Dialectics of Post-Soviet Modernity and the Changing Contours of Islamic Discourse in Azerbaijan (eBook)

Toward a Resacralization of Public Space

Murad Ismayilov (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2018
194 Seiten
Lexington Books (Verlag)
9781498568371 (ISBN)

Infos

This study examines the relationship between the Azerbaijani state and its society in the post-Soviet period. The author analyzes the growing cooperation between secular and religious sectors, the normalization of Islamic discourse, and elite attitudes toward Islam.

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Azerbaijan's independence came after seven decades of militant atheism of Soviet modernization project and emerged into staunch secularism of Western modernity, two factors that, on a par with the country's precarious neighborhood, promised a sustained indigenous effort towards the desacralization of the country's political space and the associated exclusion of religion from politics, a modern blueprint that the Azerbaijani state and its society have stood united to diligently follow over the cause of the country's independent existence. Yet the specific dynamics facing the country in the third decade of independence and the changing contours of its international engagements have gradually been working to set the country free from the stifling grips of Western-style modernity and lay the groundwork for quintessentially and esoterically Azerbaijani pathway of statehood to follow, one combining the nation's historical embeddedness in an Islamic milieu with its century-old practical experience of modern policy making.This book offers a detailed account of the dynamics behind the religious-secular divide in Azerbaijan over the past two decades of independence and the conditions underlying the ongoing process of normalization of Islamic discourse and the rising cooperation across the country's secular-religious political landscape and looks into some future dynamics this transformation is set to unleash. It begins with an outline of hybrid intentionality behind the elite's manifold attitudes to Islam, with particular focus on the strategy of separation between religion and politics in which those attitudes have found expression. It then proceeds to show the complicity of civil society and the broader populace, as well as the international community and the country's Islamic stratum itself, in the reproduction of the narrative of Islamic danger and the resultant religious-secular divide in post-Soviet Azerbaijan. The study then continues with an account of a number of dialectical tensions inherent in policy outcomes to which the hybrid nature of elite intentionality has given rise. It then follows on to discuss key factors contributing to the ongoing normalization of Islam across the public realm and the gradual bridging of the religious-secular divide amidst the ongoing state repression. The volume concludes with a comparative insight into some common features and conditioning factors behind the dynamics underlying the religious-secular nexus in Azerbaijan and across the broader region of the Middle East. It also offers an insight into some future potentialities that the current dynamics have laid bare.

Autor

Murad Ismayilov is doctoral researcher in development studies and research fellow at the Central Asia Forum at the University of Cambridge.

Inhalt

Chapter 1: Hybrid Intentionality and Exogenous Sources of the Elite's Manifold Attitudes to Islam in Azerbaijan: Geography, Soviet Legacy, and the Quest for Western RecognitionChapter 2: The Complicity of the Domestic Populace, Secular Opposition, Civil Society, and the International Community in Reproducing the Religious Secular Divide and the Representation of Islam as a ThreatChapter 3: The Contextual Dialectics of Elite Attitudes to Islam in AzerbaijanChapter 4: The Dynamics of Change: The Bridging of the Religious-Secular Divide and the Normalization of Islamic Discourse across Azerbaijan's Social-Political LandscapeChapter 5: Normalization of Islamic Discourse and the Future of Islam in Azerbaijan: Quo Vadis?Chapter 6: A Shared Landscape of Islamism across the Secularized Middle East

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 15.9.2018
• Reihe/Serie: Contemporary Central Asia: Societies, Politics, and Cultures
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Religion / Theologie ► Islam
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung ► Europäische / Internationale Politik
• Schlagworte: Azerbaijan • Dialectics • Islam • Islamic discourse • Modernity • national identity • postcoloniality • Postcolonial modernity • Post-Soviet Politics • Secularism
• ISBN-13: 9781498568371 / 9781498568371