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Azerbaijan promotes tolerance, multiculturalism and religious diversity in its region. However Armenia blows inter-religious dialogue with its aggressive stand in spite of UN resolutions.
Mubariz Gurbanli, Chairman of the State Committee on Religious Associations (SCRA) expressed these views on his article published by news portals https://www.trtdeutsch.com and https://nex24.news/ which are the Turkish TRT Media’s digital news platforms in Germany.
At present Azerbaijan’s state-religion model conducted under President Ilham Aliyev’s leadership is based on the secularism, tolerance and multicultural principles, underlined in the article. Azerbaijan believes rightly that radicalism, extremism and terrorism are alternatives to multiculturalism and tolerance that have been preserving and advancing. Therefore, Azerbaijan is still keeping the historical heritage alive and passing it on to future generations.
Azerbaijan’s historical development and its features, geographical position, ethnic composition of the population created the environment for the existence of various religions in this area. Paganism, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam and several other religious movements enabled to spread across the country to various extents, interacted with one another at different periods of time.
Germans have lived in Azerbaijan for two centuries, also considered Azerbaijan as their homeland, and preserved their cultural heritage. Several Lutheran churches are in Azerbaijan, German-Azerbaijani Cultural Center “Kapellhaus” that has been serving to strengthen cultural ties between our countries, and dozens of Protestant Christian denominations have been operating in Azerbaijan, as well as religious community of Baku Evangelical Lutheran Church of the Savior perform worship and rites in the Lutheran Church of the Saviour in Baku, as they being faithful to the traditions of their ancestors, the Chairman told.
Azerbaijan realized great projects – hosted international intercultural and interreligious forums aimed at preserving the existing ethnic and cultural diversity, tolerance and multiculturalism in the society, became the center for the promotion of interreligious dialogue. It is no coincidence that the "Baku process", initiated by President Ilham Aliyev aimed at promoting dialogue and cooperation between Islamic and Western civilizations unites the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and the Council of Europe on the same platform which is an important contribution to dialogue between civilizations.
Armenia occupied the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan and 7 adjacent districts by taking advantage of the geopolitical tensions during the collapse of the Soviet Union since early 1990s, more than one million Azerbaijanis - including Christians, Jews and other religions were forced to be refugees and IDPs, hundreds of religious monuments - mosques, churches, shrines, and cemeteries were destroyed, our mosques were used as stables, Mr. Gurbanli said in the article.
Mr. Gurbanli mentioned that Azerbaijan preserves and restores the Christian heritage not only within, but also beyond its borders. He spoke about the projects implemented by the Heydar Aliyev Foundation on the restoration of Christian religious sites.
Noting that vast majority of Christian sites in the liberated territories belong to the ancient Azerbaijani state of Caucasian Albania, M. Gurbanli noted that the Armenians either armenianized the Albanian Christian monuments and presented them as Armenian churches or destroyed them.
He stressed that the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict has never been religious in nature, the Armenian Church and clergy have always supported aggression, involved them in the war in order to achieve Christian fanaticism and attempted to present the conflict on a religious level.
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