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Abstract

Georgia is a multi-ethnic and multi-religious state where the dominant Orthodox Church (83.4% of the population) shapes national identity and often marginalises ethnic and religious minorities. As most non-dominant religious groups, Azerbaijani Muslims in Georgia face challenges related to the construction and management of religious infrastructure, including strict state regulations, limited official recognition, and restrictions on building mosques.

This study examines how the Azerbaijani minority establishes, maintains, and uses religious spaces through grassroots activism, private initiatives, and transnational support. In response to the lack of official permission, some communities convert private homes into mosques without minarets, creating semi-formal (uncertain-status) yet functional religious spaces. Others face long-term procedures and other obstacles to build and register the mosques. At the same time, official religious authorities regulate imam appointments, pay salaries, and coordinate with external actors such as the Azerbaijani SOCAR (The State Oil Company of the Republic of Azerbaijan), through its Georgian representative, for material support, including gas supplies.

By analysing the interplay between informal, community-driven initiatives and formal, state or institutionally sanctioned structures, this research highlights the complex dynamics of religious life for Azerbaijani Muslims in Georgia. It explores how religious infrastructure not only preserves cultural identity and encourages religious development, but also reflects broader social and political negotiations, the limits of minority rights, and the role of transnational actors in supporting these communities.

The presentation will focus on the tension between grassroots improvisation and institutional regulation, the creation of mosques, the negotiation with local authorities, and the involvement of international actors, including Azerbaijan, Iran, Turkey, and Russia, in sustaining religious infrastructure. This approach illuminates how Azerbaijani Muslims navigate legal, social, and material constraints while asserting their religious and cultural presence in Georgia.

The presentation is based on long-term field research conducted between 2024 and 2026 within the project: “Religious Domains of Infrastructure and its Role Among Armenians and Azerbaijanis in Georgia.”

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The official narratives in Azerbaijan strategically mobilizes architectural heritage to construct a national imaginary of “multiculturalism,” rooted in a narrative of tolerance as a “foundational feature of national character.” This paper examines the case of the Baku Lutheran Kirche (Kircha) as a site where this state-endorsed project is both enacted and resisted. Originally built by German and Swedish entrepreneurs at the end of the 19th century and later a Soviet-era survivor, the Kircha’s transformation into a state-sanctioned Philharmonic Organ Hall represents a deliberate attempt to fold “outsider” Christian heritage into a national identity defined by secular tolerance and Azerbaijani multiculturalism.

Drawing on a “multiple secularities” perspective, I explore how a diverse spectrum of Protestant communities—ranging from traditional Lutherans to neo-charismatic groups—skillfully navigate this state-supervised landscape. By utilizing multiculturalism policies to secure space within a competitive “religious market,” these actors engage in “place-making from below.” Through the act of renting the secularized hall for Sunday worship, they reclaim the building’s “original” spiritual purpose while strategically incorporating state narratives of multiculturalism into their own religious practices.

This case study reveals the Kircha as a contested space where top-down narratives of Muslim-led tolerance intersect with vernacular religious persistence. It demonstrates how heritage can simultaneously function as a tool to manage social fractures and a site where polarized identities—secular vs. religious, national vs. communal—are negotiated through the very stones of the city.

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The spiritual consciousness of the 12th-century Sufi cleric Khoja Ahmad Yasawi spans hundreds of years of Central Eurasian history, among other things informing more than five hundred anti-colonialist and later anti-Soviet popular rebellions. The collapse of the Soviet Union brought a revival of Islamic discourse and thus an unprecedented opportunity for a public discussion of this thinker’s legacy. The discussion did not occur solely within a religious context. It also took place in secular institutions – in universities and publishing houses, in cultural organizations and mass media – as scholars sought to rescue Islamic tradition from decades of official campaigns against “religious obscuritanism.” They rethought Yasawi as a philosophical name to stand alongside Al-Farabi, Avicenna, and Al-Khwarizmi.

This paper investigates the circumstances behind the first secular work on Islam to be produced by the post-Soviet RK Ministry of Education: "The Spiritual Heritage of Yasawi" by Aidar Abuov. Published thirty years ago under the title Духовное наследие Яссавы, the book was received as a landmark in the young nation’s effort to take ownership of its religious history as it emerged from more than seventy years of official state atheism. When situated in the context of secular Islamic studies, and of Central Eurasian studies as a whole, it can be seen as the beginning of an emic scholarship, “writing tradition from within.” The book was translated into English in 2024 and is searchable globally on WorldCat.

The paper will be co-presented by the book’s author, now a professor at the Kazakh University of Business and Technology in Astana, and by his English-language translator, Dr. George Rueckert of KIMEP University in Almaty. Although intended as an individual paper, it may also contribute to scholarship-in-progress forums, insofar as it draws from on-going research, including contemporary interviews with Abuov and his original collaborators and editors and a literature review of the book’s 1990s reception and commentary. "The Spiritual Heritage of Yasawi" was the first major scholarly attempt to redefine the place of Islam within Central Eurasian intellectual life, treating Yasawi as both a religious and a national figure and rethinking the Sufi tradition as an integral component of the region’s cultural identity. In tracing how the book took shape through the late-Soviet and early independence periods, our paper sheds light on broader processes: the revaluation of Sufi tradition, the search for national cultural foundations, and the emergence of an emic tradition of scholarship on Islam.