Posted on March 15, 2022

Migrants Desecrate More Than 2,000 Churches Just in Greece

Raymond Ibrahim, Gatestone Institute, February 27, 2022

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.

In April 2021, Muslim migrants entered into and utterly desecrated a small church. Proud of their handiwork, they videotaped portions of the incident and uploaded it on TikTok. It shows a topless migrant dancing to rap music as he walks towards and inside the church. The next clip shows the aftermath: devastation inside the church, with smashed icons and the altar overthrown.

In 2020, Muslim migrants ransacked and transformed a church into their personal toilet. This public restroom was once the St. Catherine Church in Moria, a small town on the island of Lesvos, which was flooded with migrants who arrived via Turkey.  {snip}

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While there are many such examples from between 2015-2020 — in 2016, the Church of All Saints in Kallithea near Athens was set aflame by “Arabic speakers” — historically conscious Greeks see a continuum in the Islamic targeting of their churches. As one report on the desecration of Greek churches explains:

“We should remember that Greece spent 400 years under Turkish Islamic rule and that the fight for freedom was bloody. With that in mind it is even more dramatic seeing these images of fighting age migrants desecrating Greek holy places and having no respect for the country they are allegedly seeking refuge in.”

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{snip} All around Western Europe, churches are under attack. This is especially true of the two countries home to Europe’s largest Muslim populations: Germany and France.

According to a 2017 report, in the Alps and Bavaria regions of Germany alone, countless crosses on some 200 churches were attacked and broken: “Police are currently dealing with church desecrations again and again… The perpetrators are often youthful rioters with a migration background.”

Following the arrival of a million Muslim migrants in Germany, a local newspaper noted in 2016 that “not a day goes by” without attacks on crosses and other Christian symbols outside of churches. 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.

As for France, an average of two churches are reportedly attacked there every day. In one instance in 2019, vandals plundered and used human excrement to draw a cross on the Notre-Dame des Enfants Church in Nimes (smearing fecal matter on churches is not an uncommon Muslim tactic). {snip}

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