More than two thousand Christian churches in Greece were desecrated in five years, coincidentally at a time 'migrants from the Islamic world' flooded the country.
WND highlighted a report from Gatestone Institute written by its distinguished senior fellow Raymond Ibrahim that decries the data released by Greece's Ministry of Education and Religious Affairs. The data showed a total of 2,339 incidents of vandalism occurred from 2015 to 2020. The data also revealed that, in 2020 alone, a total of 385 incidents were recorded on burglary, necromancy, placement of explosive devices, sacrilege, theft, and vandalism on Christian churches and buildings.
In the Gatestone Institute Report dated February 27, Ibrahim highlighted that a particular region in Greece--the North Rine-Westphalia--recorded 50 public statues of Jesus Christ and other Christian figures that were beheaded along with crucifixes that were broken. The said region also happened to be a residence to more than a million Muslim migrants.
Ibrahim pointed out that the ministry's report had the 1,453 sack of Constantinople (the Istanbul of today) in mind since at that time countless Greek churches were desecrated, destroyed, or converted into mosques. This, he said, showed a particular pattern that is a century older.
Similarly, Ibrahim underscored two quotations from the Greek City Times on the matter, which included how the vandalisms affected Greeks in a negative way toward the Muslim migrants.
"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," Ibrahim quoted the Greek Times.
"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," he continued.
One of the 385 cases recorded in 2020 involved an incident where Muslim migrants ransacked and transformed the public restroom of the St. Catherine Church in Moria into their personal restroom. Moria is a small town in Lesvos, which is overpopulated by Muslim migrants that came from Turkey. A local described the restroom as "unbearable."
"The smell inside is unbearable. (The) metropolitan of Mytilene is aware of the situation in the area, nevertheless, he does not wish to deal with it for his own reasons," the local told the Greek Times.
Another incident involved last April 2021 wherein the Muslim migrants entered a small church with the intention to desecrate it for social media consumption. The migrants recorded portions of the incident that showed one of them dancing to rap music while being topless. The migrant is shown walking towards the church before it transitions to the next scene, which shows the aftermath of the church's desecration. The video was uploaded into Tiktok and showed the church altar overthrown and statues smashed by the migrants.
Ibrahim concluded the sad reality that Greece has become a part of the statistics where Muslim persecution has grown.
"Greece has become the latest exemplar of 'Islam's Rule of Numbers'--a rule which posits that the more Muslims grow in numbers, the more practices intrinsic to Islam grow with them, in this instance, the desecration of Christian churches," Ibrahim said.
Ibrahim's statements echo a report released here in Christianity Daily last December that showed a 70% increase in hate crimes against Christians in European countries, which took place between 2019 and 2020. These were said to be more prevalent in France and Germany. But a majority of the crimes were caused by secular intolerance and Islamic oppression.
