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Azeri Women Protest Right To Wear Hijab In Passport Photos
BAKU, Jan. 15 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Over a hundred Muslim women in Azerbaijan have applied for political asylum abroad in protest at a law banning them from wearing headscarves in their passport photographs, their representatives said Tuesday, news agencies reported.
It is the latest round in a three-year battle between the secular government in this mainly Muslim former Soviet republic and the women, who argue that taking off the headscarves would be an affront to their honor and dignity, Agence France–Presse (AFP) reported.
The women have now applied for asylum to the German and French embassies in Azerbaijan, said Ilgar Ibragimov, coordinator for the Center for the Defense of Religious Freedoms, which has been fighting the women's case.
"We want that these people, whose rights are being violated, should be able to keep their dignity, their conscience," Ibragimov told AFP. "At the moment they are prisoners of conscience in Azerbaijan."
In another development, on Thursday, January 10, the head of Azerbaijan's State Religion Committee Thursday rejected concerns that the government's compulsory registration of religious groups was designed to clamp down on minority faiths.
"We have no such intention," committee head Rafiq Aliyev told AFP in an interview in the Azeri capital, Baku. "The state is not against religion, it is the guarantor of religious freedoms."
"On the contrary, we want to create proper conditions so that these organizations can operate normally."
However, Aliyev said he agreed with Azeri intelligence officials that some religious organizations were being used by foreign countries as a cover for espionage operations against Azerbaijan.
Minority faiths in this mainly Muslim former Soviet republic have expressed concern that the registration procedure might be a pretext to close down groups the authorities did not like.
Azerbaijan has a chequered record on religious freedoms. Officials attempted to close down the Seventh Day Adventist church in 2000, but backed down after the then United States ambassador intervened.
Aliyev insisted the registration process, the third since Azerbaijan became independent in 1991, was intended only to bring order to a chaotic situation where many religious groups operate outside the law.
Earlier in January, Azeri security forces arrested four Islamic activists who they suspected of allegedly attempting to cross the border into Chechnya to join rebels fighting Russian forces.
Nearly 93.4 % of the population in Azerbaijan is Muslim, nearly 2.5 % are Russian Orthodox, 2.3 % Armenian Orthodox and the other sects have 1.8% adherents.
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