RELIGION

Elmir KULIEV

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Elmir Kuliev, Ph.D. (Philos.), Director of the Department of Geoculture at the Institute of Strategic Studies of the Caucasus (Baku, Azerbaijan)

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Introduction

In 2006, continued negotiations on Nagorno-Karabakh and the socioeconomic reforms underway in the country eclipsed religious developments. Very much as before, the events on the domestic scene and all over the world, which added weight to the religious (civilizational) component of world politics, largely influenced the country’s religious context and the believers’ social and political ideas. The armed conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, and Lebanon, as well as the threat that they might pose to other Middle Eastern countries, provoked contradictory and nearly irreversible processes in the umma, stirred up and consolidated religious political forces, and generally affected the nature of religious convictions.

State Policy in the Religious Sphere

In Azerbaijan, freedom of conscience is guaranteed by Art 48 of the Constitution, according to which every citizen “shall have the right to independently define his/her attitude toward religion, practice religion alone or together with others, or profess no religion at all, and express and spread his/her convictions.”

Religious activities in the country are regulated by the Law on the Freedom of Conscience, which limits freedom “only by considerations of state and public security and in cases when rights and freedoms should be protected under the international obligations of………………

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