What could go wrong? In recent years we have seen mosques used to preach hatred; to spread exhortations to terrorist activity; to house a bomb factory; to store weapons; to disseminate messages from bin Laden; to demand (in the U.S.) that non-Muslims conform to Islamic dietary restrictions; to fire on American troops; to fire upon Indian troops; to train jihadists; and so we know they’re places of peace, and anyone who suggests otherwise is a greasy Islamophobe.
And the Germans must be so pleased that the Greeks are using their bailout money as jizya to build a state-funded mosque. Actually, they probably are.
“Greece to Build First Official Mega-Mosque in Athens,” by Soeren Kern in Hudson NY, September 12:
The Greek Parliament has approved a controversial plan to build a taxpayer-funded mega-mosque in Athens.
The move comes amid thinly veiled threats of violence by thousands of Muslim residents of the city who have been pressuring the government to meet their demands for a mosque or face an uprising.
The September 7 vote to speed up construction of the first official mosque in Athens — the only capital in the European Union without a state-funded mosque — was supported by 198 out of 300 deputies from the left, right and center.
The mosque plan was included in an environment ministry bill regulating illegal construction. The plan calls for renovating an existing state building — on a disused navy base- — in the industrial district of Votanikos near the center of Athens.
The plan commits the Greek government (by way of the Ministry of Education and Religious Affairs) to pay for the construction of a temporary mosque which will be built within the next six months. A larger 1,000 square meter (3,300 square feet) mosque with enough space for 500 worshippers at a time will be built in the same area by the end of 2012, at an estimated cost of around €16 million ($21 million).
The announcement comes as massively indebted Greece battles a growing recession that has left nearly one million Greeks out of work. Greece recently needed a €110 billion ($146 billion) three-year bail-out package to rescue the embattled economy from bankruptcy….