(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) - The famous Anglo-Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid has announced her willingness to design, free of charge, a mosque for Athens, one of the only European capital cities which has no official place of worship for Muslims.
Despite several years of official promises, tens of thousands of Muslim immigrants who have flocked to Athens in recent years have only improvised places of worship in abandoned buildings downtown.
The architect Zaha Hadid is known for her ultra-modern creations. Her most recent work was the Museum of Contemporary Art in Rome.
In a country with over 90% of Orthodox Christians and where the Orthodox Church is not separate from the state, a series of projects for the construction of a mosque in Athens, developed since the late 90s and especially during the period before the Olympic Games in Athens in August 2004, has proven unsuccessful.
Athens has a building that was built as a mosque in the 18th Century. However, this building is now a museum.
The only operational, purpose-built mosques that exist in Greece today are located in the northeastern region of Thrace, which has a minority of Turkish origin.
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