The Perception of Muslims in Bulgaria and Greece: Between the 'Self' and the 'Other'

Brunnbauer, Ulf

doi:10.1080/13602000120050541

Cited by 12 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…4. On the overt and covert interests regarding population statistics in Thrace see Dragonas (2004a Greek authors say that they are indigenous Thracians, Christians who were assimilated by the Turkish population due to their proximity (Brunnbauer, 2001;Trubeta, 2001). 8.…”

Section: Conclusion: 'Addition Not Subtraction Multiplication Not DImentioning

confidence: 97%

Educating the Muslim minority in Western Thrace

Dragonas

Frangoudaki

2006

Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations

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A large-scale, interdisciplinary Project for Reform in the Education of Muslim Children (PEM) in Western Thrace, Greece, was implemented during the years 1977-2004. Although PEM was a specifically educational project entailing teaching Greek as a second language, development of educational materials, teacher training and academic outcome, it was bound to involve identity issues and directly or indirectly embrace the entire Thracian community. A historical and socio-political background is provided in order for the reader to understand the way power is negotiated between majority and minority and the controversies that characterize educational policy and instructional practices in such a context of ethnic, religious and linguistic diversity.

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Section: Conclusion: 'Addition Not Subtraction Multiplication Not DImentioning

confidence: 97%

Educating the Muslim minority in Western Thrace

Dragonas

Frangoudaki

2006

Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations

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“…This was formalised in the first constitution of the new Greek nation, defining a Greek citizen as one who lives within the Greek territory and who believes in Christ (Sakellariou 2017a). Ineluctably, Muslims were duly branded as former oppressors, alien enemies and indeterminable Others who could fulfil neither the necessary ethnic nor religious homogeneity that afforded membership of the nation and what it meant to be Greek (Brunnbauer 2001).…”

Section: Greece In Context: History Religion Culturementioning

confidence: 99%

Problematising the Official Athens Mosque: Between Mere Place of Worship and 21st Century ‘Trojan Horse’

Verousi

Allen

2021

Religions

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This article investigates the ‘problematisation’ of the recently inaugurated mosque in the city of Athens, the capital’s first ‘official’ mosque since the country was liberated from the Ottoman Empire almost two centuries ago. Building on and developing the existing scholarly literature on the problematisation of mosques in the contemporary European setting, this article generates new knowledge by focusing on the Greco-specific context of that same problematisation: an amalgam of history, geography, religion and culture, that asymmetrically shape and inform how and why the new Athens mosque is—and indeed continues to be—a site of conflict and opposition. Presenting new empirical data, this article uses an innovative and original approach to bring together two separate pieces of fieldwork undertaken first-hand by the authors in 2001/2 and 2019/20. Analysing the two sets of data, a threefold thematic structure is employed that focuses on Greece’s history, Christian Orthodoxy and global terrorism. This article first explores the existing scholarly canon relating to the contemporary problematisation of mosques through a focused overview of Greece’s history, religion and culture appropriate to mosques and in part, Muslims and Islam. From there it sets out the findings from the two periods of fieldwork to illustrate and evidence discourses of opposition towards the mosque and how these serve to function both symbolically and tangibly. Using the thematic analysis, theories relating to the ideological processes of Islamophobia are deployed to elucidate a better understanding of the Athens mosque. In doing so, this article makes a timely contribution.

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“…The infamous bar that used to close the way to the northern Muslim villages of Greek Thrace constituted, perhaps, the most iconic symbol of discriminative policies against local Islam. Aside from the loaded endowment imposed on them by the "stigma" of religion, the region's main inhabitants' namely the Slavic-speaking Pomak Muslims of the Rodhope Mountains (to be found between Greece and Bulgaria), were exposed also to Cold War considerations against Communism and the threat of Bulgarian expansion (Brunnbauer 2001). Neighboring Turkey emerged, in this context, as the unofficial protector of all Muslims to be found in such contested buffer zones, providing the financial, political, and social incentives for the gradual Turkification of Muslim Roma and Pomak populations (Troubeta 2001).…”

Section: Rediscovering the Muslim Minority In Thrace: Rapprochement Amentioning

confidence: 99%

From mosque to mosque: past and present images of Islamic space in Greece

Kostopoulou

2016

Natl. pap.

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This essay is an attempt to chart recent developments in the field of Modern Greek Studies, focusing on shifting perceptions regarding Islam and Muslims. To do so, the essay positions the relevant literature in its historical context, touching upon both accomplishments and limitations. Its main proposition is that the Greek case is distinct yet connected to contemporary global contingencies and broader long-term regional dynamics. Athens remains the only European capital without a mosque. Moreover, despite recent academic endeavors, there exists today no coherent Greek field of Islamic Studies. That these absences have been brought recently under political and academic scrutiny constitutes, however, a noteworthy change. Most important, the traditional exclusion of Islam from the field of Modern Greek Studies does not suggest lack of relevance between the two but, quite to the contrary, reveals a set of loaded and complex socieconomic, geopolitical, and historical links that deserve to be studied in their own right.

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The Perception of Muslims in Bulgaria and Greece: Between the 'Self' and the 'Other'

Cited by 12 publications

References 5 publications

Educating the Muslim minority in Western Thrace

Educating the Muslim minority in Western Thrace

Problematising the Official Athens Mosque: Between Mere Place of Worship and 21st Century ‘Trojan Horse’

From mosque to mosque: past and present images of Islamic space in Greece

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