Elham Asaad Buaras

A mosque in Greece’s Western Thrace region has been vandalised. The Yeni mosque in Komotini, a town of 50,000 people, including many Muslims, was attacked on October 9 and the doors to the building were daubed with the words “Turks out”.

Greece has seen a rise in attacks on Muslims and Jews in recent years, coinciding with the rise of the far-right Golden Dawn party, which entered parliament in 2012.
In April, a fire at Komotini’s largest mosque damaged the entrance and roof.
In October last year, attackers placed a severed pig’s head outside an Islamic studies centre in Athens and painted anti-Muslim slogans on the building.

Western Thrace has a significant Muslim community. It was a part of Ottoman Empire before coming under Bulgarian and then Greek control around the time of World War I.