Migrants Desecrate More Than 2,000 Churches Just in Greece

by Raymond Ibrahim, GATESTONE INSTITUTE  •  February 27, 2022

All around Western Europe, churches are under attack. This is especially true of the countries home to Europe’s largest Muslim populations. In February 2019, “unknown vandals” desecrated and smashed crosses and statues at Saint-Alain Cathedral in Lavaur, France, and mangled the arms of a statue of a crucified Christ in a mocking manner. In addition, an altar cloth was burned. (Image source: Eutrope/Wikimedia Commons)>

• • “As a deeply religious society, these attacks on churches are shocking to the Greek people and calls to question whether these illegal immigrants seeking a new life in Europe are willing to integrate and conform to the norms and values of their new countries.” — Greek City Times, May 16, 2020.

• While the report most likely has the 1453 sack of Constantinople (today Istanbul) in mind — when countless Greek churches, including Hagia Sophia, were desecrated, destroyed, or turned into mosques — that pattern is a century older.
• Before Christmas, in the North Rhine-Westphalia region, where more than a million Muslim migrants reside, some 50 public statues of Jesus and other Christian figures were beheaded and crucifixes broken.

According to a new report published by Greece’s Ministry of Education and Religious Affairs, there were 2,339 incidents of church desecrations in the country between 2015 and 2020, when tiny Greece, seen as Europe’s eastern gateway, was flooded with migrants from the Islamic world. Greek City Times wrote regarding the report:

“There appears to be a correlation between the increase in illegal migration and the incidents of attacks on Greek Orthodox religious churches and religious spaces during the five year period which occurred during the peak of the migration crisis.”

In the most recent year recorded, 2020, there were 385 incidents against Christian churches and buildings, including “vandalism, burglary, theft, sacrilege, necromancy, robbery, placement of explosive devices and other desecrations.”

Over the years, a few of these desecrations made it to English-language media.

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