PRAYING TOGETHER

The word "Juma" which derives from Arabic means "an assembly". This is what Muslims call the fifth day of the week when they all get together at the mosque to pray to the Almighty together. This is the only day to which a single surah, Juma, is devoted in the Quran. This philosophy of this day, which is regarded as holy in Islam, is solidarity and unity.

Sadly, nowadays it has to be stated that Muslims frequently not only fail to adhere to this philosophy, but are at odds with one another, waging inter-confessional wars, roused by geopolitical interests. But there are exceptions.

"Unity in prayer"

At the Baku mosque in December last year, for the first time in the world the tradition was founded of holding Friday prayers with the participation of representatives of different trends in Islam. The Sunnis and Shias have begun to get together once a week under the arches of a single mosque to perform Friday prayers together. With the announcement of "The Year of Multiculturalism" by President Ilham Aliyev this action by the believers has acquired a landmark character.

It may appear to be an everyday occurrence, but there is hardly anywhere in the Muslim world where you can come across Sunnis, who have their own mosque, praying with Shias and Shias performing Friday prayers under the leadership of a Sunni imam, and vice versa. At the Heydar Mosque the call to prayers is even performed by Sunni and Shia muezzins in turn.

"In the Quran the Almighty calls us to unity and appeals to us not to allow a schism to occur. From this point of view, in spite of the different trends within Islamic religion, performing Friday prayers at a single mosque naturally deserves great approval. To perform Friday prayers in a single mosque, in a single row, standing next to one another, is highly indicative," Azertac reports the words of Haci Sabir, the spiritual leader of the Heydar Mosque.

In Azerbaijan moreover few people take any interest in whether you are Sunni or Shia or even a Muslim, Christian or Jew in general. For centuries now people of different nationalities and confessions have lived here side by side, not giving it a thought whether their way of life is a special one with its own separate name. This is possibly why it was not until relatively recently that the terms "tolerance" and "multiculturalism" entered our language, against a backdrop of increasingly xenophobic moods and a tendency towards Islamic radicalisation on the one hand and Islamophobia on the other.

In circumstances when the further peaceful coexistence of different religious communities sometimes appears highly unlikely, Azerbaijan's call to avoid departing from the idea of multiculturalism is even more pressing. Official Baku is not moreover restricting itself just to appeals.

With a predominantly Muslim population, Azerbaijan is building and repairing churches and synagogues, preserving education in Russian, opening Turkish, English, French and Jewish schools and making a contribution to restoring the world Christian heritage. This provides the basis for taking a focal place in the dialogue among civilisations.

For the first time in 2008, Azerbaijan invited the ministers of culture from the Council of Europe (CE) member-countries and their counterparts from the member countries of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to a conference in Baku. The following year the European ministers received a return invitation to a conference of OIC ministers of culture. Named "The Baku Process", this initiative has subsequently become a platform for holding a summit of world religious leaders in Baku, a forum of intercultural dialogue and the Baku International Humanitarian Forum. This year the 7th UN global forum The Alliance of Civilisations, which has become yet another recognition by the world of Azerbaijan as the centre of intercultural dialogue, is to be held in Baku.

Taking into consideration the holding of the global forum in Azerbaijan, the attention paid to this sphere as a whole and the successes achieved, I am announcing that this year will be "The Year of Multiculturalism" in Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan has done enormous work in connection with multiculturalism. Azerbaijan's example shows that multiculturalism is alive and well, in spite of the fact that some politicians assert that multiculturalism has failed. Perhaps it has failed in some places. But in Azerbaijan it is alive and well and these trends, these ideas are gathering strength as they have received increasing support from society," Azerbaijan's president stated at a government sitting devoted to the results of last year. 

Confirmation of the head of state's words is the "Unity in Prayer", which has gathered together in the Heydar Mosque representatives of the two major trends in Islam, between which conflicts are flaring up increasingly often in a number of countries. At best, the Sunnis and Shias do live in peace, but carrying out their rituals separately. Attempts to bring them together under the arches of a single mosque have repeatedly ended in failure. From this point of view, the "Unity in Prayer" of Muslims in Azerbaijan may be considered a fairly ambitious initiative, which can also be assessed as a message of multiculturalism to the entire world community.