Reportedly more than 200 Azerbaijani Sunnis were fighting against the Syrian Army in 2013 within the Jihadist forces, with 30 of them dying.
Different YouTube videos show the involvement of Azerbaijanis in the civil war in Syria. The worsening of the Syrian conflict and its gradual transformation into a kind of sectarian war has attracted dozens of fighters from Azerbaijan. Unfortunately for Azerbaijan, this mild division among the groups is getting worse and worse every day, as the result of sectarianism developing in the Middle East.
However, despite the considerable sensitivity showed by the Azerbaijani state to the delicate question of relations among Shia, Sunni, and Salafi Islam, among the religious leaders of these three groups there is a certain sense of division that is not currently shared by the average believer. The state religious policy has basically remained above the Shia-Sunni division and has rarely favored one religious group over another. The official Islamic establishment, under the leadership of Sheikh ul Islam of the State Committee for Religious Affairs, tried to harness this revival and make it compatible with the secular character of the country. This new Islamic element entered into Azerbaijan as a result of religious connections between Azerbaijani students and scholars in the Gulf countries. In addition to these Islamic traditions that have always been active in Azerbaijan, there is now a third one both new and to some extent foreign to local traditions:-salafism. Turkish proselytism by many private organizations has developed a new Sunni consciousness, while Azerbaijani students have introduced new Shia ideas thanks to their studies in Qom, Mashhad, and other major Shia holy cities. However, at the same time, an indirect consequence of the new Islamic cooperation between local and global Islam has been the reawakening of the old division between Shia and Sunni, an animosity largely forgotten after several decades of anti-Islamic (against both Shias and Sunnis) official policy. The establishment of new links between Azerbaijanis with Iranian, Turkish and/or Gulf Muslims has contributed to the diversification and even enrichment of Islam. The relative sectarianism of this revival has created a source of concern for Azerbaijani authorities. This Islamic revival all around the country is not only an internal development, but also something resulting from influences coming from Iran, Turkey, and some Arab countries. More >Īs was the case for all Muslims in the former Soviet Union, the end of rule by Moscow was a turning point in Azerbaijanis' relationship with Islam. Of special concern for Azerbaijan is that the current exacerbation of the Shia-Sunni division in the Muslim world, such as the emergence of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, or ISIS, in Syria and Iraq, is affecting the traditionally harmonious relations between Shia and Sunnis.īalci was a nonresident scholar in Carnegie’s Russia and Eurasia Program, where his research focuses on Turkey and Turkish foreign policy in Central Asia and the Caucasus. However, with the end of the Soviet Union, the subsequent gradual reconnection between Azerbaijan and the rest of the Muslim world has rekindled among Azerbaijanis a sense of difference between Shia and Sunni. As a result, the distinction between Shia and Sunni Islam was to a large extent blurred. Thanks to the long Russian and Soviet domination between 18 that promoted secularism and the emergence of a local enlightenment movement, maarifçilik, the old Shia and Sunni division lost importance. However, from the beginning of the 19th century onwards, neither Iranians nor Ottomans were able to exert influence on Azerbaijan since all the South Caucasus fell under the control of a third power, Russia. This characteristic derives from the history of the country where for several centuries Shia Safawids and Sunni Ottomans fought each other for religious and political supremacy in the region. Azerbaijan is the only post-Soviet Republic where the population is divided between Shia (65 percent) and Sunni (35 percent) Muslims.