Islam in Adjara

Ajaria or Adjaria is autonomous region of Georgia on border with Turkey.

History

Islam appeared in Ajaria between 1510 and the beginning of the seventeenth century when the Ottoman Empire started to expand in the Caucasus. As soon as Ajaria in its current form was integrated into the Ottoman Empire, Islam flourished, especially among local elites, who used it as a way of consolidating their power. For the Ottoman rulers, converting the elites to Islam represented the first step towards converting the populations subject to those feudal powers.

Ottoman domination, which was not very constraining, was fairly well accepted, although sporadic resistance with varying degrees of intensity broke out to protest the power of Istanbul. Loyalty to the Ottoman Empire was so strong that during the wars between Turkey and Russia, the Ajarians fought Russian expansion in the region.

The advent of the Soviet regime on the ruins of the Russian Empire had different – paradoxical - meanings for Ajaria. Indeed, its unique religious Muslim specificity within the Union, was a criterion used by the Moscow to confer real autonomy on the Ajarian region within Georgia. However, this autonomy obtained due to the Islamic characteristics of Ajarians did not prevent the Soviets from leading an eradication policy against Islam in the region, as throughout all the Soviet Union. Almost all the mosques and madrasas were closed, public displays of Islam were forbidden and Islam could only exist in the conscience and private spheres.

As soon as the Soviet Union split up, all the republics experienced a religious revival and redefined the links between national identity and religious feelings. In Georgia, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, the new strong man of the independent Georgia decided to rely on the Church to create a new State and a new citizenship. The intellectuals expressed their fear of the development of an activist Islam, originating from the recently-reopened Turkish border. The return of businessmen and Turkish missionaries was seen as a return to the Ottomans and to the Ottoman era. Alerted by intellectuals and the media in Batumi, the Georgian authorities decided to implement a policy to reconvert Ajaria to ChristianityFact|date=May 2008, with the help of the Georgian Church. There are many conversions among the Ajarian youth who believe that it is a return to normalityFact|date=May 2008: a renewal with the Christian traditions of Ajaria, which, according to Georgian tradition, remains the region were Christianity came in the country thanks to Saint Andrew’s missionary work. Although the process of return to Christianity had support from the Church and the authorities in Tbilisi, under Ghamsakurdia and Shevardnadze, it did not prevent the development of Ajarian Islam after the accession to power of Saakashvili. This is almost exclusively due to the initiatives of the Turkish missionaries.

See also

* Islam in Georgia

References