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AZERBAIJAN Bayram Balci1 and Altay Goyushov2 1 Muslim Populations Azerbaijan Is a Secular Country with an Overwhelmingly Musli

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AZERBAIJAN Bayram Balci1 and Altay Goyushov2 1 Muslim Populations Azerbaijan Is a Secular Country with an Overwhelmingly Musli AZERBAIJAN Bayram Balci1 and Altay Goyushov2 1 Muslim Populations Azerbaijan is a secular country with an overwhelmingly Muslim popu- lation. According to official figures provided by Azerbaijani Govern- ment roughly 96%3 (approximately 8,900,000 according to Pew Research Centre)4 of Azerbaijan’s 9.2 million5 inhabitants have a Muslim back- ground. While traditionally approximately 65% of local Muslims are considered Shi’i and 35% Sunnis,6 due to a great success of international Sunni missionary organisations after the collapse of the Soviet Union, cur- rently the estimated numbers of practising Sunni and Shi’i Muslims in the big urban areas are almost equal. A large majority of Azerbaijanis are strongly attached to their Islamic identity and consider it as an inextricable part of their self-image. Although the most recent survey of WIN-Gallup International “Global Index of Religiosity and Atheism” indicates that only 44% of their more 1 Bayram Balci is Senior Research Assistant in Centre National de la Recherche Scien- tifique, Centre d’Etudes et de Recherches Internationales (CERI). Since December 2011 he is Visiting Scholar in Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington DC. He was Director of the Institut Français d’Etudes sur l’Asie Centrale, (IFEAC) in Tashkent and Research Assistant in Institut Français d’Etudes Anatoliennes in Baku between 2003 and 2006. He holds degrees in Political Science and Arab-Islamic Civilisation (Sciences Po Grenoble and Aix-en-Provence) and a PhD in Political Science for a dissertation about Turkish missionaries in Central Asia. 2 Altay Goyushov is a Professor at the Department of Turkic and Caucasus People’s History of Baku State University. He has a Ph.D. in History of Islam from the Baku State University, Azerbaijan. For the last decade his research interests have been focused mainly on the issues related to national independence movements, political Islam and Islamic education in the Volga basin, Crimea, Caucasus and Central Asia. 3 U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor International Religious Freedom report 2011, Azerbaijan, www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/irf/religiousfreedom/ index.htm#wrapper, January 2013. 4 http://features.pewforum.org/grl/population-number.php, accessed January 2013. 5 The State Statistical Committee of the Republic of Azerbaijan www.azstat.org/ statinfo/demoqraphic/en/AP_/AP_1.shtml, accessed January 2013. 6 U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor International Religious Freedom report 2011, Azerbaijan, www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/irf/religiousfreedom/ index.htm#wrapper; accessed January 2013. 66 bayram balci and altay goyushov than 500 Azerbaijani respondents replied that they are religious, none considered himself or herself being an atheist.7 However, a majority of local researchers commonly say that, if properly asked, more than 90 per- cent of Azerbaijani Muslims will indicate that they believe in God, but only very small portion will be able to confirm that they systematically follow even the most important of Islamic teachings like daily prayer. The overwhelming majority of Azerbaijanis do not regularly perform religious duties, although the number of observant Muslims has been continually growing each year since the fall of Communist regime. Due to persecutions against religious communities during the past few years, believers tend to keep low profile to avoid possible attention of state institutions. This circumstance significantly complicated the research environment in Azerbaijan and it is extremely difficult to follow real changes occurring in the number of observant Muslims. However, local observers who monitor developments in the religious realm since the early 1990s estimate that number of those who strictly observe their Shari’a duties is in the range of 10 to 25 per cent of the local Muslim popu- lation. Exceptions are the Ramadan and Muharram months of the Mus- lim calendar, when the number of active worshippers has been visibly increasing in the years since the country’s independence in 1991, particu- larly among younger generations. Since the mid-7th century CE the territory of modern Azerbaijan north of Araxes River has been included within the boundaries of the Caliphate. It took almost two hundred years for Islam to finally become the undis- puted dominant religion, adopted by the vast majority of the local popula- tion along with the ruling elites. In the 11th century Azerbaijan fell under the rule of Muslim Seljuk Turks. Migration from Central Asia triggered a major shift in the ethnic composition of the inhabitants populating Azer- baijan by making Turkic-Oghuz tribes its prevailing constituent, although significant populations of ethnic minorities remain. According to the last Census, Azerbaijanis of Turkic origin comprise the overwhelming major- ity of the local population with a nearly 90.6% share. The other ethnic groups of Muslim background are native Caucasian Sunni Lezgins (2.2%), Avars (0.6%), Tsakhurs (0.2%), Kryts (Grizs) (0.04%), Xinaligs (0.02%), and Rutuls as well as Meskhetian Turks (0.5%) and Volga Tatars (0.4%). 7 www.wingia.com/web/files/news/14/file/14.pdf, accessed January 2013..
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