Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev is not easily swayed, but looks like the threat of an Islamic fatwa can do wonders these days. A demolition ball ready to smash Baku’s Fatimeyi-Zahra mosque froze in the air after Iran’s Grand Ayatollah Makarem Shirazi threatened to unleash the wrath of radical believers against Azerbaijani officials if the building was destroyed.
“If the destruction of the mosques in Azerbaijan continues, we will issue [a] fatwa of resistance and we will declare that anyone who is killed in this path is a martyr,” the cleric said, adding that the message was aimed at officials in Baku.
Aliyev is no Salman Rushdie, and you cannot really run a country from a secret location in London.
The missive proved more effective than numerous pleadings from local religious communities to spare the mosque, which an Azerbaijan court ruled was built illegally.
The mosque has been handed over to the Azerbaijan-based Muslim Spiritual Board of the Caucasus, but Aliyev’s secular government now has even more reasons to watch out for the turbaned theocracy to the south.
Giorgi Lomsadze is a journalist based in Tbilisi, and author of Tamada Tales.
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