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Friday, January 19, 2007. Page 4. (javascript:window.print();)
A Schism Emerges in AzerbaijanBy Aida Sultanova
The Associated Press

BAKU, Azerbaijan — A newspaper article that landed two journalists in
jail and provoked Muslim protests underscores rifts over crucial
issues — religion, freedom of speech and foreign influence —
troubling Azerbaijan.

An expected trial on charges of inciting religious hatred could begin
this month and would be closely watched in the West, which is deeply
interestedin Azerbaijan because of its oil riches and its strategic
position between Iran and Russia.

Rafiq Tagi’s article in the small newspaper Senet asserted that Islam
has suffocated people, pulled them away from freedom and hindered
humanity’s development, and that the Prophet Mohammed created problems
for eastern countries.

If convicted, Tagi and Senet editor Samir Huseinov, whose newspaper
was little known before it published the article, could face three to
five years in prison. In mid-November, a court ordered them held for
two months for further investigation. Their case underlines wide
complaints by opponents of Azeri President Ilham Aliyev that the
country persecutes independent media.

But the struggle over freedom of speech is just one facet of a
broad-ranging battle over the future of Azerbaijan, which stands at
the volatile juncture of Europe and Asia.

The article sparked angry protests in Nardaran, a village near the
capital, Baku, whose conservative Muslim community has clashed with
the authoritarian government in the past. Some residents called for
Tagi’s death.

The response raises questions about the role of religious faith in a
country that is overwhelmingly Muslim but whose government is secular
and deeply wary of any Muslims whose views and practices go beyond the
bounds of the approved.

It has also compounded concerns about the influence of nearby Muslim
nations — chiefly neighboring Iran, which has a large ethnic Azeri
minority and is often seen as seeking to boost its clout in the
smaller nation. Like Iran, Azerbaijan’s Muslims are predominantly
Shiite.

Reports in Azeri media of protests in Iran over the article, with a
religious leader reportedly offering a reward for Tagi’s killing, show
that Iran is seeking to use the scandal to increase its influence,
said Rasim Musabekov, an independent analyst in Baku.

"Azerbaijan is in pincers" between pressure from radical Sunni Muslims
in Russia’s violence-plagued Caucasus mountains to the north and
"strong Shiite influence from the south, from Iran," Musabekov said.

He said "militantly anti-Western Islamic movements" were taking root
in Azerbaijan.

Rafiq Aliyev, a former chief of the State Committee on Religion who
now heads a center for the study of Islam, said that while other
Middle East nations fund the construction of mosques in Azerbaijan,
Iran hosts its students.

"More than 1,000 people are studying in Iran who will inculcate their
knowledge when they return, and this will give [Iran] a better result
thansimply building mosques" in terms of gaining influence, Aliyev
said.

"Certain countries are exerting huge pressure" on Azerbaijan’s
religious scene, he said.

But both he and Musabekov said militant Islam was not an imminent
threat to Azerbaijan. Ilgar Ibragimoglu, an imam who leads a
congregation scattered among small prayer houses after authorities
stripped him of his mosque in Baku, suggested the future cast of Islam
here depended more on the government’s actions than on external
factors.

Growing interest in Islam is natural and will not take an extremist
turn "if the rights of believers are not limited," he said.

Religion is not the only aspect of Azeri society and politics that is
subject to heated debate at home and influence from abroad, and Iran
is far from the only country with an interest in its future path.

Its oil riches make Azerbaijan important to energy-hungry China,
Europe and the United States and also to Russia, which is struggling
to maintain influence among its neighbors following the 1991 Soviet
collapse.

For the United States and Europe, it is also a key part of a corridor
to supply Caspian and Central Asian energy resources westward without
sendingthem through Russia or Iran — and a target for efforts to
promote democracy in the former Soviet Union and the Middle East.

Those efforts have had mixed results in Azerbaijan, where Aliyev took
over from his father in a 2003 election denounced by opponents as a
sham, and has faced persistent Western criticism over the heavy-handed
treatment of government critics — particularly in the media — and
the plodding pace of moves to improve democracy.

To Leyla Yunus, a human rights activist and director of the Institute
of Peace and Democracy, a Baku think tank, the arrests of Tagi and
Huseinov and the reaction are less a symptom of a rise in militant
Islam or foreign influence than of an overly iron-handed government.

"It was unlawful to arrest journalists for writing an article," she
said.

"It was wrong."

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