[Text] [Presenter] The number of missionaries in Azerbaijan has significantly decreased because they receive less funding now, the chairman of the State Committee for Work with Religious Structures, Rafiq Aliyev, has said.
[Corespondent over archive footage of worshipers] In Baku alone, the number of Wahhabis is over 15,000. Aliyev has unveiled these statistics. In an interview which was like a report on his activities in 2004, Aliyev said the influence of radical Wahhabis has considerably waned in Azerbaijan compared with 2003. The decrease is due to the struggle of the law-enforcement bodies against the [Wahhabi] movement. Some people have been extradited from Azerbaijan for this and 54 people were arrested.
At the end of the year, the Wahhabis have resorted to a new method of struggle: instead of wearing three-quarter length trousers and growing a long beard which made them stand out from ordinary people, they have lengthened the trousers and made their beard smaller in order to avoid exposing themselves.
[Aliyev, captioned, in his office] The Wahhabis have intensified their operations in Azerbaijan, but the radical Wahhabis whom we talked about have reduced the activities. However, on balance, the spread of Wahhabism in Azerbaijan has speeded up. They are present in Azerbaijan's districts, in towns and there are many of them in Baku.
[Correspondent] Aliyev said that the number of religious organizations in Azerbaijan is not very big. Most of the organizations are Muslim. Out of 310 religious communities, only 27 are non-Muslim, some of which are traditional for Azerbaijan, including the Orthodox church, the Jewish community, the Baptists and others. Nine or ten religious communities have not been historically present in Azerbaijan and their activities are being monitored by the State Committee for Work with Religious Structures, as well as other state bodies, Aliyev said.
Aliyev does not believe that those organizations may benefit from some situation and increase their influence in Azerbaijan. How can the committee explain the decreasing scope of activities of missionaries in Azerbaijan?
[Aliyev] We judge this by the ceremonies they held, the amount of literature they buy and by the fact that the number of members of those sects is decreasing rather than increasing. All these indicators point that the number of members of religious communities has significantly declined over this year. Their scope of influence has not widened either.
[Correspondent] Aliyev also links the weakening in the activities of the missionaries to the decrease in funding. That is, the mission of many charities operating in Azerbaijan has come to an end, while others have been banned after their licences expired.
[Aliyev] One of the main areas of work of the committee is to limit the activities of the missionaries within the legal framework, restrict their tendency to get involved in politics and continue the practice of not registering new religious sects in Azerbaijan.
[Correspondent] The committee will coordinate its work with its counterparts in Central Asia and the CIS, and will take part in the January 2004 conference in Uzbekistan on the development of Islam and Islamic extremism.
Nu, zayats, pogodi!
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Small Business - Try our new resources site! http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/resources/