Religious Revival and Secularism in Post-Soviet Azerbaijan
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What Chaves and Gorski might have suggested, if I understand them in a right way, is the necessity to adapt the economic model to non-American or generally non-Western context. If so, insights form other societies and non-Christian religions should be taken into consideration. As I have found out in my own research, an application of the model to other cultures and religions is not straightforward. Some changes in the conceptualization are therefore necessary. In order to do so, I have found it useful to incorporate in my research some ideas of the anthropology of Islam and of Pierre Bourdieu’s research on the dynamics and structure of social fields, including religious one.
Implications for Future Research
The inconclusive findings of research on religious economies theory do not undermine the need for future studies on pluralism. At the moment, scholars are searching for constructive ways to modify the research agenda, so that it could yield more illuminating insights or propose new hypotheses. One proposition is to abandon, for the time being, works intended solely to settling the dispute whether the thesis postulating a positive relationship between religious pluralism and religious vitality is universally true or not. The scope of research should be much wider. In what follows I present three directions, which I have been exploring in this project; they seem to be a good starting point for expanding the model.
First of all, instead of assuming that there is a general law of religious behavior applying to all contexts, which is a very ambitious goal, a more constructive way is to analyse specific cases and to seek to understand causal mechanisms that can influence the relationship between pluralism and religiosity (Smith, 2008). One of the main tasks will be to explain the variations between contexts where there is a positive, negative and null correlation between pluralism and religiousness. The post-Soviet space where religious revival coincides with a sudden diversification of local religious markets and fierce competition offers an interesting test case. In Azerbaijan, in the past twenty years thousands of people began to practice religion and to describe themselves as religious people. Therefore, in my analysis, I will propose the conditions that seem to influence the disputed relationship in the post-communist country, paying special attention to the differences between post-Soviet and North American contexts.
Secondly, as Chaves and Gorski propose (2001), future research shall concentrate on discovering various consequences of a pluralistic situation, not only those postulated by the theory. A good starting point for that, in my opinion, consists in conducting qualitative research that may suggest some mechanisms by which religious diversity impacts religious practices and beliefs. The voices, opinions and perspectives of people (customers) should not be neglected. There is an acute need of more understanding of the social mechanisms taking place in religious markets. Although anthropological methods are limited in scope, they can contribute to the discussion by underlining the local actors’ values, norms, ideas and points of view.
Thirdly, another direction for research is the investigation into the regulation hypothesis, which postulates that state intervention in the freedom of the religious market leads to a decrease in the level of religious activity. On the basis of data from post-Soviet states it is necessary to reject an assumption that there is a direct causal relationship between these two variables. Instead, we need to explore other plausible explanations. Similar inconsistency with theoretical predictions have also been discovered in historical research. Some degree of regulation and control does not always prevent religiosity from flourishing. For example, during the Reformation, religious pluralism and the level of religiousness increased, as the arguments stated, but at the same time regulation of the religious market was rising as well, which is inconsistent with the theory. Thus, it is recommended by Chaves and Gorski to drop the market model proposition about the direct one-way causal relationship and look for possible reciprocal causation between the state intervention, pluralism and religious participation.
1.3Applying Economic Theory to Islam
One of the key problems in applying sociological theories to the study of Islam is the fact that the Muslim religion does not have an institution equivalent to the Christian Church. There is no office similar to the pope and no state such as Vatican. Although in practice a lot of Muslim countries have developed separate groups of religious experts, who often were able to monopolise the production and transmission of Islamic knowledge, in classical Islam the relationship between Allah and believers does not involve any kind of mediators. For that reason, the common operationalization of pluralism in the market model of religious activity—the number of congregations, parishes, or religious groups—is hardly applicable to an Islamic context. While in Christianity a church is a holy space, a mosque has a different status, although it is revered by believers. A majority of Muslims do not affiliate officially with a particular institution that could take part in a market competition. The Islamic religion does not resemble the church with its bureaucratic organization and a system of hierarchy competing with other institutionalised religious firms. Moreover, there is a wide range of institutions for Muslims to attend. A cultural Muslim association can serve both as a cultural centre and as a mosque, without using officially the name “mosque,” and without a minaret or other visible religious symbol. This situation happens in many European countries. In the atmosphere of widespread Islamophobia Muslim communities may prefer not to open another mosque, but rather a different form of institution. Muslims all over the world regularly meet in informal study circles, where they read the Koran, hadiths and writings of past and contemporary Islamic theologians. There are numerous discussion meetings over the ideas of the leading intellectuals of the religious revival, such as Hassan al-Banna, Sayyid Qutb, Abul Ala Maududi. The diversity of the reinterpretations of religion is influencing the scope of practices and discourses. In Europe, the first generations of Muslim immigrants were closely tied to ethnic and tribal communities, but now, among the next generations born and raised in Europe, religious affiliation is more open to choice. Ethnic loyalties are weaker and thus the competition between Islamic communities is more intense (Bendixen, 2013, p. 88–89). In Turkey study circles focused around Said Nursi and his commentary to the Koran the Risale-i Nur, which are known as the Nurcu groups, exert a lot of influence in public sphere. The discussions of Nursi followers are not solely religious, but revolve around public, political, philosophical or moral topics. The reading circles are powerful institutions forming the religious and social identity outside the formal system of madrasas or mosques. They need to be taken into account if we want to understand the Islamic identities in Turkey (Yavuz, 2003, p. 162–170). These very influential forms of associations are not included in most statistical data on religious attendance, although they are also important actors in the competition inside Islam. The problem of pluralism in Islam must be solved in a different way.
In social research on Islam in Azerbaijan the aspect of pluralism has either been neglected or inadequately operationalized. In my view, a promising way to capture diversity and the interactions inside the Islamic field is by the application of Talal Asad’s concept of “discursive traditions.” This proposition grew out of a debate in a relatively new subdiscipline—the anthropology of Islam. It emerged as an opposition to a common practice of essentialism in regard to Islamic religion, i. e., a reduction of Islamic culture to few fixed rules and rituals. The breakthrough in the research on Islam came with the first major ethnographic studies of Muslim societies in the 1960s, which favoured the study of religious scriptures and practices as they were understood and discussed in various societies functioning in their own historical, economic, and cultural contexts. An emphasis was put on a “bottom-up” perspective explaining how various types of social actors influence the transformation of Islamic doctrines, practices, ideas. The symbolic moment regarded as a birth of the new field of inquiry into Islamic religion is the publication of Clifford Geertz’s book “Islam Observed” in 1968. In the following decades, publica
tions on Muslim lives and Islamic religion in the Middle East, Indonesia, Asia, Africa started to appear.6 Comparative studies, such as Ernest Gellner’s “Muslim Society” (1981) or Michael Gilsenan’s “Recognizing Islam” (1982) presented the diversity of interpretations and patterns of worship inside the Islamic umma (Launay, 1992). Theoretical discussion over the main issues, questions, and challenges related to this new anthropological field has been initiated by Abdul Zein (1977). But it was Talal Asad’s article (1986) that provoked more intellectual ferment in anthropology.
For this work I have found the concept of “discursive tradition” particularly useful. It was developed by many scholars, including Abdul Zein and philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, but in this thesis I follow Asad’s formulation (1986, p. 14):
[a]n Islamic discursive tradition is simply a tradition of Muslim discourse that addresses itself to conceptions of the Islamic past and future, with reference to a particular Islamic practice in the present.
It suggests that the Islamic religion can be studied by social scientists as a diversity of meanings and practices within one religion, but within a certain framework. The emphasis on the term “tradition” points to certain limitations in classifications; not every religious or spiritual belief or practice observed in a Muslim society is Islamic. Nor, according to Asad, can we speak of multiple “Islams,” such as “Moroccan Islam” or “Indonesian Islam,” as such an approach ignores the fact that, all in all, we are discussing one religion with well-defined doctrinal, ritual and legal requirements. In my view, however, national characteristics of Islam can be justified, as we treat them only as an indication that local specific experience and developments have an impact of the form and content of religion practiced by particular group of people. Therefore, having in mind this ambiguity, I will in some cases refer to those national characteristics speaking about, e.g., Turkish or Iranian Islam.
An important aspect in this debate is the fact that in the mainstream Islam (excluding some radical, exclusivist trends) there is a place for inner diversity. The coexistence of four Sunni and one Shiite schools of law (maḏhab) is an evident example. On the other hand, a really fascinating issue is the inner competition over ideas, practices and rituals that can be consistent with Islamic religion.
How to differentiate the Islamic world into particular traditions that might constitute an object of research? This is a question of how we conceptualize diversity within this religion. Scholars interested in Islam in the vast area of Soviet Union and post-Soviet countries, used to employ simplistic, often dichotomous, schemes in their analyses. The most frequent framework used nowadays for capturing the inner divisions among Muslim believers is a scheme consisting of “traditional” and “untraditional” or “fundamentalist” traditions. This distinction replaced an older opposition of “official” and “unofficial” religion (see Saroyan, 1997). Traditional Muslims are usually described as being non-radical, liberal and attached to their customs and cultural norms and values. Much public discussion deals with the question of hijab and the proper dress for Muslims. For many Muslim communities outside the Middle East, the veil is not an obligatory part of women’s garment. Old women used to wear a kind of veil, which did not often differ from the veil of Christian women. In some communities it was a habit of married women to cover their heads, and not an obligation of young girls. Traditional Islam is thus an Islamic form of ideas and practices consistent with national or ethnic cultures. It is the way of living Islam to which people were socialised as a part of a wider cultural formation. Fundamentalist tradition is seen as a foreign, aggressive, and dogmatic. It is frequently associated with foreign “Arab” Islam, which undermines local habits, customs, values and norms of social behavior. This division of Muslims into “traditional” and “untraditional” has also a political aspect. Frequently the governments in the Caucasus and Central Asia underline their attachment to the first form of Islam, attacking the other. “Untraditional” Islam is then equated with Wahhabism, fundamentalism, radicalism and terrorism. With so much ideological engagement, this scheme is not a useful starting point for analysis of the empirical world of Islam. Moreover, it does not reflect the real scope of diversity of Islamic expressions that can be encountered in the region. A better solution is to build categorisations on the basis of divisions that participants in the religious field make themselves and to give voice to actors the local discourses seem to be a better starting point for an analysis of intra-religious competition.
Following this idea, I will refer to the basic trends and movements in Islam that historically contributed to its development in the South Caucasus, namely Sunnism, Shiism, and Sufism in their various shapes. For an analysis of the contemporary Islamic field I follow the distinctions that the Muslims make themselves, what I was experiencing during the field research. Since the beginning of Islamic revival, the main division is between “secular (traditional or ethnic) Muslims” and “pious Muslims.” The first term refers to the typical in post-Soviet space form of occasional religious practice connected with some basic beliefs in God and a strong sense of morality, which is not always consistent with the Koranic understandings. In my opinion, if people express particular religious worldviews, manifest them in some rituals, and use Islamic symbols, a researcher should not arbitrarily classify those people as non-believers or non-Muslims. Both Sunni and Shiite traditions include secular and pious trends, which date back to the beginning of the twentieth century.
Parallel tradition, reinforced during Soviet rule, is the “official Islam,” represented by a group of mainly Shiite Islamic clergy that has formed an alliance with the allegedly secular state. Pious manifestations of Islam are very diverse; the most significant are: Shiism in the interpretation of Iranian ayatollahs, Sunni Salafi global movement, and Modern Orthodoxy shaped by the Turkish context (including a distinct and quickly growing nurchular movement). My attention is directed also at the groups that represent reformist or modernist ideas: the Juma mosque community led by Haji Ilgar Ibrahimoglu, and some Azerbaijani intellectuals and independent Islamic scholars.
Thus, while speaking of plurality and religion in the context of Muslim activities in Azerbaijan, I will understand the religious market as consisting of Islamic traditions, which at the local level have their own distinct features (symbols, doctrines, forms of organization, ritual practices, styles of religiosity, and, what’s equally important, their own social networks). Each tradition produces and reproduces reinterpretation of the Koran and the hadiths and distribute them in the market. They respond in various ways to the challenges of modernisation, globalization and new technologies. Traditions will be treated as options offered on the religious market, among which any Muslim can choose.
The next problem that appears in applying the economic theory of religion to Islam is the notion of “religious firms.” In the market model these institutions are the agents of competition that are supposed to stimulate religious participation in the society. What can be an equivalent of such enterprises in a Muslim context? I will conceptualize this term as a type of an actor (religious group, organization, religious activist, independent leader) that is actively engaged in production, reproduction or dissemination of, using Asad’s terms, one of the Islamic traditions.
Apart from the need to adapt the concept of pluralism to Islamic context, one must also reconsider the factor of regulation of religious economy. The market approach to religion predicts that competition between religions can be effective only when there are no restrictions imposed by the state. The situation of the post-communist Muslim societies is seemingly in contradiction to that thesis. Even though the restrictions on religious activities have been reduced, state authorities still attempt, with more or less intensity and success, to control and regulate the free commerce of religion. The regulations clearly favour some religious brands over others. Despite these limitations the growth in the number of practicing Muslims is widely acknowledged. It suggests that we should rethink the role of
control as a factor mediating between pluralism and religiosity.
1.4Capital and Strategies: Insights from Bourdieu
The exchange relations established between specialists and laypersons on the basis of different interests, and the relations of competition, which oppose various specialists to each other inside the religious field, constitute the principle of the dynamic of the religious field and therefore of the transformations of religious ideology (Bourdieu, 1991, p. 17).
Applying the market model to Islamic religion in a post-Soviet context is challenging in many ways. One of the problems lies in the conceptualization of pluralism in Islam, which I have already discussed. In the Islamic market it is not the only state-supported system of mosques that matters. Among the key actors, or entrepreneurs, in contemporary Islam there are many communities, informal study circles, groups gathered around influential leaders. There are transnational movements with their own organizational structures. In what follows, I’m looking for ways to link the market model of religion with the sociology of religion. While the economic research on religion gathers evidence mainly from quantitative data, the sociological and anthropological approach is more open to qualitative explorations.
The market model has a lot of advantages in providing explanation of religious change, but to analyse Islamic revival in post-Soviet Azerbaijan it is useful to take inspiration from Pierre Bourdieu and his theory of practice. Even though his works on religion are limited in scope, they deserve attention for some constructive ideas and helpful “thinking tools” (Rey, 2004) for an exploration of various aspects of human activity. Usually Bourdieu’s theory of religion is applied to an exploration of the relationship among religion, class and power (ibidem), but it seems to me that his concepts can fruitfully enrich both the economic debate on religion and the anthropology of Islam. I do not inspire here to summarize and discuss all his theory of practice or his theses,7but will concentrate solely on those which were especially useful in the research on Islamic diversity.