Since gaining independence in 1991, post-Soviet Azerbaijan has been experiencing a broad-based Islamic revival shaped by both homegrown as well as foreign influences. The clash of these influences has generated an “Islamization” contest for the souls of the country’s population, the majority of whom are Shiite as well as ethnic Turks. This competition has unfolded between Shiite and Sunni preachers as well as between different Sunni movements, including traditional Azeri Shafei movements, Salafi Khanbali (Hambali) streams that have been “imported” from the Arab world, and Turkish Hanafi activists and organizations.
Of all the Sunni movements in Azerbaijan, the most influential is the Turkish Nurcular network that is now led by its dominant offshoot known widely as the “Gülen” or “Hizmet” movement. Named for its founder, the Turkish Muslim preacher Fethullah Gülen, the movement is a faith-based educational network that is enormously well-resourced and highly active internationally, especially in the Turkic world that stretches from Turkey into Central Asia.
In Azerbaijan, the Gülen movement has succeeded in reaching out to a diverse population, but especially to urban elites. It is different from other Islamic movements in that it promotes its religious teachings not through outright proselytization, but discreetly through its network of secular educational institutions, social media and business associations. Moreover, the movement has not become directly involved in the hotly contested disputes over the place of religion in post-Soviet Azerbaijan that have been generated by the country’s religious revival. Whereas Azeri secularists, Islamic activists and liberal human rights defenders have all traded barbs over Islam and “Muslim rights” including whether hijab can be worn in public spaces, the Gülen movement has largely remained silent on these matters.
Because of the Hizmet movement’s political quietism and its appearance of secularism, Sunni Islamists have repeatedly criticized it as “un-Islamic,” for introducing “innovations” (bida) into Islam, and for ignoring the problems that religious Muslims face. Alternatively, both Azeri secularists and Shia religious activists have accused the Gülen network of promoting a hidden Turkish-Sunni Islamist political agenda, of serving as political agents for Turkey, and of promoting Sunnism against Azerbaijan’s native Shiism. Such widely divergent appraisals have given rise to many questions and considerable suspicion about the Gülen movement and its aims. What makes the movement so different from the other Islamic movements operating in Azerbaijan? What is the Gülen movement’s agenda in Azerbaijan, and what is its relationship to affiliated Nurcular associations back home in Turkey and elsewhere internationally? Will the movement and its growing network continue to integrate with secular Azeri society, or is it following a hidden agenda with the aim of refashioning Azerbaijani society?
More here: http://www.currenttrends.org/research/detail/the-gulen-movement-in-azerbaijan
