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Once trust and interaction between the two nations begin, the final solution will come much easier. A step-by-step approach would promote the overcoming of ethnic hatred, the softening of myths, and the elimination of prejudices. The Azerbaijanis and Armenians, bound together in a regional framework, territorial borders, and a local administrative arrangement, will achieve peace sooner, rather than remaining divided and clashing over a piece of land. The solution lies in coexistence and cooperation both between Armenia and Azerbaijan, as well as between the Karabakhi Armenians and the Karabakhi Azerbaijanis.
Fuad ALIEV
Post-graduate student at the Research Institute of Economic Reforms of the Ministry of Economic Development
(Baku, Azerbaijan).
ISLAMIC REVIVAL IN AZERBAIJAN: THE PROCESS AND
ITS POLITICAL
A b s
The author analyzes the Islamic revival in the Republic of Azerbaijan, its specific characteristics, main actors, and potential trends; he also formulates possible responses from the government to the challenges of the times. He is convinced that the country can hypothetically use re-
IMPLICATIONS
r a c t
ligion to improve the social and economic context: today it has the unique chance of setting up a new model that combines secularism and revived Islam, since public perception of this concept has so far managed to escape the influence of radical ideologies.
I n t r o d u c t i o n
Religious revival in practically all the Soviet successor states arose from the ruins of the official ideology of atheism and the communist system and gradually spread to all spheres of political, economic, social, and cultural life. The predominantly Muslim post-Soviet states supply the most graphic example of this revival: today many more people than before attend services and take part in other religious ceremonies in mosques; the media and the academic community are actively discussing the process and its possible results; and sociopolitical discussions of the subject are as vehement as ever.1
1 For more detail, see: F. Aliyev, “Crisis of Ethics under the Post-Communist Transition: Case of Political Economy of Azerbaijan,” in: Compendium of the Conference “Caspian Sea: Relations and CooperationMazandaran, Iran, October 2003.
On the whole, all sorts of religious groups and movements (not only Islamic) were very active in the Muslim regions during the post-communist transition period. Missionaries and preachers of all hues, each with lots of money, arrived in huge numbers to change, together with the local “supporters of the faith,” the commonly accepted religious ideas and traditions and the already established lifestyle.
Much in post-Soviet Islam brought to mind other Muslim countries that tried to set up new political institutions in the first years of their post-colonial independence. Today, the recent trends and events that took place in the Muslim world are affecting the CIS Muslim nations.2
The Republic of Azerbaijan, in which the Shi‘a majority and Sunni minority (not a small minority, by the way) are living side by side with each other as well as with all sorts of Christian confessions and Judaism, could serve as a model of peaceful coexistence and cooperation among religions. In the past, the country was an example of religious tolerance: the Azerbaijanian Democratic Republic (ADR), which existed between 1918 and 1920, successfully combined democracy and Islam, which means that Azerbaijan has certain religious and democratic traditions that should be revived today.
Islam in Soviet Azerbaijan
After seizing power in 1920 by defeating the ADR, the Bolsheviks were at first too weak to suppress the Muslim clergy and national intelligentsia—they tried to lure them onto their side. The Azeris were allowed to retain their national identity, of which Islam was one of the components.3 At the same time, Soviet power consistently undermined it by replacing the Islamic ummah with the Azeri national self-identity.
Soviet Islamic policy lived through several stages. As Tadeusz Swietochowski wrote,4 at first the state remained within the limits of general modernization, which included expropriation of the waqfs (charity foundations), closing Islamic civil courts of justice, schools, and mosques, banning public religious ceremonies, and forcing women to refrain from covering their heads.
Late in the 1920s, the regime began fighting Islam (and other religions) in earnest. The Arabic script was replaced with Latin and then Cyrillic letters, which undermined the influence of the Islamic clerics, Muslim intellectuals, and religious books on the popular masses. The new laws robbed the nation of many directly or indirectly religious customs; the recalcitrant were severely punished. In the late 1920s and throughout the 1930s, nearly all the mosques were closed; clerics accused of pan-Is-lamism were arrested in great numbers and deported, or even executed.
It was a severe test for Islam’s continued presence in the republic, yet the faith deeply rooted in the nation’s mentality survived. Tadeusz Swietochowski has the following to say about this period: “No longer able to perform its rituals in public, Islam became a private religion, it retreated into the family, the most conservative of all institutions in Azerbaijan. .. .The Soviet period saw a revival of the tagiyya tradition—apostasy under pressure—in the tradition’s historical homeland.”5
World War II relieved the pressure: the Soviet government rallied all forces in the face of a foreign invasion.
At that time, the ideology of militant atheism coexisted with official allegedly independent Muslim religious structures: the Spiritual Administration of the Muslims of the European and Siberian Parts of the U.S.S.R. (with its center in Ufa, the Bashkirian A.S.S.R.), the Spiritual Administration of the Muslims of the Northern Caucasus (that operated first out of Buynaksk and later out of
2 See: Y. Ro’i, “Islam in the CIS: A Threat to Stability?” Central Asian and Caucasian Prospects, RIIA, 2001.
3 See: T. Swietochowski, “Azerbaijan: the Hidden Faces of Islam,” World Policy Journal, Vol. XIX, No. 3, Fall 2002.
4 Ibidem.
5 Ibid., p. 72.
Makhachkala, Daghestan); and the Spiritual Administration of the Muslims of Transcaucasus (with its center in Baku, Azerbaijan). These structures never opposed the Soviet government and even tried to bring the communist ideology closer to Islam by pointing out that they shared many common features, such as equality, freedom of conscience, the right to safe labor, the right of those who tilled land to own it, etc., proclaimed in the early post-October 1917 period.6
The Muslim elite of the Transcaucasus operated under conditions that differed radically from those found in all the other Soviet Muslim republics. The Baku Spiritual Administration was filled with Azeri members and worked with the Azeri communities in Armenia (until they were murdered in great numbers or deported), Georgia (where Azeris comprised the bulk of the local Muslim communities) and Daghestan.
Before it regained its independence, the republic had 54 registered “religious entities,” including 11 Shi‘a, two Sunni, and two mixed mosques. Educated clerics were a rarity; the republic had no Islamic scholars educated in the famous educational centers abroad.
Islam in Post-Soviet Azerbaijan
Collapse of the Soviet Union provided a strong impetus for Islamic revival in the formerly atheist republics. Self-identification with Islam, which was absent among the broad popular masses in the late Soviet period, is the best illustration of re-Islamization.7 This process might acquire political implications: social and economic conditions are deteriorating, while the people are bitterly disappointed in the secular corrupt and undemocratic regimes.
In Azerbaijan, religious and national customs and ethnic identity are inseparable: the local people usually speak of themselves as Muslims and Azeri without distinguishing between the two.8 It has been demonstrated that some of the customs perceived as Islamic are in actual fact local customs that “predate or even contradict Islam.” This means that folk and Islamic customs blended, which allows us to speak about ethnos, regionalism, language, and Islam as the main sources of national self-awareness.9
According to Raoul Motika, in the first decade of the transition period, between four and six percent of the total population could be described as active faithful, which means that they followed the Islamic rules of conduct; 87-92 percent regarded themselves as Muslims, but obeyed only part (a small part, as a rule) of the religious injunctions; while only three percent described themselves as atheists.10
The fact that the Spiritual Administration in Baku was the legal heir to the religious administration that functioned in czarist Russia was of immense importance: even under Soviet power it enjoyed certain legitimacy among the locals. The fact that most of the republic’s Muslims are Shi‘a is of even greater importance: as distinct from Sunni Islam, a formal religious hierarchy is not alien to Shi‘a Islam. This makes the official regulatory religious institutions a component of the republic’s Shi‘a heritage.11
The republic shares certain elements of Islamic revival with other post-Soviet regions. It had its share of Salafi and radical Wahhabi movements, which came here relatively recently and never devel-
6 See: M. Saroyan, Minorities, Mullahs, and Modernity: Reshaping Community in the Former Soviet Union, University of California, Berkeley, 1997.
7 See: Y. Ro’i, op. cit.
8 See: R. Motika, “Islam in Post-Soviet Azerbaijan,” Archives de Sciences Sociales des Religions, available at [http://www.ehess.fr/centres/ceifr/assr/Sommaire_115.htm], March 2002.
9 See: N. Tohidi, “The Intersection of Gender, Ethnicity and Islam in Soviet and Post-Soviet Azerbaijan,” Nationalities Papers, Vol. 25, No. 1, 1997.
10 See: R. Motika, op. cit.
11 See: M. Saroyan, op. cit.
oped as widely as in Central Asia and the Northern Caucasus. Certain groups acting on Iranian money tried to upset the status quo, but, as distinct from other countries, no force in Azerbaijan openly opposed the idea of a secular state.
The state has already accepted some of the outward religious features and is prepared to protect religion as part of the nation’s identity, but it is not yet ready to accept the implications of Islamic revival or any Islamic activities uncontrolled by the state. Ro’i argues regarding the governments in Muslims CIS countries in the following manner: “Like their Soviet predecessors, while preaching the separation of state and church, they have created administrative machinery to ensure that all religious activity will be subject to government supervision and surveillance.”12 In fact, all religious structures and manifestations uncontrolled by the official religious institutions are viewed as “suspicious.”
The continued Armenian military occupation of Nagorno-Karabakh and the adjacent Azeri territories has already instigated a deluge of over a million forced migrants and thousands of war veterans and shahid families. This has created fertile soil for the spread of religious feelings among the destitute people badly hit by the sufferings of their country. One wonders, however, who shapes the religious feelings of the faithful and which Islam should be accepted as genuine.
Intellectuals could have largely shaped the future image of Islam in the republic. Significantly, all the actors (with the exception of the radical Wahhabis and small extremist Shi‘a groups) are trying to play down the distinctions between the Shi‘a and Sunni Islam in order to bring the various sects and movements closer together.
It should be said that the Islamic ideas differ from region to region. Baku and the adjacent areas are mainly pro-Shi‘a, but there are also Salafis in the capital and Sumgayit. The Wahhabis are stronger in the country’s north, which is populated by compact groups of Daghestanian Sunni minorities. The people living close to the Iranian border are influenced by the Iranian Islamic model.
Today, Islam has no great role to play in the republic’s political life, yet Islamic rhetoric is gaining popularity. Until recently, Islam was much weaker politically in Azerbaijan than in the Central Asian republics. The public opinion poll conducted in several Central Asian states and Azerbaijan revealed that while 60 percent of the Muslims of Uzbekistan and 33 percent of the Muslims of Tajikistan and Kazakhstan agreed that Islam played an important role in their countries’ political life, in Azerbaijan less than 20 percent agreed with this,13 even though Islam has gained considerable political weight in the last five years.14
The Main Actors
The Spiritual Administration of the Muslims of the Caucasus (SAMC) is the only one among the similar institutions in other republics that survived the Gorbachev reforms and the Soviet Union’s collapse. Headed by Sheikh ul-Islam Allahshukur Pasha-zadeh since the 1980s, the official structure of the religious establishment of Azerbaijan has been losing its former prestige and influence: the public shifted its trust and respect to certain members of the unofficial Muslim clergy. The rapidly unfolding process says that Islam has developed into a haven for all those who have lost hope, who live in poverty, and who have no work, as well as for those who reject much in Western culture.
It became obvious during the transition period that the SAMC had lost its unique role in Islamic revival. Today, this role is claimed by several forces:
—The popular and generally recognized Shi‘a religious leaders opposed to the official center: Gajji Shakhin, Gajji Iqbal, and Gajji Ilgar Ibrahimoglu, best known among them. He is the
12 Y. Ro’i, op. cit., p. 51.
13 Ibidem.
14 See: Times.az news portal (2006) [www.times.az], February-March 2006.
so-called imam-jamaat (leader of collective prayers) of the Juma Mosque. He also represents the International Association for Religious Freedom and is known as a human rights activist. He does not obey the SAMC and criticizes it and the government.
—The self-appointed mullahs and religious leaders who opposed Shi‘a and, consequently, the Spiritual Administration. Gajii Gamet Suleymanov, who is believed to be a Salafi, is the most prominent of them. They have their mosques, in which their followers congregate. In the mid-1990s, the republican government tolerated the Salafis, lest it irritate the rich clerics of the Gulf countries. Between 2001 and 2003, the authorities began to persecute the Salafis, the growing number of the Salafi mosques being one of the reasons for the dramatic developments; the intention of the Salafi communities to elect their own leaders instead of the SAMC supplied another reason for the persecutions. The Salafis are fairly influential in the country’s north, mainly among the ethnic minorities.
—The pro-Turkish Islamic movements and organizations (the Nurchular being one of them) engaged in mosque building, charities, education, and setting up a network of their followers.
—The pro-Iranian Islamic Party of Azerbaijan registered in 1992. In 1996, its leaders were arrested and accused of spying in favor of Iran and sending young people to this country for military training. The party, with up to 70,000 members (according to its own information), does not have the support of either the SAMC or the intellectuals.
—The Muslim intellectuals who may also be described as Islamic reformers and modernists. This group includes such people as Ilgar Ibrahimoglu, Nariman Gasymoglu, and others. They hold different, or even opposite ideas, about Islam and its role in Azeri society.
The above suggests that, on the whole, during the transition period Islam in Azerbaijan remained controlled by the SAMC, which itself is controlled by the state. During that time, Islam developed into a component of the Azeri national self-identity, which, in turn, strengthened what is known as traditional Islam. However new religious Islamic and other movements and sects appeared on the fertile soil created by insufficient religious knowledge, as well as the ignorance and corruption among the clerics.
Some Empirical Observations
To get a better idea of the scope of the Islamic revival in Azerbaijan, let us look at some of the empirical studies on this topic.
A public opinion poll conducted in 2001 in the republic’s five regions revealed that 62.7 percent of the respondents considered themselves religious, while 6.4 percent said they were very religious people; 10.6 percent were “undecided,” they formed the second largest group. Only 16.3 percent of the first group performed regular prayers. When asked about the role of religion in their everyday life, 25.7 percent described it as important; 41 percent as moderate; 11 percent as very important; 11.9 percent as negligible, while 10.5 percent said it was of no importance at all. Most of the polled (77.4 percent) were interested in religion; a large number of the respondents (71.7 percent) said that they had general knowledge about religion; 7.3 percent believed that their religious knowledge was adequate; and 13.3 percent failed to answer this seemingly easy question.
Knowledge of Islam presupposes knowledge of the Shari‘a. The majority (57.1 percent) was convinced that they had a certain amount of general knowledge about Islamic law; 14.9 percent knew a lot, while 23 percent knew nothing at all. A small group (5.2 percent) claimed very good knowledge of the Shari‘a principles. According to the poll, 71.6 percent did not gamble; 62.6 percent did not eat pork; and 49.3 percent abstained from liquor. When asked about the Koran, 49.9 percent admitted that they never read it; 19.8 percent intended to read it; 10.4 percent read it occasionally; 9.9 percent read
it frequently; 5.6 percent had begun reading it recently, while 4.6 percent not only read it, but also studied it.
In 2005, the FAR-Center carried out a very representative poll in 12 regions of Azerbaijan. When asked whether they regarded themselves as religious people, 87.1 percent of the respondents replied in the affirmative; 9.6 percent described themselves as “religious rather than atheists;” 0.6 percent as “atheists,” while 0.4 percent was undecided. When asked about the Muslim ritual prayer (namaz), 19.9 percent of the religious people said they prayed every day; 13.2 percent prayed irregularly; while 63.6 percent never prayed. Over half of the polled said that they wanted to live according to the Shari‘a either “completely” (23.2 percent) or “partially” (28.9 percent). About 76 percent of the respondents said that they would not like to have a non-Muslim president.
The polled were asked about the causes of poorly developed democracy in the Muslim world:
5.5 percent blamed “the colonial heritage;” 14.3 percent referred to “foreign forces and the enmity of other states;” 27.8 percent blamed “corrupt leaders and officials;” 16.6 percent put the cause down to “the citizens and their laziness and unprincipled position;” 6.3 percent pointed to “culture and traditions;” 24.6 percent were undecided, while 4.9 percent offered other answers. People did not emphasize any destructive role of Islam in democratic developments; “culture and traditions,” as the closest answer, was given by a small share of the polled.
The majority (65.5 percent) had no religious authority; the answers of those who did look at someone as a religious authority failed to identify a specific person. The group of five people identified as religious authorities by the largest number of the polled included: Sheikh ul-Islam Allahshukur Pasha-zadeh, 4.1 percent; Gajji Sabir, rector of the Islamic University of Azerbaijan, 3.3 percent; Wasif Mam-madaliev (who translated the Koran into Azeri, member of the Spiritual Administration), 1.8 percent; Gajji Ilgar Ibrahimoglu, 0.7 percent; and Ayatollah Khamenei (the religious leader of Iran), 0.7 percent.
The author of this article carried out the latest poll in 2006 (with support of the Caucasian Resource Studies Center) among the Azerbaijanian business community. Two hundred members of the business community from Baku, Ganja, and Lenkoran were asked about the role of ethics and religion in their business activities. Professional interviewers met each of the 200 respondents personally (70.5 percent of them were men and 29.5 percent were women). The majority (60 percent) had university degrees; 98.5 percent of the polled considered themselves Muslims.
The poll demonstrated that the majority (40 percent) of Azerbaijan’s business community believed education and upbringing to be the main sources of the system of values; while two groups of
24.5 percent each described either religion or tradition as such a source. Lack of faith (atheism) was selected, along with another three negative personal traits, from among the eight negative points offered. This shows that, hypothetically, the Azeri population is devoted to religion. Atheism was often mentioned as one of the negative features of a businessperson.
When asked to assess their everyday principles on a 6-point scale, the polled supplied the following answers:
(1) the permissible (in Azerbaijani—“halallyg” [meaning “halal”]—something allowed by the Islamic law; the word is frequently used to describe something correct or ethical);
(2) dignity;
(3) efficiency;
(4) professionalism;
(5) profitability;
(6) thrift.
These results are striking, since business people spoke of “non-business values” as being the most important for them in everyday life. Experts, however, doubted the respondents’ sincerity: corruption, deceit, unreturned debts, and mutual mistrust among business people, as well as a crisis of
ethics, are all too obvious in Azerbaijan. It seems that most of the polled passed the desired for the actual principles.
When asked about the level of their religiosity, 72 percent described themselves as moderately religious; 14 percent as very religious; 12.5 percent were not sure of their religiosity, while
1.5 percent had no religious feelings at all. The answers had a regional dimension: the most religious business people lived in Lenkoran, the moderately religious in Baku, while those not sure of their religious feelings were found more frequently in Ganja. When asked about the role of religion in their everyday activities, 47.5 percent described it as moderate; 25 percent as important; 22.5 percent as imperceptible, while 5 percent admitted that religion played no role in their business activities.
To identify the level of their religious knowledge, we asked the business people whether they read the Koran and other spiritual literature. It turned out that a relatively large share (30 percent) never read this type of literature; 26.5 percent read it occasionally; 21.5 percent rarely; 14.5 percent regularly, while 7.5 percent read it very often. The business people from Lenkoran described themselves as religious, but it turned out that their colleagues from Baku read more religious literature than the others. This is explained by the relatively larger share of educated people among them and the predominance of urban dwellers among the Baku respondents.
To check the level of fundamental religious knowledge, we asked about Kalima Shahadat.15 The majority was familiar with it, but 36.5 percent (a surprisingly large number for a Muslim nation) admitted that they knew nothing about this principle of faith.
A large number of business people (85 percent) did not perform Muslim ritual prayers, while a half of them said that they wanted to start praying; 11 percent prayed every day; 4 percent occasionally. We revealed serious regional distinctions: in Lenkoran, 45.5 percent prayed regularly, while in Baku and Ganja, the figure was only 8 percent. A comparison with earlier figures reveals that the share of practicing Muslims has increased over less than ten years.
The questions about hajj to Mecca produced more or less similar results. The majority had not performed hajj, but planned to perform it in the future (41.5 percent), a large share was not even planning it (37 percent), while 13.5 percent never thought about it; 5 percent dismissed the idea as unimportant, while only 3 percent had already performed hajj.
Forty-seven percent visit mosques or holy places very rarely (less that 10 times a year); 23.5 percent never do this, 19.5 percent do this once or twice a month, and 10 percent do this regularly.
On the whole, the polled business people were absolutely ignorant of Islamic economic principles; interest-free loans, associations based on dividing profits, zakat, and other things. The majority, however, believed that these principles should be practiced in Azerbaijan; 30.5 percent remained undecided, while 11 percent gave negative answers. At the same time, a large share (40.5 percent) doubted that this economic model could be incorporated in the republic, while 30.5 percent did not believe in its potential.
The majority of the polled (58 percent) believed that loan interest was a forbidden practice and never took part in such deals; 11 percent, while forced to take part, believed that this was a banned and negative phenomenon; 27 percent did not object to such operations, but were never involved in them; a small share (4 percent) had no moral qualms about paying or obtaining loan interest.
The most striking answers were given to the questions about the Shari‘a: 30 percent believed that the Shari‘a should be introduced in all spheres of life; 25.5 percent thought it should be practiced in some spheres (business activities included); 21 percent believed it should be introduced, but not in the business sphere; 19 percent remained undecided, while 4.5 percent gave negative answers. This means that the absolute majority wanted the Shari‘a to be introduced (to different degrees).
15 The Muslim declaration of dedication to Islam in Arabic: “I witness that there is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is Allah’s Messenger.”
There are several possible explanations for the widely differing answers:
1. Most of the business community does not ponder on existentialist issues and answered on the spur of the moment.
2. Most of the business community is not educated enough and knows next to nothing about religion, the Shari‘a, and its introduction and implications in particular.
3. Most of the respondents were merely showing off and deceived the interviewers and themselves.
4. People are frustrated with the current political and economic model; they do not trust it and know it cannot resolve the snowballing social problems.
The latest sociological poll carried out by the Pulse-R service also revealed several interesting facts. The share of those who wanted Islamic values to play a greater role in the republic’s sociopolitical life increased more than two-fold: from 6.2 percent in 2004 to 14.5 percent in 2005; today fourfold more respondents want closer cooperation with the OIC (2.3 percent in 2004 and 10.5 percent in 2005), while the share of those who approved of NATO has dropped considerably: from 12.4 percent to 7 percent, respectively. For the first time, Iran gathered more votes as a “friend of Azerbaijan” than the United States.16
Concluding Remarks: Embracing Islam
The above suggests the following conclusions:
1. In the last decade, mass consciousness and behavioral patterns have changed a great deal. Religious consciousness is now governed by broad and highly diverse religious aims, motives, and interests; the number of people interested in religion and wishing to practice it is growing daily. At the same time, the minds of religious people are full of contradictory ideas.
2. All sociological studies register a growing level of religiosity among the Azeri population. Recently, the process has intensified and become even more dynamic: the number of those who described themselves as religious people is on the rise, together with the number of practicing believers. At the same time, a fairly large number of people remain undecided about their attitude toward religion. This process can be explained in the context of the changed system of personal motives, values, and interests. The changes, in turn, are caused by the deep-cutting and widespread social processes underway in the republic.
3. Mass consciousness still perceives religion as a merely cultural and moral-ethical phenomenon and an abstract source of everyday behavioral patterns and traditions. The people crave for detailed, objective, and reliable religious information or even specialized religious education. Today, such information is being supplied, albeit sporadically, in greater volumes; some of it might be unreliable or gained through self-education. The quality of religious knowledge suffers; what should be perceived as a system is a fragmented mass of religious knowledge. In fact, greater religiosity has not yet extended the sphere of high-quality religious knowledge, partly because of the clerics’ and the local religious institutions’ relatively low prestige.
16 Today.az news portal (2006) [www.today.az], February-March 2006.
4. Islam is already affecting public consciousness to a much greater extent than before; this trend will intensify and continue in the near future. This, in turn, will create serious political and economic changes.
The recent elections in Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Lebanon, and, finally, in Palestine showed that Islam had moved to the forefront of local politics. At the same time, its position is somewhat undermined by the nationalist ideologies (the nation-state ideology in particular) that have flooded the Muslim world. They have divided the ummah into disunited nations. Recently, however, intensified globalization has created an opposite trend and pushed Islam to the forefront once more.
How should we respond to these developments? Are they dangerous for a secular state, especially if it is still weak and still coping with the problems of the transition period? Should such a state be apprehensive of religion (particularly Islam) and try to stem its spread? Mankind has accumulated enough experience to learn by now that the objective processes cannot be defeated or annulled.
Azerbaijan, in which a peaceful and highly tolerant version of Islam predominates, is much luckier than many other Muslim states, yet, as A. Veliev has pointed out, some of the local elements look every much like what Iran experienced in the early 1970s: corrupt elites, relatively hard social and economic conditions, and a certain disillusionment in democracy. If the situation persists, religious organizations with adequate foreign funding will attract crowds of supporters. During the Iranian revolution, a large share of people with no sympathies for any type of Islamic governance closed ranks around the Islamist leaders to unsaddle the Shah.17
It seems that the philosophy put in a nutshell by the slogan “Embrace Islam!” is the only correct approach to the problem of interaction between a secular state (particularly of a transition type) and Islam. Some countries (Malaysia) have already successfully realized this slogan: there a relatively large non-Muslim population, a secular state, and a national ideology based on Islam are living peacefully side by side.
It is critically important to launch a policy of embracing Islam before the Islamic revivalist movement and groups become marginalized and radicalized. In fact, the Sudan, Pakistan, Algeria, and some other states failed to achieve this because the governments relied on radical religious groups to secure their political aims, while the radicals later moved against the authorities.
So far, radical Islam is weakly developed in Azerbaijan, while the radical groups are not numerous and not rich enough to upset the status quo. There is time to launch the “battle for Islam” and win it.
To succeed, the state should pay particular attention to its institutional, educational, and stimulating components. The institutional component consists of creating a foundation for the new relations by:
• Amending the laws, which will rule out any discrimination against the faithful and will give them a chance to take part in the country’s public, political, and economic life.
—This does not mean that the country is prepared to drop the principle of separation of religion and the state (Art 18 of the Constitution), but it would be wise to abolish the prohibition on religious leaders running for parliament (Art 85 of the Constitution). It should be pointed out that this category of Azeri citizens can run for presidency; they can also be civil servants or judges. If the prohibition is abolished, clerics could become de-marginal-ized and included in the country’s social and political life (if all members of the clergy accept the Azeri statehood and the Constitution).
—The time has come to create a law on the waqfs (charity foundations based on the property of religious communities) to outline the boundaries of such property and turn the existing
17 See: A. Veliev, “Azerbaijan: Islam in a Post-Soviet Republic,” MERIA, Vol. 9, No. 4, Art 1, December 2005.
holy places (the so-called pirs) into civilized, transparent, accountable, and effective charities; to attract even more donations and Islamic taxes (zakat, hums) for the sake of local and, later, national socioeconomic projects. In the final analysis, this would decrease the local religious communities’ dependence on foreign funding.
— It would be wise to amend the laws on the central bank, commercial banks and banking, credit unions, microfunding, etc., so that the country acquires a legal basis for interest-free loans according to Islamic principles.
• Structural changes to and increasing the potential of the State Committee for Work with Religious Organizations (SCWRO) and the Spiritual Administration of the Muslims of the Caucasus. Today, the State Committee functions as a punitive state structure with a vague status and an equally vague range of duties, while the Administration is a relict of the Soviet epoch and is ill-suited to both traditional Islamic and secular organizational structures.
—It would be useful to transform the SCWRO into a state structure responsible for licensing, controlling, and regulating religious activities and religious organizations, including the waqfs. It should promote religious tolerance, education, and the religious component of the republic’s state ideology.
—The SAMC should be transformed into a consultative structure (association) that would include autonomous Muslim communities of all sorts. It should own property of the waqf type. Its experts, as well as experts of other official confessional institutions, should be invited to cooperate with the SCWRO.
• Introduction and promotion of the Islamic economic and financial principles aimed at the conceptual level at liquidating poverty and introducing social justice. Among other things this would help to attract Islamic financial institutions to our country.
—The government could include promotion of these structures in the current and future programs (such as decreasing the level of poverty, encouraging economic progress, socioeconomic development of the regions, etc.).
—Having done this, the government, to a greater extent than before, could expect support and funding from the Islamic Development Bank, as well as from other international donors, to develop the institutions of waqf, zakat, and Islamic finances.
—By accomplishing this, the government will acquire tools of control over these institutions and stem any secret illegal designs.
The new state policies in the sphere of education should cover many dimensions. The fundamentals of religion should be taught in school to meet the requirements of the rising generation in religious knowledge; this will help to create a progressive image of Islam free from radicalism and extremism. This subject should be taught as part of the course of comparative religious studies.
To stimulate society, the state should promote ethical norms by relying on the Koran and the traditions of the Prophet Muhammad, imams, and companions, as well as by cooperating with the most prominent religious leaders (intellectuals in particular) and civil society to create and implement all sorts of projects in this sphere.
If promptly and efficiently realized, this political approach will play a positive role in the Islamic revival and help to avoid conflicts between Islam and the secular state.
