Asia Times: Missionary Impossible: Azerbaijan tackles religion


	August 28, 2001	atimes.com

Central Asia/Russia

Missionary Impossible: Azerbaijan tackles religion
By Liz Fuller

In late June, Azerbaijan's President Heidar Aliev decreed the creation of a State Committee for Relations with Religious Organizations and appointed Oriental scholar Rafik Aliev to head it. The committee will supercede the old Religious Department within the Cabinet of Ministers, and have a much larger staff. Its primary function will be to monitor the activities of religious organizations engaging in missionary activity in Azerbaijan, whether Christian or Islamic.

The presidential decree on creating the new state committee specified that its work is not intended to restrict the freedom of religion guaranteed by Azerbaijan's constitution. But statements by Rafik Aliev make clear that the committee aims to introduce more stringent regulations to govern the activity of both religious organizations and individual religious activists, and monitor compliance with those regulations. It will be entitled to collect, and to submit to the Interior Ministry and other law-enforcement agencies, information on persons engaged in religious propaganda. And it will be empowered to ask a court of law to suspend the activities of any religious organization that engages in illegal activities, incites inter-ethnic discord, or engages in "religious-political diversive activities aimed at undermining national security".

Rafik Aliev said that of the total estimated 2,000 religious organizations in Azerbaijan, only 410 are formally registered. Those that have not yet undergone registration will be asked to do so beginning in October, a process that Aliev estimated will take some six or seven months. All mosques must be subordinated to the Baku-based Spiritual Administration of Muslims of the Caucasus. Aliev added that the number of foreign pastors granted permission to engage in proselytizing in Azerbaijan will be limited, and restrictions will be imposed on the length of time they may stay in the country. He also said that the legal ban on allowing "foreign nationals" to work as teachers in Azerbaijani medreses (Islamic institutes of higher learning) will be strictly enforced, noting that 90 percent of those medreses are not registered with the state. The textbooks and other teaching materials used at those medreses will likewise be vetted for suitability.

In addition, the committee will monitor the import of religious literature and may impose specific quotas for individual religious groups in order to ensure that the number of religious texts that a religious community imports is commensurate with its current members' needs. If a community of 500 people seeks to import 5,000 copies of a religious text, Aliev said, this suggests they intend to engage in "propaganda".

Rafik Aliev did not say, however, who the new restrictions are primarily directed at. There are at least three currents of religious activity that could be construed as posing a potential threat. The first of these is proselytizing by Shiite religious emissaries from Iran. The second is "Wahhabism", which in the Azerbaijani, as in the Russian, context appears to be a shorthand term for any brand of Islamic extremism originating in the North Caucasus that the state leadership cannot control. And the third are the various Christian and other sects whose missionaries are currently active in Azerbaijan.

Ever since the demise of the Soviet Union, Western observers have been watching attentively for indications of a crusade by Iran to export its own particular brand of Islam to Azerbaijan. While Iranian mullahs are active in Azerbaijan, until very recently they have not been publicly identified as a serious danger. But Vremya Novostei reported on June 25 that "extremists dispatched from Tehran" are the primary target of the new state committee, and that Azerbaijani intelligence agencies consider them a threat to Azerbaijani statehood. Moreover, the paper quotes Azerbaijani intelligence sources as saying that "although the Iranian clergy does not officially support Wahhabism, the Wahhabis who are engaged in illegal activity in Azerbaijan have direct links with Iranian intelligence".

Speaking at a seminar in Baku in early May, Azerbaijan's Deputy National Security Minister Tofik Babaev claimed that a number of religious organizations sponsored by Iran or Arab countries are engaged in inciting domestic political conflicts with the ultimate aim of seizing power in Azerbaijan. Babaev estimated the number of Azerbaijani converts to Wahhabism at some 7,000, noting that Wahhabi missionaries seek above all to recruit representatives of ethnic minorities and persons of mixed parentage. Northern Azerbaijan and three mosques in Baku are identified as the main strongholds of Wahhabism. The Iranian Embassy in Baku promptly rejected Babaev's claims as "unfounded" and "irresponsible".

Whether fundamentalist Islamic has become a significant political force in Azerbaijan is difficult to judge. On the one hand, most Azerbaijanis' conscious religious identification as Muslims does not extend beyond the observance of rituals that have evolved from the strictly religious to become part of national culture. On the other hand, economic collapse and the resulting rise in unemployment could predispose the most disadvantaged members of society to seek consolation in religion.

While Babaev focused primarily on the perceived Iranian-Wahhabi threat, Rafik Aliev also spoke with concern over the number of Azerbaijanis who have converted to Christianity, Hinduism, or Bahaism. He admitted that no precise figures exist, but estimated the number of such converts as between 5,000-6,000. (Sharq last December gave the higher estimate of 9,368 converts over the previous decade, while the head of the now defunct Religious Department within the Cabinet of Ministers, Mustafa Ibragimov, said in early January that the total figure was approximately 3,000.)

One reason why the Azerbaijani leadership appears so concerned about such conversions was divulged during the Baku seminar in May by the city's mayor, Hajibala Abutalibov, who claimed that missionary activity is aimed at weakening Azerbaijan's statehood and its armed forces. Possibly in an attempt to minimize the effects of such proselytizing, the Spiritual Board of Muslims of the Caucasus has formally requested permission from the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry to introduce the post of religious councilor in military units in order to "strengthen servicemen's faith and patriotic feelings", Nezavisimaya Gazeta reported on August 9. The paper reported that in some military units a special room has already been set aside for servicemen wishing to perform the namaz (prayers).

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