Azerbaijan: Sounding the Alarm on Religious Intolerance
May 4, 2012 - 2:34pm, by Eldar Mamedov
EurasiaNet Commentary
President Ilham Aliyev’s administration likes to cast Azerbaijan as a bastion of secularism. Yet, it’s a very bad time to be an atheist in Baku.
Radical Islam’s reach over Azerbaijani society keeps expanding, spreading a cloud of intolerance over the country. The latest sign of darkening skies is the decision of Agalar Mammadov, a professor at Khazar University and a leading Baku intellectual, to seek asylum in April in Sweden. Mammadov’s flight followed the murder late last year of another leading Azeri secularist, Rafig Tagi. Both developments are connected to Islamic radicals’ efforts to silence those who offer differing visions for how society should be organized.
Mammadov aroused the ire of radicals by initiating a letter in the wake of Tagi’s death -- who was presumably murdered by pro-Iranian extremists – that warned about the growing danger of violent Islamism. The letter was signed by 54 intellectuals. Subsequently, Mammadov came under public verbal attacks, and received several threats of bodily harm. With Tagi’s fate serving as an example, Mammadov opted to seek asylum. His case emphasizes a sad truth: Azerbaijani secularists feel increasingly squeezed between the state´s inability to protect their rights, Islamist intolerance and the indifference of society at large, including, with some exceptions, the political opposition.
The cases of Tagi and Mammadov testify to the fact that the political model represented by the Aliyev administration – call it secular authoritarianism – is actually ill-suited for protecting the rights of the non-religious. A freer, more democratic society would offer a safer haven for secularists, given that freedom of conscience is a key pillar of an open society.
http://www.eurasianet.org/node/65359