Political) Islam in Azerbaijan: Quo Vadis?
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A RESACRALIZATION OF PUBLIC SPACE AND THE FUTURE OF (POLITICAL) ISLAM IN AZERBAIJAN: QUO VADIS? CAP PAPERS 186 (FELLOWS PAPERS SERIES) MAY 2017 Murad Ismayilov1 Our country suffers from a number of fundamental problems, without there being thoroughly examined and analyzed, such as the problem of morals, the problem of self-confidence, the problems of sex, individualism and the lack of readiness to offer help and sacrifice for others, cultural imitation, the problem of economic development and its relationship with morality, etc. These problems result from our historical, political and educational circumstances and from the effect of international circumstances on our own situation. It is necessary that we have our own criteria by which our circumstances should be judged. [By this] I mean a special culture and a special analysis of the universe, the human being and life. -- Rachid al-Ghannouchi, co-founder of the Tunisian Islamic Movement, al-Ma’rifa magazine, 10th issue, 1973, 11-14 (qtd. in Mohamed Elhachmi Hamdi, The Politicisation of Islam: A Case Study of Tunisia (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998), 22. 1 Murad Ismayilov is a doctoral researcher at Politics, Psychology, Sociology and International Studies (PPSIS) at the University of Cambridge. He holds an MSt in International Relations from the University of Cambridge and an M.A. in International Relations from Baku State University. He has been awarded fellowships and research and visiting scholar grants from Open Society Institute Europe Foundation, Aleksanteri Institute, Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI), Michigan State University’s Center for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies (CERES), and NATO Studies Centre (Bucharest, Romania). 1 Over the past 25 years of independence, the ruling elite in Azerbaijan have benefited from – and sought to reproduce – overall societal animosity, including as expressed in the attitudes of the secular opposition, towards the country’s religious groups, particularly those opposed to the incumbent regime, these routinely portrayed as radical, potentially terrorist, and ostensibly evil. Not only was the effort to reproduce the social, cultural, and ideological rupture between these two segments of society meant to keep the country’s secular and religious opposition apart as a component of an ingenious “divide and rule” strategy in the pursuit of total dominance and control (including by thus depriving the religious opposition of an organizational toolkit to mobilize society around their cause), but by working to continuously reinforce the representation of Islam as an imminent danger to the stability and secular nature of Azerbaijani statehood, the government has sought to position itself – both in the eyes of the ‘liberal,’ ‘democratic’ West and the populace at home – as the sole force capable of staving off the Islamic danger thus using the radical Islamist card to justify its increasingly illiberal regime and authoritarian practices, a discursive effort that received a particular boost during the dramatic shift in geopolitical conditions associated with the 9/11 events of 2001 in the United States and the “global war on terror” that quickly followed. For a long time, the regime’s approach progressed almost without hindrance. More recently, however, the rise of the Union for Muslim Unity under the leadership of Taleh Baghirzade, a charismatic young Shia cleric, and the concurrent rapprochement between the country’s Islamic movement on one hand and secular civil society and traditional opposition (particularly as embodied in the National Council opposition bloc) on the other, has occasioned a dramatic shift. Religious and secular forces, which before were insulated from one another, have now opened a multifaceted dialogue, discussing issues as fundamental as the nature of Azerbaijani statehood, national identity, and Islam’s role and place in both. This study offers an account of the conditions underlying the unfolding partnership and convergence of interest across the country’s religious-secular political landscape and looks into some future dynamics this transformation is set to unleash. The paper begins by outlining elites’ attitudes to Islam, and the strategy of separation between religion and politics in which those attitudes find expression. It then proceeds to show the complicity of civil society and the broader populace in the post-Soviet reproduction of the narrative of Islamic danger and the resultant religious-secular divide. The article goes on to discuss key factors contributing to the ongoing normalization of Islam across the public realm and the gradual bridging of the religious-secular divide amid ongoing state repression. The study concludes by offering a comparative perspective of common features and conditioning factors behind the dynamics underlying the religious-secular nexus in Azerbaijan and across the broader Middle Eastern region. It also offers an insight into some future potentialities exposed by the current dynamics. Elite attitudes to Islam and the quest for a religious-secular divide The perception of Islam as a threat and a viable political challenge, if left unrestrained, has long permeated elite engagement with Islam in post-Soviet Azerbaijan, a concern that prompted the Baku regime to seek control of conduits of external influences on religiosity (including religious education abroad, external sources of teaching in madrasas, and religious proselytizing) and 2 fight any public and, particularly, collective manifestation of religiosity that held a danger of transforming religion, particularly Islam, from an individual identity marker into a social phenomenon and hence potentially a political challenge. With Islam seen as “a dangerous genie to be contained,”2 the elite’s consistent effort to erase it from – and render it invisible in – the public space, seeking instead to confine religious practices to the privacy of one’s home or state- sanctioned mosques, has been intended as “a means of pre-empting the rise of Islamism as a political challenge.”3 “Religion is in our hearts and should not be on our streets”—this is how Ilham Aliyev, president of Azerbaijan, summarized the regime’s position on the issue in an interview with a Washington Times journalist in 2007.4 Apart from a range of practical measures aimed at stifling the penetration of Islamic discourse in public space (including a ban on using loudspeakers during the call to prayer, a ban on wearing Islamic headscarves in public schools, closing down mosques with a massive following, etc.), the symbolic violence5 the Azerbaijani political establishment has directed toward Islam, including as part of its quest for legitimation vis-à-vis both the domestic populace and the West, involved at least five intricately linked discursive lines: 1. Upholding a narrative associating any upsurge of religiosity, particularly if the latter finds expression in the rising public activism of religiously inspired groups and individuals (and thus transforms from an individual identity marker into a social phenomenon), with the rise of Islamic “extremism” and thus framing it as a threat to state security and domestic stability; 2. Contrasting the dictate of Islamic fundamentalism in neighboring Iran and the rising tendency of insecurity, destruction, and war across the Middle East with the overall secular nature of Azerbaijani statehood and stability and security at home; 3. Linking any trend of rising religiosity (including as the latter necessarily, as the narrative claims, translates into the rise of “radical” Islam) to – and grounding it in – poverty, illiteracy, and backwardness, thus effectively rendering it a quality of the outcast; 4. Linking expressions of religiously-inspired public activism to the influence or direct sponsorship of foreign agents, including, in particular, Iran, these allegedly using Islam to radicalize domestic politics in Azerbaijan; 2 WikiLeaks, “Recent Steps Highlight GOAJ’s Attempts to Control Islam,” October 16, 2007, goo.gl/yA3Dnn. 3 WikiLeaks, “Azerbaijan: Summer 2009 Mosque Closures, Destruction, and Openings,” September 16, 2009, goo.gl/4Ueu7Y; Islamic Human Rights Commission, “Azerbaijan and the Hijab Ban: A New Kemalist Nightmare?” February 8, 2003, goo.gl/x6w3zH. 4 Rob Sobhani, “Post-Soviet Modernity,” The Washington Times, August 7, 2009, goo.gl/wqgDjT. 5 The notion of “symbolic violence” was introduced by French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu to denote processes whereby “order and social restraint are produced by indirect, cultural mechanisms rather than by direct, coercive social control” (Richard Jenkins, Pierre Bourdieu (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), 104). 3 5. Promoting secular nationalism (including as upheld in the face of the ongoing conflict with Armenia) and homogenously empty multiculturalism as an alternative ideological vision around which to mobilize society.6 As such, the regime has been pursuing two mutually reinforcing objectives. First, in reproducing the post-9/11 notion of “fundamentalist” Islam as a security threat and thus portraying Islamic activism at home as a product of a foreign conspiracy, the elite have sought to position themselves as the only potent leadership able and willing to contain Islam’s rising political clout in the country and guard the secular nature of Azerbaijani statehood. Meant to justify the need for authoritarian governance to properly address these challenges, the effort has become an increasing feature of the elite’s engagement with Islam the more