- Title: AZERBAIJAN: Regime tries to balance secularism and Islam
- Date: 15th November 2010
- Summary: BAKU, AZERBAIJAN (RECENT) (REUTERS) BAKU SKYLINE BUS PASSING ROADSIDE POSTER OF LATE PRESIDENT OF AZERBAIJAN HAIDAR ALIYEV HAIDAR ALIYEV POSTER PEOPLE WALKING IN CENTRAL SQUARE PEOPLE WALKING OUTSIDE MACDONALDS RESTAURANT YOUNG WOMEN IN WESTERN CLOTHES SITTING IN SQUARE FAMILY WALKING IN SQUARE, WOMEN IN HEADSCARVES WOMEN WALKING, WEARING HEADSCARVES TABIB HUSSEIN
- Embargoed: 30th November 2010 12:00
- Keywords:
- Location: Azerbaijan
- Country: Azerbaijan
- Topics: Domestic Politics,Religion
- Reuters ID: LVAERI9ZV9ECF7EE7JWMI4PR8LPZ
- Story Text: The Azerbaijan regime tries to balance secularism and Islam as the country becomes more religious.
Azerbaijan's capital Baku is a thriving Central Asian city, a mix of traditional and modern, a Caspian Sea fusion of East and West. Like its capital, the country is also trying to strike a balance culturally--between an increasingly religious population and its secular state.
Like many of the residents of the former Soviet Union, both Christian and Muslim, Azerbaijan's mainly Shi'ite Muslims have witnessed a limited religious revival since the collapse of Communism two decades ago. According to polls the number of Azeris who pray regularly has risen to some 10 percent.
Tabib Husseinov, a researcher with the International Crisis Group, says the collapse of communism left a vacuum for new values to fill.
"Beginning from the early years of independence in the 1990s young generation of people were looking for new sets of values, especially after the collapse of the Soviet Union, collapse of the old value systems, so there is this emerging trend of seeking a new identity and certainly many Azerbaijanis, many young generation representatives find the new identity in Islam," Husseinov said.
For the majority of Azerbaijan's citizens, faith is a matter of fact rather than a defining element of identity something that is also clear from the diversity of dress in the city's streets.
Geographically Azerbaijan is at a crossroads. To the west lies Turkey, where a secular state is trying to accommodate growing conservative religious influences, to the south lies the Islamic Republic of Iran, and to the north Russia's Dagestan, gripped by an Islamist insurgency against Moscow. Baku has foiled several Islamist bomb plots in recent years, targeting Western embassies, which it has linked to Iran.
Using measures. that have been criticised by groups promoting religious freedom, the state requires all religious communities to register with the State Committee for Work with Religious Organisations and to align their teachings with the Caucasus Board of Muslims (CBM), the official state-backed clergy which enjoys government support for building and restoring the mosques that it controls.
CBM chairman Sheikh-ul-Islam Allahshukur Pashazade said he supports President Ilham Aliyev's efforts to encourage religious communities and bring them within the conformity of the board.
"The Aliyev family is creating all the necessary conditions for the development of Islam in Azerbaijan. They have helped us a lot - all those religious buildings, mosques that are being built. Of course, religion is separate from the state. But the citizen is not separate from his state and his religion," he said.
Speaking about radical Islamists, Sheikh-ul-Islam said they too must adhere to the laws of the state.
"Our board does not put pressure on them. We say, 'work within the boundaries of the law'. Probably they want to agitate, to work in the interests of other states," he said.
Western diplomats appear sympathetic to Aliyev's efforts to stem any drift towards radicalism in Azerbaijan, an energy supplier and transit route for the U.S. military in Afghanistan. But rights groups say the government's methods are heavy-handed, part of an authoritarian reflex to stifle independent expression as a potential challenge to the regime. To many Azeri officials, rooted in secularism, Islam runs contrary to their vision of a modernising Azerbaijan, where an oil-fuelled boom is transforming the capital Baku and spawning an opulent jet set.
"Islamophobia can be felt today, among the officials," said rights activist and outspoken Imam Ilgar Ibrahimoglu. "Some link this to the remnants of the Soviet period. Others think it is a reflection of islamophobic attitudes in the West."
Iranian-educated Ibrahimoglu used to preach at the influential Shi'ite Juma mosque, nestled within the warren of cobbled streets that form Baku's picturesque Old City. But it was closed in June 2004 after he was convicted of organising opposition protests against the 2003 election of Ilham Aliyev and given a five-month suspended sentence. Ilham, son of the late long-serving leader Heydar, further consolidated power when loyalists swept the board on Sunday (November 7) in a parliamentary election faulted by monitors.
"Restrictions have a boomerang effect - it makes the believers look for a way out. Some choose to work on serious social issues. Others are radicalised. I think it is a very big problem and a very serious problem," Ibrahimoglu said.
Two mosques that authorities said were built illegally were demolished last year and at least two others in Baku have been closed, including Abu Bakr where a Salafi community prayed until the mosque was bombed in 2008 and two worshippers were killed. The attack was blamed on radicals linked to the North Caucasus.
After the attack the mosque was closed for repairs but the gates remain padlocked even now the works have been completed.
Analysts say the Salafi community, with its purist approach, has borne the brunt of state sanctions. Such communities reject the CBM's spiritual authority.
In the dusty village of Nardaran, views from its vast sandstone mosque sweep down through to the Absheron peninsula and the Caspian Sea from which Azerbaijan derives its wealth. Devotion to Islam defines daily life. Walls carry Koranic verses and social grievances against this strictly controlled former Soviet republic. According to Haji Aga Nuriyev, Naradaran elder and former head of the banned Islamic Party of Azerbaijan, It's a way of life that sits uneasily with the secular regime of President Ilham Aliyev.
Residents of Nardaran, where anger over living standards in the village spurred rioting in 2002, have long tried to forge a political role for Islam in Azerbaijan. One person died during a day-long police operation to restore order and residents say police no longer enter the village.
"In any given country, Islam has an influence on peaceful coexistence, unity, on the resolution of existing problems in a peaceful manner. Without that there is conflict and instability. I think Azerbaijan has to reach the level where Islam helps to solve problems peacefully," Nuriyev said.
Balancing the calls to prayer and the calls to modernise continue, as the strategically-located country of 8.3 million tries to further define it place on the world stage. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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