural speech, citing Micah and Ecclesiastes.
Muslims should be firmly informed that they have no say whatever as to when, or where, Christians in Macedonia choose to build, or rebuild, a church; and that just because Christians are building a church somewhere, does NOT mean that Muslims MUST be allowed, or assisted (god forbid) to build a mosque right next to it. Each building proposal, be it for a mosque or for a church, must be considered separately. And to be frank, it sounds as though a mosque in this particular location would be a very bad idea indeed.
Memo to all Christians here: politely encouraging letters to the Macedonian government and the leaders of the Macedonian churches, encouraging them to stand up to Muslim whingeing and bullying. Let them know that they are not alone: that the terrible tale of what the Muslims did to Christians in Macedonia, during the long dark night of Ottoman domination, is not forgotten by others in the world.
kosovA is a muslim name for the province of Kosovo. I'd rather not use it.
As far as the situation in Macedonia a google of James Pardew will show you how the State Department special envoy made mandatory the participation of albanian muslims in Macedonian government. The current effects are just the logical continuation of the events of 2001. Macedonia has no safe strategy for the future.
Some fine posts.
Remember how the Balkans mess was all the fault of
a) The Serbs
and particularly
b) Slobo
Well how to explain this one?
Slobo had already been illegally replaced in Belgrade when the KLA invaded Macedonia.
In what can only be described as the most incompetent piece of anti terror strategy ever, NATO managed to kill zero terrorists as they crossed over the border betwixt beautiful Kosovo and lovely Macedonia. Any injured terrorists were gratefully treated in NATO bases, given food, rest, etc, and then kindly dropped off at a convenient bus stop with adequate bus fare, so they could hop off over the border again and murder some more poor infidel peasants.
But that's all okay 'cos they were peasants and not New York yuppies. We're talking sub human, folks.
And yet, the MSM continue to pin it all on naughty rascal and n'er do well, Slobo.
Even in death that hound continues to provoke unrest in the Balkans.