Hungarians on Sunday began voting on the EU's troubled refugee quota plan, in a referendum aimed at boosting Prime Minister Viktor Orban's self-styled campaign to defend Europe against the "threat of mass migration." While there is little doubt his ‘No' camp will comfortably win, the poll could still end in embarrassment for Orban if it fails to reach the required 50-percent turnout and is deemed invalid. Polling stations opened at 0400 GMT and will close at 1700 GMT, with results expected later in the evening. "We are proud that we are the first to be able to vote on this question, unfortunately the only ones," Orban said after casting his ballot in the capital Budapest. The firebrand leader has emerged as the populist standard-bearer of those opposed to German Chancellor Angela Merkel's "open-door" policy, in the wake of the bloc's worst migration crisis since 1945. Orban warned on Saturday that mass migration was a "threat... to Europe's safe way of life" and that Hungarians had "a duty" to fight the failed "liberal methods" of the "Brussels elite." The proposal seeks to ease pressure on front-line countries Italy and Greece, where most migrants enter the EU. Hungary has not accepted a single refugee of the 1,300 allocated under the scheme and instead joined Slovakia in filing a legal challenge against it. Meanwhile, Muslims in Hungary say they are wary of the government's anti-migrant referendum this weekend, which polls suggest has boosted xenophobic feelings. "I'm starting to feel that my own homeland is repudiating me," says Timea Nagy, a Hungarian Muslim. Prime Minister Viktor Orban has said Hungarians have "no problems" with the local Muslim community, but he believes any EU quotas to relocate asylum seekers, including many Muslims, would destroy Hungary's Christian identity and culture. A poll taken in August by the Publicus Institute for the Vasarnapi Hirek newspaper found 35 percent of the 1,000 people asked said it was obligatory to help refugees, down from 64 percent in September 2015. Some 5,600 Muslims live in Hungary, according to the 2011 census, the latest available. On Friday, about 30 people took part in a "Muslims living among us" walking tour in a Budapest neighborhood, an effort to counter prejudice. "In the past year, especially since the migrant crisis is causing tension in Hungarian society, this is one of our most popular walks," said tour guide Anna Lenard. "We present Hungarian Muslim communities and try to show their human face because people living here get a lot of false information from the media." The tour in the city's so-called "New Buda" neighborhood stretching to the Danube River includes stops in several shops and mosques, as well as presentations and chats by community leaders. "We could say that this (referendum) campaign is against the migrants but in reality it is covertly against Islam, that's how people mostly understood it," said Tayseer Saleh, imam of the Darusallam Mosque. "We do not support the migrants coming to Europe," Saleh said. "We support putting an end to the problems there and I guarantee that 90 percent of the people will return to their homeland."
