The Speech presented to the conference held in Geneva 26-27,
November 2013 on Religious Freedoms for Minorities by Hussein
Housa Mohammed, the representative of the Religious Teachers’
Association in Komotini, Greece
May the peace, mercy and blessings of Allah be upon you.
I, Hussein Housa Mohammed, the official representative of our
association and the Imam in the central mosque in Komotini, Greece,
am taking part in this sixth conference on minorities and religious
freedoms and I represent our association “The Islamic association for
religious teachers”.
The work of the members of our association is done under the
supervision of formal legal advice in the region in order to carry out
education, teaching and reciting of the Koran and religious knowledge
in mosques, schools and government institutes in which a large
number of the children of Muslim minorities study.
In the last few years our government has decided to increase the
percentage of entry into universities of children from Muslim
minorities by one in a thousand. Following this, entries from
minorities increased showing the desire of the students to study in
government schools. Their numbers have grown to hundreds of
students.
The country is praised for passing a law which appoints teachers to
government schools.
However, the scope was extended when the Mufti was given the
power to choose those who wanted to teach the Koran in mosques in
order to make their children more devout. Likewise the Imams who
want to be government officials, rely on the Mufti with issues such as
insurance and the likes of it.
For the first time in a European country a law has been implemented
whereby the Greek government has given full opportunity to teach