Farideh Heyat, Dr.

Anthropologist / Consultant

Baku, Azerbaijan

 

After Azerbaijan recovered its independence in 1991, its people turned to Islam, which had always been an important identity marker, to fill the ideological vacuum that followed the breakdown of the Soviet system, a process that was profoundly affected by the agendas and actions of neighboring Muslim countries like Iran which promoted radical Shiism, Turkey with its Sunni Orthodoxy and the Gulf states which aimed to further various Wahhabi / Salafi doctrines. 

While most Azerbaijanis remained far more secular than many in other historically Islamic countries, there has been a significant growth in religious practice and belief over the last two decades.  More veiled women now appear on the streets of Baku, a capital with strong cosmopolitan and secular tradition, and more people attend Friday prayers.  Whilst external factors were important in the increased level of religiosity, for many who turned to religion this was also an instrumental way of expressing frustration about the increasing wealth gap, corruption, and stalemate in the war with Armenia, as well as a conservative reaction to western cultural influences permeating through the media.  

 

Ninety-five percent of Azerbaijanis are Muslims, with Shiites forming the majority, especially in the south and in Baku, and with Sunnis scattered in the north and west of the country.  With the rise of the oil industry and the influx of Iranian workers at the end of the nineteenth century, Shiism strengthened its hold on villages surrounding Baku.  The city itself at that time was cosmopolitan with non-Azerbaijanis forming a majority.  And consequently, the city itself was more influenced by European enlightenment ideals and viewed the Islamic clergy with distaste. 

 

The Bolshevik revolution installed atheism as state policy.  Many Muslim leaders were exiled or killed, and most mosques closed down.  But despite this, a certain amount of religious practice continued in the private domain, although the social functions of Islam including such things as dietary prohibitions and gender relations were clearly weakened.  Indeed, it is fair to say that a basic belief in God, or more precisely, the fear of Allah, remained in the hearts and minds of the population.  As a result, throughout the Soviet period, certain religious practices, such as for example paying alms (nazir) continued, even if people forgot the wording of namaz (daily prayers) and no one fasted any longer.  And because the Soviets prevented Muslims from going on the hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca), they unintentionally made other practices, such as visiting pirs, the shrines of Muslim holy men, more attractive as substitutes.

Another consequence of Soviet policy, which involved the regime's total control over the religious establishment, was close cooperation between Shiite and Sunni faithful.  Because the number of mosques open was so small, members of both trends often used the same ones, sometimes with religious leaders providing services to both groups.  As a result, today, most Azerbaijanis are not conscious of the distinctions between Shiite and Sunni beliefs and practices.  At the same time and just as in Central Asia, ethnicity and religion became interchangeable frames of reference to which cultural norms and practices were ascribed.  Even today, the label Musulmanchilik (being a Muslim) covers a whole multitude of behavior and practices, some of which have little to do with Islam and may even be antithetical to its teachings. 

 

After 1991, it was this ideological confusion and ignorance that provided the backdrop to and that helps explain the success of efforts by outside actors to redefine Islam for Azerbaijanis.  Iran attempted to promote its brand of radical Shiism in Azerbaijan in two ways.  On the one hand, it provided massive and much publicized assistance to Azerbaijani refugees, something that attracted sympathy and support.  And on the other, Iran through its seminaries in Qom trained a new generation of Azerbaijani Shiite clerics, something that also promoted Iranian point of view.  But by the end of the 1990s, the Azerbaijan government had taken measures to restrict this channel of influence.  The State Committee for work with religious organizations was established in 2001 aimed at monitoring the import of religious literature and requiring religious groups to register with them.  

 

Turkey in contrast has sought to promote Sunni Islam in Azerbaijan, and unlike the Iranian or the Arab efforts in this direction, it has aimed to do so in concordance with the Azerbaijani government.  The Turkish governmental support is supervised by Diyanet Isleri Baskanligi (Directorate of Religious Affairs in Turkey) and is supplemented by the activities of the religious Nur movement.  The Turkish government has funded the construction of numerous mosques throughout the country and supported the organization of a theological faculty at the Baku State University.  Based on the Hanafi school of Sunni Islam, teachings organized by Turkish imams in these mosques are focused on moral and ethical issues and avoid politics.   

 

The Gulf states and Saudi Arabia have also used their wealth to promote the re-Islamicization of the Caucasus through various religious charities, the distribution of Islamic literature, the construction of mosques, and the training of clerics.  The Saudis have promoted Wahhabism in the North Caucasus and also in Azerbaijan through which many Chechen refugees and Arab radicals passed during the conflicts in the North Caucasus during the 1990s. 

 

The main Wahhabi center in Azerbaijan is Baku's Abu Bakr mosque, a community that was set up by a Kuwaiti foundation in 1997.  More than 10,000 faithful attend its Friday prayers, with some bused in from the north of the country.  A significant proportion of those attending consists of educated young Azerbaijanis interested in the spiritual side of religion and attracted by the populist sermons offered by the mosque's leadership.  There is also a smaller group of people among them, mostly poor and uneducated, who espouse the radicalism of the Wahhabi ideology but prefer to identify as Salafis, followers of Salafiyya (the path of the forefathers). 

 

The Salafis reject all other denominations within Islam, mysticism in any form, and veneration of saints and shrines.  Many of them seek to re-Islamicize society from the grassroots upwards, often by exploiting popular grievances against those who have benefited from the reforms of the last two decades.  They thus represent the most extreme form of the more general conservative backlash that has led many people back to Islam.

 

  

Bibliography 

 

Cornell, Svante (2006). The Politicization of Islam in Azerbaijan, Silk Road Paper, Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program, October.

 

Heyat, Farideh (2008, forthcoming publication). “New Veiling in Azerbaijan: Gender and Globalising Islam,” European Journal of Women's Studies, vol. 15, November.

 

Heyat, Farideh. “Post-Soviet Islam in Azerbaijan,” in Nino Tsetsishvili (ed.) (forthcoming publication). Cultural Archetypes and Political Change in the Caucasus, Nova Science Publishers.

 

Yunusov, Arif (2004). Islam in Azerbaijan, Baku: Institute of Peace and Democracy (with support from Fredrich Ebert Foundation).