Azerbaijan

Azerbaijan sits on ground where fire was worshipped before it was fuel. Natural gas vents on the Absheron peninsula burn without a source, and the temple at Ateshgah outside Baku was built around one; its inscriptions are Sanskrit and Punjabi as well as Persian, because by the eighteenth century it was maintained by Hindu and Sikh merchants of the Indian trade as much as by Zoroastrians, and the site is one of the few places where those traditions demonstrably shared a sanctuary. Islam arrived in the seventh and eighth centuries, and the region became predominantly Shia under Safavid rule from 1501, when Shah Ismail, himself of Azerbaijani Turkic background, imposed Twelver Shiism across his empire.

The nineteenth century divided the Azerbaijani people between the Russian empire and Iran, a division that persists, so that more Azerbaijanis live in Iran than in Azerbaijan. The Baku oil boom made the city cosmopolitan, and Soviet rule then made the country strongly secular; the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic of 1918 to 1920 had already been notable as the first secular parliamentary republic in the Muslim world and the first to grant women the vote. The Shirvanshahs' palace complex in Baku, with its mosque, mausoleum and bathhouse, records the medieval Islamic court that preceded all of this, and stands beside the Maiden Tower whose original purpose is still unresolved.

Azerbaijan is a Shia majority country that has organised its religious life to prevent Shia clericalism, and the reason is proximity to Iran. The State Committee for Work with Religious Associations registers communities, approves the appointment of clergy and vets imported religious literature, while the Caucasus Muslim Board, an institution inherited from the imperial and Soviet periods, supervises mosques. Religious education abroad is restricted and foreign trained clergy are barred from leading prayers.

The restrictions apply visibly: the head of the Islamic Party of Azerbaijan has been imprisoned, the Juma mosque in Baku's old city was taken from its congregation, and the demolition of mosques for redevelopment has drawn protest. The wearing of the hijab in schools was prohibited in 2010, prompting demonstrations, and the arrests following unrest at Nardaran in 2015, a village known for its religiosity and its shrine, were the sharpest confrontation. Non Muslim minorities have generally had an easier time and are used to illustrate tolerance: the Mountain Jews of Qirmizi Qesebe near Quba form one of the few all Jewish towns outside Israel, Orthodox and Catholic churches operate, and Pope Francis visited in 2016. Jehovah's Witnesses and some Protestant congregations report the same registration and literature problems found across the region.