Why Should Piss Poor Greeks Pay For A Mosque In Athens?

So Greece is in dire straits, economically, and yet they've promised to build a mosque in Athens? No wonder people are up in arms, though some of those- like the neo-Nazi-like Golden Dawn Party- are more than questionable.

Reviving the long-stalled project during Greece's worst peacetime economic crisis has divided a country that spent four centuries under Turkish Ottoman rule, where the Orthodox Church is powerful and hostility toward immigrants is rising.

Apparently it was promised a century ago, but considering Greece's economic state (its own fault), and the fact that the Greeks are still bucking for an EU and IMF bailout, I don't think building a mosque- which will cost the government well over $1 million- is such a good idea.  If Muslims want a mosque (which, granted, will be modern and not have a minaret) why don't they raise the funds themselves?

Turkey's Prime Minister Tayyep Erdogan had said he would fund the mosque, but some Greeks were not too keen on the Ottoman Empire connection.

More details here.

Thousands of Neo-Nazis March In Athens Greece

Supporters of the Greek Neo-Nazi party 'The Golden Dawn' were out in force. Tens of thousands of them with their swastikas and torches, chanting "anti-immigrant slogans."  The extreme far right Golden Dawn aka Chryssi Avghi party won 7% of the vote and 21 seats during the last election in May 2012, though the seats were reduced to 18 after a June election. This is the same party whose leader Nikos Michaloliakos said:

“There were no ovens, no gas chambers, it’s a lie.

“Auschwitz, what Auschwitz? I didn’t go there. What happened there? Have you been there,” he asked a reporter in the interview, adding that he had “read lots of books casting doubt on the number of six million Jews” who died in the Holocaust.

Apparently, they were out there with and torches,

Greek Neo-Nazi Party Leader - "There were no ovens, no gas chambers"

Granted, Greece is a humongous mess, faltering dangerously on a precipice, but how on earth does a Neo-Nazi party win 21 seats in  parliament? The extreme far right skin-head Golden Dawn party won a whopping 7% of the vote during the May 6 elections, and now the head of the Chryssi Avghi party, Nikos Michaloliakos, has joined Mahmoud Ahmadeinjad and others in denying the Holocaust ever took place. Not that it's a novel stance for a neo-Nazi, but this man (and his party) is now part of the Greek government.

“There were no ovens, no gas chambers, it’s a lie,” , the head of the Chryssi Avghi (Golden Dawn) party, said during an interview aired on the private Mega television channel on Sunday night.

“Auschwitz, what Auschwitz? I didn’t go there. What happened there? Have you been there,” he asked a reporter in the interview, adding that he had “read lots of books casting doubt on the number of six million Jews” who died in the Holocaust.

Prior to the elections, Michaloliakos apparently kept mostly mum about the extent of his Holocaust-denying beliefs, but the Greek people would have to be pretty darn stupid to not realize that neo-Nazis aren't terribly different from the original murdering Nazis.
Yes, voters were fed up with all the austerity measures their socialist nanny state was forcing them to put up with to save the country from drowning, but that's not a good reason to vote in extremists.

And it still boggles my mind that there are people who actually deny that there were gas chambers, and ovens, and that millions were killed, not only Jews, in spite of all the photographs, the witnesses and the evidence.

Good luck to the Greeks, they're going to need it.