Framing Perceptions of Islam and the ‘Islamic Revival’ in the Post-Soviet Countries

JRSI journal, Romania 2005
Framing Perceptions of Islam and the ‘Islamic Revival’ in the Post-Soviet Countries

Abstract
This paper studies the main directions and trends in framing the perceptions of Islam in the post-Soviet countries under the process of so-called “Islamic Revival”. It focuses on the Northern Caucasus region in Russia, Azerbaijan and the countries of Central Asia - a battlefield of the tensions between local Muslim traditions and imported Islamism. It argues that Islamic revival in post-Soviet countries has been associated either with the revival of local pre-modern traditions and thus with the localization of post-socialist Muslim space, or with the spread of Islamism absolutely alien to local Muslim traditions, introduced from abroad.
Islam in the Caucasus and Central Asia during the Soviet era, main actors and the current development in the struggle for framing perception of Islam during the so-called “Islamic Revival” among the post-Soviet Muslim nations are discussed in this paper.

Introduction
The Post-Communist transition has been accompanied not only with political, social and economic changes, but also cultural ones. After 70 years of official atheism and the collapse of the Communist value system religion started to revive and play important role in different spheres of social life, politics and economy. The bright example of such revival is the mainly Muslim populated ex-Soviet republics. Building of new and modernization of old mosques, an increasing number of Islamic study centers, schools and universities, thousands of pilgrims going to Mecca for Hajj every year as well as falling profits of alcohol producing plants more or less can be observed in all of these republics. Islam to some extent could manage to fill the void left after the collapse of Communism.
The processes of religious revival have played a tremendous role in lives of people of the former Soviet Union. Islam does not separate the secular life from the spiritual one. Here is the reason for its active involvement and influence on the course of political events in the Northern Caucasus. The concepts "Islamic" and "National" are closely intertwined in Muslim perception. During the years of Soviet atheism, people continued to follow Islamic customs and rites, understanding them as national and not religious.
This paper will focus on the Northern Caucasus region in Russia, Azerbaijan and the countries of Central Asia since they, to some extent, became the battle field of the tensions between local Muslim traditions and imported Islamism. I will try to answer the following question: What are the main directions and trends in framing the perceptions of Islam in the post-Soviet countries.
It can be argued that Islamic revival in post-Soviet countries has been associated either with the revival of local pre-modern traditions and thus with the localization of post-socialist Muslim space, or with the spread of Islamism absolutely alien to local Muslim traditions, introduced from abroad. It resulted in certain tensions between them. In the Northern Caucasus and Republics of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan these tensions have even [has] turned to [the] military conflicts. Very often such conflicts are considered to be between Islam and secularism, whereas, “the real dispute lies within Islam” (Cornell and Spector 2002: 195).

Islam in the Caucasus and Central Asia during the Soviet Era
During the Soviet rule and times of the militant atheism there still were official “independent” Muslim religious administrations: the Muslim Religious (Spiritual) Board for the European USSR and Siberia (centered in Ufa, Bashkir ASSR); the Muslim Religious Board for Central Asia and Kazakhstan (Tashkent, Uzbekistan); the Muslim Religious Board for the North Caucasus (in Buinaksk; later in Makhachkala, Daghestan); and the Muslim Religious Board for Transcaucasia (Baku, Azerbaijan). The strongest position and hidden leadership were granted to the Muslim Religious Board for Central Asia and Kazakhstan, situated in Tashkent and head by Uzbek nationals mainly. Existence of the same institutional structures for the various Islamic traditions can be evaluated as a process of homogenization.
These Boards did not oppose the Soviet rule and even tried to find similarities between Communist ideology and Qur’anic values. These are equality of nations and sexes, freedom of religion, security of honorable work, and ownership of land by those who till it and others, which were put in practice after October Revolution (Saroyan 1997).
As our focus is the regions of the Northern Caucasus, Azerbaijan and Central Asia, let’s see what was the position and specific features of Islam in the above-mentioned regions separately.
Central Asia
First of all, I have to mention that traditionally Uzbeks and Tajiks have been more religious than Kazakhs, Turkmens and even some Kyrgyzs (Hiro 1994, Rashid 1994). The main reason is that the latter have had a nomadic life-stile while the former settled. During whole Soviet era up to Gorbachev reforms the main part in framing of the perception of Islam in this region was played by the Muslim Religious Board for Central Asia and Kazakhstan, situated in Tashkent. This religious body had more rights and advantages than other boards. It issued the only official Muslim journal “Muslims of the Soviet East” and was responsible for other literature and publications about Islam. In fact, there emerged and developed the Muslim administrative elite, which was trying to promote its own authority and undermine any alternative authority.
Perestroika and changing sociopolitical and economic circumstances brought to life the reconstruction of Islam not only in terms of theological debates between isolated Muslim elites but also reinterpretations of Muslim identity in Central Asia.
Fragmentation and regionalization substituted homogenization. Saroyan highlights fragmentation along ethnic and sectarian lines within the Muslim community in the USSR as one of them most important institutional changes in Muslim religious organizations (Saroyan 1997). In 1990 an assembly of Muslim clerics in Alma-Ata declared the establishment of a Muslim Board for Kazakhstan. Central Asian boards based in Tashkent did not recognize the legitimacy of this new board.
The establishment of a new medresa also allowed for the development of differentiation as well as further divided Muslims by nationality in Central Asia. For example, the inauguration of new training centers for the clergy in the various republics meant that Turkmen Muslims studied in Turkmen medresa and Tajiks studied in Tajik medresa. Moreover, the Tajik medresa, along with religious subjects, also provided instruction in Tajik history and culture, which clearly meant stress on the national issues. Thus, without the bonds of a common institutional experience and educational process, Muslim clerics increasingly had contact only with members of their own nationality and preached a more localized form of Islam.
The rapidly changing political environment also created conditions for new forms of Muslim religious association. In the past, the Muslim Religious Boards could rely in part on the coercive power of Moscow to prevent the emergence of independent Muslim religious centers. In the perestroika era, however, liberalization allowed for the emergence of several new Muslim religious movements. The Muslim Religious Boards not only confronted a new set of religious and political challenges, they also increasingly faced a challenge from below-from Muslim religious movements that operated independently from the boards (Saroyan 1997). First strong challengers in Central Asia were the Turkestan Islamic party centered in Uzbekistan’s Ferghana Valley and Islamic Renaissance Party in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.
Muslims in the Ferghana town of Namangan near Kyrgyzstan border began their movement with the takeover of a mosque that had been used as a storage facility for wine. After making renovations to the building, the Namangan Muslims chose an imam and mosque council and opened the mosque for regular worship. In this way, the mosque became the first in the postwar Soviet Union to operate outside the jurisdiction of a Muslim Religious Board. In the ensuing months, local activists began the construction of a medresa alongside the mosque. Most significant about the Ferghana Valley movement and other independent religious movements that emerged in the late perestroika era was the nature of their challenge. Their target was not secular Soviet state, but self-serving and corrupt Muslim boards.
Collapse of USSR and gaining independence intensified “Islamic revival”; especially in the southern part of Central Asia, namely Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and the Ferghana valley region of Kyrgyzstan. Islam has deeper roots there than in western republics of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. Radical Islamist movements opposed official religious elite and authoritarian regimes in these countries. Authoritarian governments in turn tried to suppress them.

Northern Caucasus
The multiethnic community of the Northern Caucasus has been traditionally poly-confessional. Here, along with the autochthonous pagan beliefs, at various times of history Christianity, Judaism and Islam have been widespread. Since the XVII-XIX centuries Sunni Islam has became the indisputably dominant religion in the region. In the first half of the XIX century Islam was a flag for national movement for independence of the mountain people of the Northern Caucasus, which strengthened itself in the minds of those who previously were very often Islamicised only on the surface (excluding the inhabitants of Southern and Central Daghestan). The exception was the people of the Indo-European language group the Ossetians, who were and are predominantly of the Orthodox Church, and the Tats in the northern part of the Caucasus, who for a long time were referred to as "the mountain Jews", because Judaism was the dominant faith among them.
In Soviet times the Muslim Religious Board for the North Caucasus was a main official religious center this heterogeneous in its linguistic variety and ethnic composition region. There are traditionally have existed two versions of Sunni Islam Khanafit and Shafit, different Sufi orders and small Shiite communities (mostly in Southern Daghestan). Historically the primary expression of religiosity in the region has been Sufism (Bobrovnikov 2001). Unlike orthodox ideology the “mosque tendency” is relatively weak in Sufism. Originating from the Naqshbandiyya and Qadiriyya Sufi lineages, the widespread network of Sufi orders links the North Caucasus’s disparate ethnic, linguistic, clan, and village communities. Sufism is especially important in the region since most mosques in the area were destroyed during the deportation of Chechens and Ingushes in World War II (Saroyan 1997). Thus, the North Caucasian religious board most clearly fits the description of official Muslim elite isolated from the people. It already had a challenger in framing a perception of Islam among population in face of alternative power - Sufi movements.
Thus the religious board’s definition of Islamic identity and practice is orthodox and exclusionary. The North Caucasian board emphasizes mosque worship and the religious authority and primacy of the official cleric. Pilgrimages to local shrines (mazar) - traditional meeting places of Sufis, are discouraged, and the believing population is encouraged to participate in religious rituals performed by official clerics in the state-registered mosques. The North Caucasian clergy has issued a fetwa prohibiting women from leading religious associations. This can be understood as a measure aimed against the numerous Sufi orders that are led by women and whose membership is entirely female (Ibid).
It can be argued the North Caucasian administration adopted the dogmatic variant of Islamic identity articulated by the Tashkent Muslim establishment in response to the cultural particularities and Sufi opposition.
However, weakening of the Soviet Union has the results like in Central Asia: fragmentation of the official board. Changes in the North Caucasus were even more striking and confusing. A conference of religious leaders from the region declared the dissolution of the North Caucasian board. In its place they proposed the formation of “religious centers” for each of the ethnic autonomous regions in the area. Like in the case of Central Asia Makhachkala refused to recognize the decision to dissolve the North Caucasian board, but could not stop this process.
There was also third power, which have been in a shadow for a long time - “Caucasian Wahhabis”. Their roots go back to the 1970s, when proselytizing Muslim groups appeared in many of Daghestan and Chechen villages of Terek-Sulak lowlands (Bobrovnikov 2001). They had secret meetings in houses of local radical Muslim scholars taking classes of Arabic and Qur’an. In fact, such unlicensed schools carried out missionary work among the village youth. The most famous teachers have been Bagauddin Kebedov and Ahmad-qadi Akhtaey (who died in 1998).
According to Bobrovnikov the movement of North Caucasian Wahhabis appeared as a reaction to anti-Islamic socialist reforms. They were more popular in the lowland regions of Daghestan and Chechnya where collectivization and “cultural revolution” were successfully implemented from 1930-1970s.
Azerbaijan
According to Motika 4% to 6% of the population may be called ”active” believers, which means that they obey the various Islamic regulations of behavior; 87% to 92% do consider themselves as Muslims, but comply with only a (quite often little) part of the religious regulations. Only about 3% call themselves atheists (Motika 2001).
In contrast to the North Caucasian administration, the Transcaucasian Muslim elite have operated under different conditions. Aside from its jurisdiction over Muslims in Armenia (before they were massacred and deported) and Georgia (where in any case most Muslims are ethnic Azerbaijanis), Baku religious board is staffed by Azerbaijanis and serves an Azerbaijani community. Administration can be characterized as an Azerbaijani national institution. In Azerbaijan the overlapping of religious and national customs and identities is more common and likely since “Muslim” is coterminous with “Azerbaijani.” (Hadjy-zadeh 1997, Safizadeh 1998, Shaffer 2000, Motika 2001). Another important factor is that Baku administration is also heir to a religious administration established during the Tsarist period and thus may have some historical legitimacy for the population. Probably more important, however, is that Azerbaijan’s Muslim community is predominantly Shiite. In contrast to Sunni Islam, formal religious hierarchy is not foreign to the historical development of Shiite Islam. Thus the operation of official institutions regulating religious life can be seen as part of Azerbaijan’s Shiite heritage (Saroyan 1997).
Since in this sense it enjoys a greater degree of legitimacy in popular eyes, it can more easily accommodate particular popular traditions by appropriating them as its own legitimate religious traditions. For example, while visitations to saints’ tombs or other holy sites have been criticized as heretical by the Tashkent and North Caucasian establishments, the Baku Muslim elite has encouraged such visitations by organizing pilgrimages under its auspices to holy sites in Azerbaijan (Ibid.). Thus it can be argued that the intensity of Islamic reconstruction is much less pronounced in the Azerbaijani administration. The Baku elite’s appropriation of popular Azerbaijani traditions serves its quest to consolidate its socio-religious authority and legitimacy.
In fact, Baku board is the only one that could survive and develop after the Gorbachev reforms and collapse of the USSR. It is also particular case where the least observed the role of transnational Islamic movements, and perception of Islam was mainly framed by “specific circumstances of the republic” (Motika 2001).
During the post-Soviet transition, however, the Muslim Religious Board for Transcaucasia was not the only actor in Islamic revival. I think one can highlight the following “competitors”:
· Popular and recognized Shiite religious leaders, opposing the official center, e.g. Haji Ilqar Ibrahimoglu - Imam of Djuma Mosque, Azerbaijani representative of the International Religious Liberty Association and human rights defender. He does not obey the board, criticizes it and government. At the moment, Haji Ilqar is under 5 year suspended sentence of deprivation of liberty and his issue is under the rapt of many human rights defenders, international organizations and some Western Governments.
· Self-declared mullahs and religious leaders opposing Shiism and thus the board. I can mention a name Hamet Suleymanov, who is considered to be Wahhabi. They have their mosques where the followers gather together.
· Pro-Iranian Islam party, officially registered in 1992. In 1996 leaders of the party were arrested under the accusation of spying for Iran and sending youngsters to IRI for military training. Party has up to 70 000 members, but is not supported by the board and intellectuals.
· The latter can be defined as actors as well. Muslim intellectuals might be seen as reformists and modernists of Islam. People like Haji Ilqar can also be referred to this group.

As we can see, Islam in Soviet republics was under control of local official religious boards (to less extent in Northern Caucasus), which, in turn, were controlled by the state. One of the most important features was the fact that Islam became a part of national identity and it resulted in strength of traditional Islam in all republics. However, lack of religious knowledge among population and high level of ignorance as well as corruption among clergy created fertile ground for emergence and strengthening of new religious movements and sects and not only of Islamist sense.

Radical Islamists: Who Are They?
The notion of "Islamic Fundamentalism" has become so strongly entrenched in the minds of the Western common men, thanks to the efforts of the mass media, that it seems difficult to imagine that fundamentalism can be something different. The concept itself appeared at the beginning of the 20th century in conjunction with the movement of radical Protestants directed against rationalism and modernism. Similar movements do exist in Judaism, as well as in non-monotheistic religions such as Hinduism, which calls for the resurrection of what had never existed in history-a pure, unalloyed Hinduism (Chanishev 1974). However, it should be mentioned that Islamic fundamentalism has shown itself on the largest scale and to be the best organized. The reasons for this are hidden in the peculiarities of Islam, which is not only a religion, but also “modus vivendi” and this fact very easily transforms it into one of the factors in the political game, which is being played on different levels (Yarlykapov 1999).
I already mentioned that after the collapse of Soviet Union there was heyday of radical Islamic movements. For better understanding of the problem we should, fist of all, define who are these Wahhabis, if there are any.
Radical Islamist movements demand a return to the original Islam of the days of the Prophet and His first successors. The basis for it should only be the Qu’ran and Sunnah of the Prophet; the majority of what was achieved through Muslim thought involving other resources and implicit in the life of the Muslim community (including beliefs, as well as everyday life) is declared prohibited innovation and is rejected. It is worth mentioning the fact that such movements are not a product of the XX century, as it might appear to an unsophisticated contemporary observer. This idea has a long history and even a particular symbol in Islam: those supporting “fundamentalist” ideas are named Salafits (as-salafiya). In Sunni Islam such ideas found expression in one of the four renderings Khanbalist Mazkhab (originally it was formed as a religious-political movement in the IX century, and only later was transformed into a dogmatic legal school at the beginning of the XI century). Later, in the XVIII century, Muhammad Ibn Abd Al-Wahhab elaborated his own teachings based on the Khanbalist ideology and tried to implement them.
The followers of the movement call themselves 'Muslims' or 'brothers' (ikhwan) and consider their congregations as the only communities of the faithful (jamaat). They are also known as salafs or salafits, making reference to the first followers of Prophet Mohammed whose way of life they claim to imitate. They prefer to call themselves as “true Muslims” or “monotheists” who have returned to the purity of the original Islam. The movement was named 'Wahhabi' by its opponents.
The Wahhabis, accusing traditional Islam of departing from the original teachings, in their innovations (bida) reject many customs and rites entrenched in the minds of people as Islamic. Thus it is forbidden to read the Qur’an over a grave or in the house of the deceased, to read “Yasin” sura on funerals, to use beads etc. Not acknowledging the special virtues of the Prophet, the Wahhabis are against the celebration of the Mavlid, the birthday of Muhammad. A special target for attacks is Sufism, cult of the saints and Ziyarat (pilgrimage) to holy places, which is closely linked to Sufism and Shiism. These practices are sharply condemned as polytheism (shirk).
It [is] also should be mentioned that even in spite of quite radical agenda different movements differ on their repertoire of contention, which is ranging from peaceful religious propaganda to the above-mentioned acts of militant extremism and terrorism. A good example of such a difference is two movements in Central Asia: “peaceful” Hizb-ut-Tahrir and militant Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.
Very important is fact [is] that first of all the radical ideas have been disseminated mainly in those areas where the economic and social situation is unstable: Chechnya and the foothills of Daghestan, poor and war-torn regions of Central Asian republics (Yarlykapov 1999, Rashid 1994, Hiro 1994, Cornell and Spector 2002). The main target group is youth. The young people have not yet become integrated into the life of the community. They have not yet fully perceived the traditional culture, or even protest against some of its components. In the course of teaching, great attention is given to learning the Arabic language, and to studying the Qu’ran and Khadises in the original language. In this way they are being trained for forthcoming discussions. It is no secret that Wahhabis receive significant financial support from abroad. People of Daghestan even have christened Wahhabism as "Dollar Islam" (Yarlykapov 1999).

The Struggle for Islam in the Post-Soviet Republics
Post-Communist transition in Muslim regions is noticeable for the activation of different religious groups and movements (not only Islamic by the way). Thousands of missioners and preachers from abroad with briefcases full of dollars together with local “fighters for faith” started actively challenge existing perceptions and traditions of a religion as well as a common lifestyle.
The main target of their criticism was, first, local clergy and then local governments. The clergy has been criticized and accused of ignorance, being corrupted, betrayal of religion for indulgences from the side of oppressive and corrupt governments as well as cooperation with atheist Soviet power and KGB. The latter was said about all the Muslim religious boards and their administration. For example, a head of the Spiritual Board of Muslims of the Caucasus since 1980 Sheikh ul Islam Allakhshukur Pashazade is said to be a KGB colonel, though he rejects these accusations.
However, it will be wrong to say that only Wahhabi movements have been active. Local traditional Muslims as well as Sufi orders did their best to resist imported Islam. The most obvious and tragic manifestation of such a clash has been military conflicts in Northern Caucasus and Central Asia.
In Northern Caucasus Wahhabism started to spread in 1970s, but its regional activization started in 1991 from Daghestan and Chechnya (Bobrovnikov 2001). By the mid-1990s Wahhabi congregations, though small in size, emerged in Ingushetia, Karachaevo-Cherkessia and Kabardino-Balkaria. First, they concentrated only on missionery work by imparting Qur’anic education and literature based on Islamic practices such as Bagauddin Kebedov’s book Namaz (Prayer). The center of the movement was located in Daghestani town of Kizliyurt, famous for tis largest Wahhabi madrasa al-Hikma. There were established connections with the foreign missionary Islamic foundations, which beagn to sponsor their activities (Bobrovnikov 2001).
Radicalization started in the mid-1990s. From 1994-1998, a number of armed conflicts occurred between Wahhabi and traditionalists in the towns and villages of Daghestan and Chechnya. Since the mid-1990s, the Wahhabis have been subjected to systematic repression by the local official Muslim clergy. Gradually, outbreaks of fighting within village and town communities were reproduced at the level of the republic and subsequently expanded to the regional level. It was also a period when first Russian-Chechen war started and region got militarized as a result.
In December 1997, Bagauddin Kebedov had to leave Kizilyurt for Urus-Martan in Chechnya. This exile and some other factors resulted in a rapid politicization and radicalization of the movement in terms of its form and programs. “Islamic Jamaat”, established by Bagauddin Kebedov in 1998, announced a holy war (al-jihad al-asgar). This war was to be waged against the “unbelieving secular government” of Daghestan and for the establishment of an “Islamic caliphate in the Caucasus”. With the support of Chechen field commanders, the Wahhabi leaders organized “Islamic peace-making troops”.
The interesting fact is that the militant ideas and practices are shared by both Wahhabis and their religious and secular opponents.
In Central Asia Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and to less extent Kyrgyzstan also turned into the arena of the clash between traditionalists and radicalists for the human minds and power. It is worth mentioning that these countries have worse economic performance than Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan. Still we can observe some negative association between economic performance and spread of religious fundamentalism.
Shortly after independence, Tajikistan got involved into s civil war that pitted the former Communist elite against an opposition force containing strong Islamist groups. This conflict led political regimes in four other regional countries to outlaw many opposition parties and religious movements, halting the development of political opposition (Rashid 1994, Cornell and Spector 2002).
It should be also mentioned that different Islamist movements (e.g. Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, Hizb-ut-Tahrir, Ahle-Sunnah an others) act not only on the territory of one state, but in the whole region. This is the most underdeveloped place in the region, which did not have strong Sufi tradition. The “hottest” place of spread of militant groups is Ferghana Valley and surrounding regions where three republics border with each other. Wahhabi movement in the Ferghana valley is the most determined and organized of all the radical movements (Rashid 1994). They condemn Sufi tradition, Shiites, secular governments and official “Islam”.
As I already mentioned militant Islamist movements discredited themselves in the eye of the public since have challengers from the side of organizations like Hizb-ut-Tahrir (HuT). This is transnational secretive network of different movements working on local level in the Middle East and Central Asia. Having the same goals with militants it has completely a different repertoire: they try to achieve their objectives propagating its tenets through leaflets and fliers, rather than the use of force (Botobekov 2001, Babadzhanov 2001). The lack of secular opposition (where the most active opposition is in exile or jail) contributed to the fast rise of HuT (Cornell and Spector 2002).
The Uzbek government of Karimov is considered to be the most anti-Islamic government in Central Asia. However, suppressing radical movements the Uzbek government has maintained very good relations with the global network of the most prominent Sufi order - Naqshbandiya (Cornell and Spector 2002).
Turkmenistan’s Islamic revival was relatively weak. The Government could manage to control a process of framing and foreign influence was minimal. Kazakhstan is least Islamicized country in the region. They also have undergone large-scale “Russification” and have the biggest Russian population. There was also revival of religion in a country, but it was not as strong as in other countries and local clergy could satisfy it easily. As Rashid mentions in his book “many of faithful who come to pray every Friday at local mosques belong to non Kazakh minorities, who see Islam as an effective means to distance themselves from both the Kazakhs and the Russians and as means to assert their ethnic identity with their national homeland” (Rashid 1994: 133). I would also like to mention that Kazakhs and Turkmens have traditionally been nomads, which is negatively correlated with a role of religion in their lives.
Azerbaijan includes different elements of the “Islamic Revival” in other regions of the Post-Soviet space. Radical Wahhabi movements came later and could not achieve such a progress as in Central Asia and Northern Caucasus. Financed by Iran groups also try to challenge existing status quo. But unlike other republics nobody openly and extremely opposed an idea of a secular state. At the same time Islamic movements were not as weak and unpopular as in Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. In first chapter I mentioned main actors in framing the perception of Islam in Azerbaijan. But what are the main trends in this process?
The prestige and influence of Azerbaijan's official religious "establishment," the Spiritual Board of Muslims of the Caucasus, which has been headed since the 1980s by Sheikh ul Islam Allakhshukur Pashazade, is reportedly rapidly evaporating, while that of some other members of the unofficial Muslim clergy is on the rise. Those developments suggest that Islam is becoming a rallying point for the dispossessed, impoverished, and unemployed, and even simply for those Azerbaijanis who reject many aspects of western culture. As co-chairman of the Social-Democratic party of Azerbaijan Zardusht Alizade argued in his interview to Turan information agency: "The politicization of Islam has helped drive the secular opposition into a corner. A holy place is never empty, and the population has reached out for the mosques...The politicization of Islam was the reaction of the lower classes to the introduction of such attributes of Western mass culture as beauty contests, the cult of eroticism, the legalization of sexual minorities, and the provocative consumption of the upper classes. The ethical puritanism of the conservative sectors of the population manifested itself in the form of devotion to the Islamic behests of their forebears." Unsolved problem in Karabakh, about million of refugees and internally deisplaced persons as well as thousands of veterans of war and families of martyrs also create a fertile ground for such trends.
As Motika argues the intellectuals might have a considerable influence in framing the future outlook of Islam in Azerbaijan since most of Azerbaijanis consider Islam as a part of their identity (despite of lack of knowledge about their own religion). All actors (except some radical Wahhabis and small extreme Shiite groups) try to minimize the differences between Sunni and Shiite Islam and find ways to unite the different sects and movements within Islam (Motika 2001).
The state established a certain committee head by one of so called Islamic intellectuals and modernists Rafiq Aliyev. That committee is currently completing the process, which it began last fall, of reregistering all religious communities in Azerbaijan. All missioners and preachers from abroad will be registered and tested by experts of the committee. It also is going to check the financial base of all existing religious organizations.
Azerbaijan's opposition parties are well aware that the burgeoning popularity of Islam could both destabilize the domestic political situation, and undercut the degree of support they currently enjoy. Some parties, e.g. the Azerbaijan Popular Front Party, have amended their programs to give greater emphasis to the role of Islam in Azerbaijani society.
I would also like to mention regional diversity of Islamic ideas in Azerbaijan. Baku and surrounding regions are more pro-Shiite, though Wahhabis are getting more support in Baku and Sumgait. Wahhabis are strong in the northern parts of Azerbaijan, where different Sunni Daghestani minorities reside compactly. Regions bordering Iran are influenced by ideas and support of Iranian Shiite model of Islam.

Conclusion
After examination of the processes, which have taken place in the regions of our interest, some conclusions can be drawn. The first conclusion is that it is still too early to make any clear-cut conclusions, as the process of “Islamic Revival” is still on as well as the Post-Communist transition itself.
However it is obvious that the main conflict is within Islam. Different movements and groups struggle for the framing the perceptions of Islam. In some countries this conflict turned to the military clashes between different groups. It can be explained by using such contradictions for achieving political goals by certain groups and even states like in the Northern Caucasus and Central Asia. However, there is a trend to demilitarization and change in the contentious strategies of these movements to more the peaceful.
Long tradition of secularism as well as other Soviet legacies also played a role in framing these perceptions of Islam. On the one hand, it framed a kind of “national” Islam in these countries; on the other hand, it creates the fertile ground for framers to influence unemployed and poor youth. In this respect, corrupted and discredited local clergy left from the Soviet times also contributes to the disillusion of public and turning to the puritan Islamists.
For most of the Muslims of the post-Soviet nations, Islam serves as a component of their ethnic and regional identity, but is not their primary collective identity (Hadjy-zadeh 1997, Safizadeh 1998, Shaffer 2000, Suleymanov 2001). Solidarity on an Islamic basis with Muslims abroad is minimal, although it has begun to emerge among movements, especially in the North Caucasus and Central Asia. Most members of the region hold in high regard their local cultures, and they are not particularly susceptible to chief identification with the broader Muslim world.
Islamist movements are supported from abroad. Rich Muslim countries through different charity and religious organizations try to create and support a kind of “advocacy networks” in order to develop their type of Islam and have strong influence in the Post-Soviet countries from inside. It is clear that radical ideas are spread more successfully in the regions worst in their economic performance.
One can roughly say that the above-mentioned processes in the post-Soviet countries are just another illustration of the centuries-old conflict between Wahhabism, Sufism and traditional Islam, and will be right, in a way. However, this view of the problem is too simplified. In fact the processes going on are more sophisticated and not only religion is involved. Economic and political interests, socio-cultural and political factors, geopolitics and others altogether contribute to the complication of this issue.
Writing this paper I could not conduct precise examination of all necessary factors. Study of such issues as interconnection between poverty, unemployment and radicalism, whether Islamism is more developed in urban or in rural areas, among which strata of society, connection between secular authoritarianism and Islamism, regionalism (tribalism) and Islamism, and many others, would be very useful and helpful for better understanding the process of “Islamic Revival” in the post-Soviet countries.

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