Interview with political scientist Heydar Jemal, chairman of the Islamic Committee of Russia.
Q: What can you say about the recent statement of the Russian Foreign Minister S.Lavrov that the ‘split between Sunnis and Shiites, threatening to blow up the whole Islamic world is maturing’ in the Muslim world?
A: This split is the project of the West, the American project which was already probed in Iraq and other places. As a closest ally and satellite of the United States, Saudi Arabia is actively investing in the second civil war in the Islamic world. The consolidation of all countries of the Arabian peninsula from Saudi Arabia to Qatar proceeds actively. But today, they failed to set them all under the Saudi banner.
Salaphits do not constitute the majority in the Islamic world but there are other political forces which view the Saudi Arabia as a refuge of the dark forces.
Israel and the United States also show cautiousness, because from time to time, they get signs of Iranian unpredictability. The proof is the story with the US unmanned jet of the latest generation, which was considered invulnerable in the face of the missile defence. Nonetheless, Iranians took hold of this unmanned jet and cause its landing. A couple of days ago US President Obama asked Iranians to return this unmanned jet. This jet had the capacities which was the cold water for Iran, because the United States fight against those who have the strong ‘fifth column’ and in the leadership of which there is a tendency for capitulation. The same happed to Saddam Hussein. If Americans understand that they have no one to agree with and cannot reckon on the ‘fifth column’, they do not take forced confrontation, but try to use the so-called minions to this end.
Additionally, Iran has warned that it will go to the end in case of aggression. That is this aggression against this country, regardless of where it comes from, will lead to attacks against Israel and the United States.
Going back to the question that it could have been the warning of Lavrov to the western forces that ‘if you achieve this, everyone will suffer. Anyway, there is such a threat, but inside Islamic world there proceed the processes which finally lead to reducing the influences of Saudites and consolidation of umma. I think these are the issues of the coming generation.
Q: There are not many countries with predominantly Shiite population in the Muslim world and this makes the hostile attitude of Iran toward Azerbaijan even more unclear. What is the cause of the distrust?
A: I think the essence of these differences lies in the fundamental difference of the cultures of Tehran, including Iranian Azerbaijan and North Azerbaijan in the 19th century. North Azerbaijan was an area of free development of tendencies for liberalism, Masonic lodges were for the first time established here in the South Caucasus, and the activity of Mirza Fatali Akhundov, Mammadguluzade and his ‘Molla Nasraddin’ was developing. As a result, Azerbaijan started to orient on petty bourgeois liberal values, while remaining a Muslim country. In this situation Azerbaijan was caught in a less enviable state than his neighbors who need not to prove anything to anyone. I think the religious tradition in Azerbaijan was broken in the last decade of the 19th century, while the Soviet power deepened this crisis even further. Bagirov’s activity in the Stalin period for eradication of even the independently thinking secular ideologists led to the fact that the mentality of modern Azerbaijan became secondary, which means the ideology of modern Azerbaijanis is dependent, they tend to repeat the liberal commandments and orient on conformist observance of instructions from above. This forms a certain civilian and moral and psychological gap between Baku and Tehran.
Tehran is under the influence of two mixed channels-on the one hand, this is the imperialistic continuous history of Iran, which lasts for 2,500 years when Iran realized itself as an independent subject on the political area, either during Byzantine empire or the period of its conflict with the Ottoman caliphate. This is a definite continuous line. On the other hand, this is an Islamic line where Iran found its place, which, by the way, happed thanks to Azerbaijani Shah Ismayil Khatai, who made Iran a Shiite state. This laid accurately on the fundamental paradigms of Iranian mentality, connected in their roots with the Zoroaster division of reality into black and white, good and evil, settings for permanent fight of lie and truth. The Zoroaster outlook of dark and light has filled the settings of political Islam. There are many factors which are absent among Arabs including feeling of mission, feeling of sense and goals of history, self-perception as a subject of the great political game. This all accumulated in Iran.
As a result, Azerbaijan turned into a spiritually uncontrolled enclave and an object of gambling between Russia, Turkey and Iran, being indeed a very valuable territory with its own fate.
Q: Can the religious leaders of Azerbaijan and Armenia make the two sides closer to peace in conditions of political differences between them?
A: This is highly unlikely since Echmiadzin will never make any concessions.
Q: What are the implications of Armenian attempts to present the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict as religious?
A: Armenians make use of dominating of the secular trend in the mentality of Azerbaijani leadership quite impudently and openly and they do not risk to state that this is a religious conflict, being aware that Baku will always reject this.
Meanwhile, this is the real way to solution. Indeed, if to transfer this into the format of a religious conflict, Azerbaijan must get the support of the Islam world (which today means more than 10 years ago) and attach the same status of Palestine to Nagorno Karabakh. Nagorno Karabakh must add to the list of hot points, fracture in intercivilization fight. Meanwhile, this means not Christianity but liberal West, supported in one point by Israel and in another by Armenia.
Along with Palestine, these are Cashmere, Southern Sudan and Nagorno Karabakh. Localization of the Karabakh issue as the problem of the South Caucasus and the problems of relations between Azerbaijan and Armenia makes the problem marginal and farms it out to Moscow, Washington and Brussels and makes this issue having no prospect of solution, since none of the parties is interested in ‘slaughtering the hen which lays gold eggs’. That is now this is the leverage of influence through which the West can permanently interfere with the affairs of the South Caucasus, thus further raising tension between Baku and Yerevan. Meanwhile, Armenians are aware that the attempts to present the conflict as religious will fail and make Azerbaijan reject this opinion once again. Because otherwise this initiative from their side would be simply unwise, since it gradually lead to isolation and termination of the Armenian state.
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