Expressing concern about religious freedom in Azerbaijan seems like a misplaced attempt to undermine one of the great strengths of Azerbaijani society, which is religious and ethnic tolerance, former US Ambassador to Azerbaijan Matthew Bryza told Trend.
“My personal experience living in Azerbaijan and working on US-Azerbaijan relations is that Azerbaijan is remarkably diverse and tolerant when it comes to various religious communities. One of the great strengths of Azerbaijan strategically from the US perspective is that Azerbaijan’s society is secular, with an overwhelmingly Shiite Islamic society, but that’s fundamentally secular and therefore is divisive and tolerant,” he said.
Ambassador Bryza pointed out that by being a secular society with a Shiite majority population, Azerbaijan provides a very hopeful example of tolerance and economic development that counters some of the intolerance in Azerbaijan’s neighborhood.
“I was a practicing Roman Catholic when I lived in Azerbaijan. I attended Catholic Mass every Sunday at the Roman Catholic Church in Baku. I also know the vibrant Protestant communities and Orthodox Christian communities, but also, of course, the Jewish community, which is one of the oldest anywhere. I mean, it’s 2,500 years old. I think pretty much all Azerbaijanis are proud of the mountain Jewish population in Krasnaya Sloboda. I know that the Orthodox Jewish community thrives, and one of its chief rabbis once told me that in there is so little anti-Semitism in Azerbaijan. And of course, in terms of religious diversity, it’s not just Shiite Muslims in Azerbaijan, even though they’re a large majority, but of course, there are Sunnis as well, especially I know in northwestern Azerbaijan,” the ex-ambassador added.
