Fear of Islam in Greece: migration, terrorism, and “ghosts” from the past

Abstract

The article explores the “fear of Islam” through a specific series of political debates about Islam and the future of the Greek-Orthodox national identity. The analysis is based on the method of qualitative content analysis, which makes use of thematic categories and draws on the proceedings of the Greek parliament. The main questions the article will try to address are: How have Greek political parties reacted to public demand for the construction of a mosque? What have been the rhetorical tropes they use? How have they capitalized on current and old fears about Islam? What have been the implications of this discourse on state policies toward Islam? Have there been any differences in this discourse over time? The analysis highlights the role of historical interpretations of Greek national identity and contemporary problems related to new waves of migration due to Greece's place on the border with Turkey and with the broader Islamic world.

‘Social Re-presentation for…’: An Action-Oriented Formula for Intergroup Relations Research

“…Researchers often focus on similar objectifications of diverse phenomena in various domains. For instance, a social object like Islam may be linked to Moroccans in the Netherlands (Dekker and Van der Noll, 2012, p. 115), Turks in Greece (Sakellariou, 2017) and Libyans in Malta (cf. Buhagiar et al, 2018), despite the fact that the national groups involved are widely disparate in various characteristics.…”

Migration has Stripped Us of Our Manhood: Contradictions of Failed Masculinity Among South Asian Male Migrants in Greece

“…What makes Greece unique is that it is one of the most ethnically homogenous countries in the EU. Its history of liberation from the "Muslim" Ottoman Empire and the creation of an "orthodox" state wherein Islam was pitted as nation's Other (Sakellariou 2017) has been used to stoke fear about Muslim migrants. In 2014, Nikos Dendias, Greece's then Minister of Public Order and Citizen Protection, publicly stated that migrants from Bangladesh and Pakistan "belong to another culture," and "come from a different world than us" (AFP 2014).…”

Attitudes Towards Syrian Refugees During the ‘Refugee Crisis’ in Greece

“…As many Syrian refugees are Arabs and Muslims, they are likely to activate symbolic threats escalating concerns on the potential incompatibility of refugees' value and belief system with the dominant culture and with Greek Orthodoxy as the dominant religion in the country. Despite the visibility of Islam in the Greek public sphere 9 and the gradual transformation from a relatively culturally and ethnically homogenous society into a more diverse one (Cavounidis, 2013) hosting a significant number of Muslim migrants (Sakellariou, 2017), the native population seems to be reluctant in accommodating the cultural, ethnic and religious diversity of Muslims (Lipka, 2018;Tent, 2017). For instance, Dixon et al (2019) found that the majority of the Greek population expressed increased anxiety about the potential incompatibility of the Greek culture and the Islam religion.…”