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15.11.07
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Confronting Radical Islam
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By Sergei Markedonov
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There is no Smoke without Fire
As the escalating political crisis in Georgia is at the center of media attention, the events in neighboring Azerbaijan have been sidelined. Meanwhile, they are no less significant than the meetings and massive demarches of Georgia’s President Mikhail Saakashvili’s opponents. On October 29, 2007, the press service of the Ministry of National Security (MNB) of Azerbaijan distributed information about the prevention of a number of attempted terrorist acts, and provocations planned by Islamist groups against a number of governmental structures and the US embassy in Azerbaijan. The same day, this information was confirmed by the official representative of the U.S. State Department, Sean McCormack (he also stated that he believes the Azerbaijani-American cooperation in the field of security to be effective). Simultaneously, the U.S. and Great Britain limited the operations of their embassies in Baku.
Quoting some “informed sources,” one of the most influential Azerbaijani information and analysis portals distributed information that “the United States Embassy had held a meeting dedicated to the problem of security in the capital [of Azerbaijan]. The participants concluded that there is a threat of Wahhabism in Azerbaijan”. According to Rafik Aliyev, the head of the Center for Islamic Studies in Baku, radical Wahhabite groups can become more active before the presidential elections, which are planned for the fall of 2008. In his opinion, “such groups are instruments of foreign forces that are trying to destabilize the situation.” However, disregarding the typical rhetoric of the post-Soviet expert and political community (believing some foreign forces to be causing all the troubles), the words of this Azerbaijani expert should be treated with all due seriousness, because it’s not the first time that the “Wahhabite trace” (actually, the correct term is “Salafite”) has been found in Azerbaijan. “The Wahhabite virus has evolved in our country in the last few years,” says Azerbaijani human rights activist Ilgar Ibragimoglu.
At the beginning of April 2006, Azerbaijan’s National Security Minister Eldar Makhmudov put out a sensational statement: “We have a wealth of experience in counteracting radical religious and terrorist organizations. However, the information on the plans of the presently eliminated ‘Al-Qaeda Caucasus’ group to recruit young Azerbaijani women for suicide missions, became the worst discovery in the past few years.” At the same time, the minister claims that there has recently been a surge in Islamist radical group activity, striving to change the secular character of the Azerbaijani state.
Meanwhile, many common residents of Baku joked only yesterday that not even Osama bin Laden himself would be able to make a young Azerbaijani woman wear a hijab. Today, however, a few significant premises exist for making radical Islam more active in Azerbaijan. Just a few of them are:
∙ a weak, demoralized and politically ineffective secular opposition (there is a general dissatisfaction with the current regime, however, there are no instruments for expressing it through civilized opposition);
∙ ethno-national trauma (the loss of sovereignty of Karabakh and seven other regions beyond it, amounting to 13 percent of Azerbaijan’s territory);
∙ the possible interpretation of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict as inter-faith opposition (the Armenians are not just Christians, they represent an ethnos that has its own “national church,” the Armenian Apostolic Church, which acted as a quasi-state formation for the Armenian diaspora for many centuries);
∙ the realization of an authoritarian modernization project, accompanied by drastic social stratification, corruption and morphing of traditional life principles;
∙ the close vicinity to Dagestan and Iran (the former is a region that has become the center of Salafi (revivalist) Islam in the Caucasus, and the latter is a Shiite country, oriented at exporting the Islamist model of government and social life);
∙ popular disappointment in the United States and in the West in general.
In the beginning and middle of the 1990s, many Azerbaijanis believed that the United States and the EU could help Baku resolve the Karabakh problem to its advantage. However, the failure of the negotiation process, initiated primarily by the Western states, triggered a public aversion toward American and European politics.
Secular traditions in Azerbaijan have strong historical roots. The first Azerbaijani state (1918-1920), the Azerbaijani Democratic Republic (ADR), was ruled by secular ethno-nationalists, the Musavat (“Equality”) party. This party shaped the set of Azerbaijan statehood values that the country’s present-day post-Soviet elite appeals to. However, this does not stop Ilham Aliyev from harshly “pressing” the current Musavat party, which is in opposition to the regime. During the brief existence of the ADR, the Islamist party Ittihad (“Union”) did not just advocate traditional Islamic rules of law; it repudiated the idea of an Azerbaijani nation state, and proposed unity of all Muslims in the former Russian Empire. In the heat of their battle with Musavat, Ittihad followers even supported the establishment of the Soviet regime in the republic. Thus, historically, the Islamist ideology has “anti-state” roots in Azerbaijan. And, on the contrary, the idea of national statehood rhymes with secularism and anticlericalism. These traditions have also been influenced (not trying to evaluate this influence) by the Soviet atheist tradition, which is also propagated by the “demigod” of present-day Azerbaijan, Heydar Aliyev.
During the post-Soviet era, Turkey, an Islamic but secularly-oriented state, became Azerbaijan’s strategic partner. It is the secular Turkey, and not the “kindred” Shiite Iran, that supports Azerbaijan in the “Karabakh matter” and in carrying out a joint blockade of Armenia.
Post-Soviet Azerbaijan has demonstrated its ability to implement a rather flexible policy toward different religions, from Russian Orthodoxy to Protestant Unions, as well as to combat radical extremist trends. This experience should be taken into account by all multi-religious formations on the CIS territory.
According to a quantitative index, the independent Azerbaijan has become practically homogenous in terms of religion, compared to the Azerbaijani Soviet Republic. At the end of the 1980s, only 87 percent of Azerbaijan residents were Muslim (and 60 percent of them – Shiite), 12.5 percent were Christian (primarily Russians and Armenians), and 0.5 percent were Jewish. Today, however, some 97 percent of Azerbaijan’s population is Muslim. Islam is practiced not only by ethnic Azerbaijanis, but also by Lezgins, the Talyshs and the Avars. Religious communities that were never before present in the republic started developing after 1991, including the so-called “untraditional” Christian denominations such as “Praise Church.”
Azerbaijan’s legislation proclaims the secular character of its statehood. Article 7 of the Constitution of the Azerbaijan Republic states: “The Azerbaijani state is a democratic, legal, secular, unitary republic”. Article 18 proclaims separation of religion from the state and equality of all religions before the law. Article 48 proclaims freedom of conscience. In 1992, the republic’s Parliament (Milli Mejlis) passed Azerbaijan’s “Law on Freedom of Religion.” Two years later, a number of amendments to the law were passed, aimed at foreign religious preachers. Foreign citizens were banned from religious propaganda on Azerbaijan’s territory. These amendments were caused by fear of radical Islamist views penetrating the country. In 1991-1993, many missionaries from Jordan, Pakistan and even Afghanistan were active in the republic. The state’s religion policy is under the jurisdiction of a special State Committee of the Azerbaijan Republic on working with religious organizations (founded in 2001). The committee is empowered with registering religious associations.
In 1991, when Azerbaijan was still formally part of the Soviet Union, it became a member of the influential international Organization of the Islamic Conference. Today the majority of the republic’s Muslims are Shia, but Sunni-Shafi and Hanafi are also present. As a rule, the Shiites are a minority in Islamic countries. Azerbaijan, along with Iran, Iraq and Northern Yemen, is an exception to that rule. During the post-Soviet era, Salafi beliefs also became popular among the republic’s population. Azerbaijani experts and columnists connect the spread of Salafism with the Chechens, who settled in the republic in the middle of the 1990s, as well as with the representatives of ethnic minorities (Lezgins, Avars). The popularity of Salafi beliefs among the ethnic minorities is explained by their distance from the Azerbaijani authorities, and thus their tendency toward opposition.
There are active congregations of the Baku and Prikaspiysk Eparchy of the Moscow Patriarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church in Azerbaijan. The eparchy was created in 1998. This arrangement was positively accepted by the leader of the Muslim Administration of Southern Caucasus, Sheikh-ul-Islam Allashukyur Pashazade. In 1999, Alexander, the bishop of the Baku and Prikaspiysk Eparchy, was received by Heydar Aliyev in the Presidential Palace. The relationship between the eparchy and the governmental institutions of Azerbaijan as a whole is quite constructive. In 2003, an Udin and Albanian Christian Congregation was registered in Azerbaijan. The Udins are an ethnic minority in Azerbaijan (according to the 1999 census, there are about 4,200 of them), who are thought to be the descendants of an ancient Albanian tribe of Uti. The Udins associate with Armenian Gregorian Christianity.
In 2002, Pope John Paul II made an official visit to Azerbaijan. The Azerbaijani authorities also used this visit for their own propaganda purposes. The 100 thousand U.S. dollars apportioned by the Pontiff for the needs of refuges were declared “a fund for the victims of Armenian aggression.” In the 1990s, Seventh Day Adventists, Evangelical Baptists and Jehovah’s Witnesses became very active in Azerbaijan. According to unofficial data, about 5,000 Azerbaijanis converted to Christianity under the influence of “untraditional” Christian preachers. There is now also a small community of Krishna followers in Baku. The Baha’i mahfal (meeting place) was restored in the Azerbaijani capital, having been closed down as a result of repressions in 1937.
Thus, today’s Azerbaijan demonstrates its adherence to secular principles as well as its ability to carry on a dialogue with different religions, preferring stability to adherence to “religious purity”. However, the system of a “managed democracy” and the social problems of modern Azerbaijan actualize radical Islam, which is difficult (or even impossible) to fight with pure power, without eliminating the premises that make this religious movement so popular with the masses.
Sergey Markedonov, PhD in history, is the head of the Interethnic Relations Department at Moscow’s Institute of Political and Military Analysis. |
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