USINFO: "Educators say Azerbaijan's culture is more important than its oil"

Azerbaijani educators told a U.S. audience recently that their small country on the Caspian Sea can contribute much more than oil to the rest of the world.

Azerbaijan blends Islamic tradition and religious tolerance at a geographic and cultural crossroad linking Europe, Asia and the Middle East. While seeking more contacts with other nations, Azerbaijanis also want to preserve their country's unique balance of tradition and tolerance, the educators said.

"We are all for integration. Not Westernization, but integration," said Sevinj Ruintan, a history professor at Baku State University. "We do not think that we are the only ones who can learn" from cultural exchanges with other countries, she said. "We think that others can learn from us as well."

Ruintan was among six Azerbaijani women scholars and teachers, all Muslims, who visited the United States March 27-April 14 in a State Department-sponsored International Visitor Leadership program, where they looked at religion and education in this country.

During a March 29 roundtable discussion on Islam in Azerbaijan and Europe, four of the six visitors wore traditional head scarves and two wore Western-style business clothes. They said the majority of Azerbaijani women lead a secular lifestyle and do not wear head scarves in public.

Azerbaijanis rediscovered their Islamic heritage after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, yet the resurgence of religion has not undermined the country's acceptance of other faiths nor its fair-minded treatment of women, members of the group said, speaking through an interpreter. For example, they said, Azerbaijanis have valued the education of women and girls for well over a century, and many teachers and scholars are women.

"Azerbaijan has always been a very multiethnic nation," said Naila Suleymanova, a rare manuscripts researcher at the Azerbaijan Academy of Sciences. Until the Soviet Union takeover in 1920, Muslims, Christians and Jews lived together in Baku. "We have never had any conflicts with non-Muslims," Suleymanova said. "Everybody in a way back in Soviet times fought for his or her faith. Communists were closing mosques and churches and the synagogues." Beginning in 1990, "representatives of all the ethnic groups began to return to religion."

Azerbaijan is bordered by Armenia, Iran, Russia, Turkey and the Republic of Georgia. The country has an ethnic Turkic heritage that also blends elements of ancient Persian culture. Despite shortcomings during a presidential election in November 2005, U.S. officials support democratic efforts in the former Soviet republic.

"Azerbaijan has a chance to emerge as a secular democracy that has a predominantly Shiia population," Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Fried testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on April 5.

Thomas Goltz, a professor at the University of Montana who was a journalist in Azerbaijan during the early 1990s, said the country's rediscovery of Shiite Islam once created the potential for an Islamist revolution. "The most interesting thing to me is that it didn't happen," Goltz said during a lecture in January at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington.

During the lecture, Goltz showed a film he made in 1994 documenting the rise of Shiite Islam as Azerbaijanis cast aside 70 years of Soviet dominance. "We preserved our religion like a precious flower," one Azerbaijani said in the film, which showed fervent gatherings of worshippers. Goltz, who was an observer during the November 2005 elections, said the country has political flaws but appears to have struck a balance between modernity and its cultural identity.

Although the government of neighboring Iran is dominated by theocrats, even religious-minded Azerbaijanis say they are not interested in Iran's approach to Islam. "We are not on the level of Islam seen in Iran," Sevda Hasanova, editor of Hesabat, a social-political magazine, said during the State Department roundtable. "Our people would never want to live the kind of Islam as practiced in Iran."

"The overall mentality of the Azeri people is clearly intertwined with Islam," said Ulduza Fataliyeva, an observant Muslim who teaches ethics for the nonprofit Center for Religious Studies in Sumgayit, north of Baku.

"That applies to all people, whether they adhere to the rules of Islamic law or not," said Fataliyeva. "As an ethnic Azeri, everyone knows the rules of Islamic conduct. Whether we worship according to the Islamic ritual or not, that doesn't change our Islamic identity."

Zakiyya Abilova, a rare manuscripts researcher for the Azerbaijani Academy of Sciences, said she chooses to wear a head scarf as an outward sign of her faith. "We can't say people do not have any religion if they do not pray," Abilova said. "We all have God in our heart."

Abilova learned Arabic as part of her university studies, and she said her doctoral dissertation was related to sharia, Islamic law. "Islam is a true light that enriches the human spirit, and I am really proud to be an Islamic scholar," said Abilova.

The decision whether to wear a head scarf does not influence the way women are treated in public, the educators said. "In our country, whether or not you're covered or uncovered, the attitude men have toward women is good," said Suleymanova, who is also a manuscripts researcher at the Academy of Sciences.

In discussing what Azerbaijan has to offer the world, the women were concerned that outsiders tend to view their country only in light of its petroleum reserves. Azerbaijan became an important oil-producing region more than 100 years ago and was a major oil and gas supplier to the Soviet Union. In the 1990s, Azerbaijan signed multibillion-dollar agreements with Western companies. The 1,610-kilometer $4 billion Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan pipeline - built with U.S. backing - is scheduled to begin regularly pumping oil from Azerbaijan to Turkey's Mediterranean coast later this year.

"Unfortunately, the integration of Azerbaijan has started with the oil agreements and it has ended with them," said Hasanova, the magazine editor. She said she hopes the government of Azerbaijan will put its oil wealth to work for the people. And she noted that some experts predict the oil boom will last no more than 45 years before petroleum reserves begin to run dry.

Azerbaijan lies on the traditional Silk Road and is a crossroad between Asia, the Middle East and Europe. The Azerbaijan Academy of Sciences includes unique volumes of Muslim medical texts, including 363 manuscripts that have been entered in the UNESCO "Memory of the World" register, which preserves world heritage documents.

"Much of the world could benefit from these global treasures," said Abilova, one of the Academy researchers.

Also, many well-known carpet styles from modern-day Iran use Azerbaijani patterns, Ruintan said. In 1828, Azerbaijan was divided between the Russian and Persian empires. The portion north of the Aras River, which was ceded to Russia, eventually became today's Republic of Azerbaijan. A larger portion south of the Aras, to include the city of Tabriz, remains an ethnic Azerbaijani region of Iran. Hence, ethnic Azerbaijanis weave many Iranian carpets.

"So what we could give to the world," said Ruintan, "is our rich cultural heritage. We could try to present our culture on a global basis."

/usinfo.state.gov/