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Europe-Asia Studies
ISSN: 0966-8136 (Print) 1465-3427 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ceas20
Conversion of Ajarians to Orthodox Christianity:
Different Narratives and Perceptions
Ayşegül Aydingün, Pinar Köksal & Alter Kahraman
To cite this article: Ayşegül Aydingün, Pinar Köksal & Alter Kahraman (2019) Conversion of Ajarians to Orthodox Christianity: Different Narratives and Perceptions, Europe-Asia Studies, 71:2, 290-314, DOI: 10.1080/09668136.2018.1543651
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/09668136.2018.1543651
Published online: 24 Jan 2019.
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Conversion of Ajarians to Orthodox
Christianity: Different Narratives and
Perceptions
AYS¸EG €
UL AYDING €
UN, PINAR K €
OKSAL
& ALTER KAHRAMAN
Abstract
Based on field research and interviews conducted in both Ajaria and Tbilisi, this article focuses on the different interpretations of the conversion of ethnically Georgian Muslim Ajarians to Orthodox Christianity. It is argued that Orthodox Christianity is an important aspect of self-identification and the national narrative of all Georgians. For many Muslim Ajarians, conversion appears to be a pragmatic act, with the ultimate goal of being recognised as‘fully Georgian’ by both state and society.
AJARIANS, WHO ARE ETHNICALLY GEORGIAN WERE, UNTIL the late 1980s, predominantly Muslim.1 They converted to Islam when the region was part of the Ottoman Empire: in the official view of the Georgian state, their conversion was a ‘forceful’ one. Although there are no official data on how many have converted to Orthodox Christianity since the 1980s, and more particularly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Muslim Ajarians tend to see their conversion as a result of policies of ‘encouragement’ implemented by the Georgian state and the Orthodox Church. The peculiarity of the Ajarian case is that the switch to Orthodox Christianity is not defined by the Georgian Orthodox Church as a conversion but, rather, as a ‘return’ to their essential Georgian identity.
This work was supported by Middle East Technical University (grant BAP-07-03-2015-016). Research for the article was conducted while Alter Kahraman was at the Department of Eurasian Studies, Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey.
1Muslims in Georgia constitute 10.7% of the population. Azeris and Ajarians are the two largest
Muslim communities. Azeris constitute 6.3% of the population, including both Shia and Sunni Muslims, and the majority of them live in Kvemo Kartli. For details see‘2014 General Population Census Main Results’, National Statistics Office of Georgia, 28 April 2016, available at: http://geostat.ge/cms/site_ images/_files/english/population/Census_release_ENG_2016.pdf, accessed 28 September 2018. Although ethnically Georgian, Ajarians are Sunni Muslims and most of them live in the Autonomous Republic of Ajaria. Some 39.78% of the population of Ajaria is composed of Muslims, the large majority of whom are Muslim Ajarians. As they are ethnically Georgian, Ajarians do not constitute a separate census category. For details see ‘2014 General Population Census—Population by Regions and Religion’, National Statistics Office of Georgia, available at:http://census.ge/en/results/census1/demo, accessed 28 September 2018.
# 2019 University of Glasgow
https://doi.org/10.1080/09668136.2018.1543651
This study is based on the findings of interviews with experts, members of the elite and ordinary people carried out in Tbilisi in May 2015 and in Batumi, the Ajarian capital, in June 2015 (see Appendix). During field research in Batumi, 19 in-depth interviews were conducted with scholars, Muslim leaders, politicians, NGO representatives and ordinary people, including Muslim Ajarians and Muslim to Christian converts. During the field research in Tbilisi, 18 in-depth interviews were conducted with members of NGOs, the Patriarchate, the State Agency for Religious Issues, the Office of the Public Defender of Georgia (also known as the Ombudsman Office), scholars, Muslim leaders and leading members of minority religions such as the Evangelical Baptist Church of Georgia. Most interviews were conducted in English, some in Turkish and a few in Georgian (with the help of a translator). Direct quotations from the interviews in Turkish have been translated into English by the authors. The main objective of the research was to examine the controversies arising from the pressures on Muslim Ajarians to convert to Orthodox Christianity, ultimately querying the nature of conversion: is it a sincere return to the ancestral religion or an act of pragmatism with the goal of being recognised as‘fully Georgian’?
This article discusses the two different narratives and perceptions related to the conversion of Muslim Ajarians to Orthodox Christianity, establishing a link between conversion and identity that is discussed against the background of the history of Ajaria. Supported by the interviews, the institutional and legal framework of the post-Soviet period is explained to give context to the two different narratives of conversion: the first representing the approach of the Georgian Orthodox Church and state institutions; the second representing the perception of Muslim Ajarians who have refused to convert. These narratives shed light on the link between identity and conversion.
Conversion: an interplay between religion and identity
As it ultimately represented a ‘fuzzy term’ (Coleman2003, p. 17), religious conversion has been the subject of much scholarly research, discussion and controversy, being described as a process of religious change or a shift from a lack of religious faith to religious commitment, from one religion to another, from one orientation to another within the same religion, and as a renewed orientation within one’s own religious group (Rambo1993, p. 2; Jindra2011, p. 276).
Religious conversion is, first and foremost, ‘an interplay between religion and identity’ (Austin-Broos2003, p. 1). It is an issue of identity formation and redefinition of identity. In this regard, to convert is to re-identify, to re-order, to re-orient and to recreate oneself (Austin-Broos 2003, p. 2). Converts form ties with the new religious community that make them feel or appear to be part of the group. As Rambo (1998, p. 1) points out, people mostly stay within the family religion, and those who convert are ‘passionate [and] … in many cases arrogant. They have the truth. They know exactly what should be done, or should not be done’. Accordingly, conversion is often a controversial act that disrupts people’s lives and families, and seldom leaves room for rational or calm discussion.
In some cases, converts are essentially returning to what are perceived to be their original religious roots; in other words, the basic justification for their action is that they
are ‘converting back’ to their authentic religions, as in the case of some Muslim Ajarians. Seeman’s study of the arrival of the Falasha community in Israel is a striking case in this sense. The Falasha, whose ancestors had converted to Christianity in Ethiopia, were seen as simply ‘returning to Judaism’ (Seeman 2003, p. 29). Similarly, Radford (2013, p. 120), in his analysis of the conversion of the Kyrgyz people to the Protestant Christian faith (the mashayakche in Kyrgyz), found that the Kyrgyz converts did not feel that they had ceased to be Kyrgyz, nor did they consider any change to have occurred in their ethnic identity. For them, to be mashayakche‘is only to return to what many Kyrgyz once were’ (Radford2013, p. 123).
Conversion attempts are associated with rejection, resistance and repudiation. Rambo (1993, p. 36) found that in China and Japan, people resisted the nineteenth-century Christian missionaries who built schools, hospitals, churches and orphanages in the two countries. A similar tendency was observed among members of the Hindu nationalist movement, the Hindutva. As Menon (2003, p. 46) argues, Christianity was a ‘foreign’ religion ‘forever associated with the Western world’, and so for them, conversion to Christianity constituted a threat to the construction of the Indian nation: Hindu nationalists saw Christianity as a seductive force that lured people away from their original Hindu faith (Menon 2003, p. 50).
Conversion may be a cause of tension and conflict. As Buckser (2003, pp. 69–70) suggests, conversion is not just a reinforcement of group beliefs but also a source of conflict, bringing different groups and individuals into direct confrontation. In this regard, conversion creates tensions within families, kinship groups and society, as can be readily observed in the case of the Muslim Ajarians during our fieldwork, and much in line with the case of the Kyrgyz mashayakche.
In clarifying the link between religion, culture and identity, Olivier Roy explains the ethnic or quasi-ethnic nature of religion, as in the case of some Orthodox Churches in Eastern Europe: ‘religion can identify itself with a particular culture or even operate solely as culture’. Furthermore, religion can even ‘be reduced solely to an identity marker’ (Roy 2010, p. 33). The Ajarian case demonstrates clearly that, throughout the post-Soviet era, Orthodox Christianity in Georgia became a matter of identity. To better understand the nature of this identification, the next section analyses the historical continuities related to state policies towards Islam, the significance of Orthodox Christianity for Georgians, and the link between religion and identity.
Brief history of Ajaria
Starting in the sixth century BC, Ajaria, part of Colchis (the Kingdom of Egrisi) was invaded consecutively by the Greek, Persian and Roman empires. In the fourth century, Christianity was established in Colchis. Ajaria became a part of the Kingdom of Abkhazia in the eighth century and unified with the Georgian Kingdom in the eleventh century (Anchabadze2005, pp. 8, 14). Founded in 330, the Orthodox Church of Georgia ‘became a symbol of the values of the Georgian nation … . These were a mixture of the traditional beliefs and culture; they were, and continue to be, the backbone of Georgian society’ (Grdzelidze2010, p. 162).
The introduction of Islam to Georgia came with the Arab conquest of the region in the seventh and eighth centuries, after which Georgia fell under the influence of powerful Muslim kingdoms and empires until Russian imperial and Soviet rule. At the time of King David IV’s conquest of Tbilisi in 1121 and the city’s subsequent designation as the capital of a new unified Georgian Christian state, Georgia, and Tbilisi in particular, had been under Islamic rule for around four centuries (Minorsky 1993, pp. 752–55). The Muslim rulers tolerated Christianity and at this stage there was no pressure to convert.
The period that Georgians define as the‘Golden Era’ began in the eleventh century. The ‘Golden Era’ saw the political union of Georgian entities and the establishment of suzerainty over neighbouring territories, alongside a flourishing of arts and letters (Toumanoff 1943, pp. 145–46; 1966, pp. 623–25). This era came to an end in the thirteenth century with the Mongol invasions. Subsequently, one after the other princedoms of Georgia disintegrated. Georgia split up once more into independent kingdoms and principalities (Suny 1994; Sharvadze 2008, p. 63; Coene 2010, pp. 98–122; Aydıng€un & Asker2012, pp. 127–30). Following the weakening of Mongol domination, two important actors emerged in the region: the Ottoman Empire and the Safavid dynasty. From the sixteenth century onwards, Georgian princedoms were subordinated to these two regional Muslim powers, with the Ottomans penetrating Georgia from the southwest, including Ajaria, starting from the late fifteenth century (1479), and the Safavids seizing Tbilisi (1658). The Georgian kings embraced Islam in order to retain the throne although their subjects remained Christian for many years to come (Minorsky1993, p. 758; Roemer 2006, p. 245). As the Safavid dynasty started to lose power, the Ottoman Empire became dominant in the South Caucasus. The competing presence of these two Muslim empires in the South Caucasus over many centuries resulted in the longstanding coexistence of Islam and Christianity.
Islam continued to spread in Ajaria and some other parts of Georgia such as Meskheti-Javakheti with interruptions throughout the Ottoman period (1479–1878). As a result, the ‘primary identity [of Ajarians] as ethnic Georgians [was] replaced by a religious identity’ (Balcı & Motika 2007, p. 346). Certain economic and political advantages (land ownership, lower taxes and political opportunities) were associated with conversion (Balcı & Motika 2007, p. 345; Hoch & Kopecek 2011; Liles 2012, p. 5), and noble Ajarians were the first to convert.2Over time, Islam spread to the lower Christian levels of Ajarian society (Baramidze2010, p. 13).
Tsarist Russia, which gained ground in the South Caucasus in the eighteenth century (Allen & Muratoff 1953, pp. 17–8), signed the Georgievsk Treaty with the Georgian King Irakli II in 1783. This treaty led to the gradual annexation of different regions of Georgia by the Russian Empire, eroding the influence of the Ottomans (Suny 1994, pp. 63–95; Hambly 2003, p. 127; Hille 2010, pp. 63–4; Aydıng€un & Asker 2012, pp. 128–29). After the 1878 Treaty of Berlin, Ajaria was reunited with Georgia within the boundaries of the Russian Empire. This reunification resulted in the migration of large numbers of Ajarians to Turkey. According to some sources, around 150,000
2
For more details and examples, see archival documents in Yıldıztas¸ (2012, pp. 18–9, 35–9, 43, 71).
Muslim Ajarians left in the five years following the signing of the treaty ( €Ozel 2010, pp. 478–79).
Under the Russian Empire, and especially under the rule of Catherine the Great (1762–1796), policies favourable to Islam were a strategy to control Muslims. The Russian authorities introduced policies designed to win the loyalty of Ajarians, with mixed results for ethnic identification. Religious concessions—including the construction of mosques, opening of Islamic educational centres and training of mullahs who would receive state salaries—were made to the Ajarians to dissuade migration to the Ottoman Empire (Sanikidze & Walker 2004, p. 10; Sanikidze 2008, p. 274). These policies encountered some success, leading to the return of approximately half to two thirds of the migrants to Ajaria from the Ottoman Empire in 1881 and 1882 (Pelkmans 2002, pp. 254–57).
However, efforts to disseminate the Orthodox faith among the mountain people of the Caucasus date back to the nineteenth century. Local Georgian efforts to establish the Society for the Restoration of Orthodox Christianity in the Caucasus were supported as a result of the Russian imperial vision of an Orthodox empire. After Ajaria was seized by Russia in 1878, the Georgian Muslims of Ajaria were targeted by the Society starting from 1889 (Tarran 1991; Jersild 2002, pp. 38–47; Gnolidze-Swanson 2003; Sanikidze
2008, p. 278).
After the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, new political formations emerged in the South Caucasus. Ajaria became an Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (ASSR) in 1921 and was recognised by the Kars Treaty signed in the same year.3 Very much in line with the imperial tradition, the Soviet regime made a special effort to promote Islam to gain legitimacy in the eyes of Ajarians. The autonomous status of Ajaria, in being based on religion, was unique; all the other Soviet administrative divisions were based on ethnicity (Coene2010, p. 162; Khalvashi & Batiashvili2011, p. 244). The autonomy of Ajaria was in fact in direct contradiction with the secular principles of the Soviet Union (Nodia2005, p. 54).
This autonomous status seemed at first to guarantee certain freedoms for Ajarians. Starting with the late 1920s and 1930s, however, as a result of anti-religious policies, Muslims in Ajaria came to suffer persecution (Balcı & Motika 2007, p. 346). The Muftiate of Muslims in Ajaria was dismantled in 1926, with the Muslim clergy either exiled and taking refuge in Turkey, as in the case of the last Mufti of Batumi, _Iskender Efendi, or purged in the 1930s (Sanikidze & Walker2004, p. 11). Places of worship, such as the Aziziye Mosque in Batumi, were destroyed or closed and put to use for different purposes (Baramidze2010, pp. 13–4; Hızlı & Kılınc¸2014, pp. 14–8). Even ‘Ajarian’ as the name of an officially recognised religious group was slowly erased from the public domain. For example, while the census of 1926 included the ethnonym ‘Ajarians’, this category was removed from the census of 1936, when it was subsumed under the category of‘Georgians’ (Derlugian1998, p. 278; Hoch & Kopecek2011).
Such Soviet actions attracted local discontent. For example, in Khulo in 1929, Muslim peasants protested the closing of religious schools and the demand that women
3The Kars Treaty, signed on 13 October 1921, established the borders between Turkey, Armenia,
Georgia and Azerbaijan. This peace treaty guaranteed the cultural and religious rights of the Muslim population in Ajaria (Soysal1983, p. 43).
remove their veils. According to Blauvelt and Khatiashvili (2016, p. 360), the largest and most violent confrontation between Muslim subjects and the Soviet regime took place in Ajaria. The authorities in Moscow blamed the local party leaders and suggested that their insulting of Islam and humiliation of the clergy put unbearable pressure on the peasants (Blauvelt & Khatiashvili 2016, p. 370). In such a context, at least for some peasants, the motives of the local communist party leaders were ‘a continuing project of Georgification, but one that involved Christianization’. According to the peasants, the closing of religious schools and mosques had the goal of Christianising the Ajarians and ‘taking away the Muslim religion’ (Blauvelt & Khatiashvili2016, p. 373).
Discrimination against religious groups in Ajaria (and elsewhere in the USSR) continued throughout 1930s. This attitude had changed slightly by the end of World War II, with the founding of Spiritual Directorates in North Caucasus (Dukhovnoe Upravlenie Musul’man Severnogo Kavkaza—DUMSK), in South Caucasus (Dukhovnoe Upravlenie Musul’man Zakavkaz’ya—DUMZ) and in Central Asia (Dukhovnoe Upravlenie Musul’man Srednei Azii i Kazakhstana—SADUM) (Ro’i 2000, p. 11). The goal of the Spiritual Directorates was to gain the loyalty of Muslims, mobilise them against the enemy and increase state control over them (Ro’i 2000, p. 103; Yemelianova 2003, pp. 139–40). Founded in 1944 in Baku, DUMZ dealt with the religious affairs of Muslims in the three Southern Caucasian Republics. According to Ro’i (2000, pp. 178–79), this institution revived in a way the Transcaucasian Muslim Board that had been established in the nineteenth century in Tbilisi. The Tsarist model included both the Shia Sheikh ul-Islam as the chairman and the Sunni Mufti as the deputy chairman, setting an example for both Soviet and post-Soviet era institutions. After the collapse of the USSR, the DUMZ began to operate as the Caucasus Muslim Board (CMB) in 1992, headquartered in Baku. Although Azerbaijan and Georgia became independent states, the Sheikh of Georgia remained dependent on the CMB, and Georgia made no attempt to cut its ties with Baku or to form a new organisation under auspices of the government. In practice the Soviet model for the organisation of the Muslims of the Southern Caucasus continued to function until 2011, when a national institution, the Administration of Muslims of All Georgia, was established.
In the late 1980s, Georgian Muslims in Ajaria, as well as Muslims in other parts of Georgia and the wider Soviet Union, started to make religious demands, such as for the reopening or reconstruction of mosques. As a result, 35 mosques were built in Ajaria (Pelkmans 2002, p. 261). The late 1980s also saw the launch of a campaign by the Georgian Orthodox Church in cooperation with the state authorities to convert Muslim Ajarians to Orthodox Christianity. Muslim Ajarians protested this campaign as well as the Christianisation programmes and mass baptisms in Muslim areas, and the appointment of Georgian Orthodox priests to governmental positions (Jones1993, p. 296).
The conversion policy continued in the post-Soviet era with the emergence of the national narrative of Georgia that had started with Georgia’s first post-independence president Zviad Gamsakhurdia, who had ‘a fanatical commitment to Georgia’s independence’ and openly promoted the Christianisation of the republic (Jones 1993, p. 304). In this narrative, the Georgian language and Orthodox Christianity represent the key elements of Georgian culture, as they enabled Georgians to preserve their national identity for centuries of foreign domination (Khalvashi & Batiashvili 2011, p. 242). As
will be elaborated below, in this period certain legal and constitutional changes were introduced and new state institutions established in an attempt to (re)create the new (old) Georgian identity, an integral part of which was Orthodox Christianity.
Despite such developments, Ajaria can be considered unique in the sense that it was the only former Soviet autonomous territory in Georgia that did not seek secession (George 2009, p. 142). Although in the late 1980s and early 1990s Ajarian Muslims made certain demands on the centre, such as the retention of Ajaria’s autonomous status and the cessation of the new anti-Islamic policies, tensions were political, not ethnic, in that they were ethnically Georgian (Kotchikian 2008, p. 145; Coene 2010, p. 162). This may be an important factor in the relatively less tense situation in Ajaria, although there was a trend towards the public marginalisation of Islam in Georgia (Pelkmans
2002, p. 252). While Tbilisi’s policy of marginalising Islam was implemented in Ajaria in the face of local Muslim discontent, shared ethnicity ultimately sustained loyalty to the central government.
These historical developments demonstrate that religion has always been an identity issue throughout the history of Georgia, stimulating both the association of religion with particular ethnic groups and its subsequent political cooptation, and ultimately leading the state to control Islam through restrictive policies such as the sponsoring of religious institutions, and its oversight of local mosques (Crews 2006). These policies were carried over into the post-Soviet period, this time by the Georgian authorities themselves. In other words, religion was once again recognised as an important marker of Georgian identity and the new institutional and legal framework was shaped with the same purpose of controlling minority religions, and Islam in particular.
Changing institutional and legal framework in post-Soviet Georgia, and the politics of proselytising
Article 9.1 of the 1995 Constitution of Georgia mandates absolute freedom of belief and religion. Likewise, article 14 states that ‘Everyone is born free and is equal before the law regardless of race, colour of skin, language, sex, religion, political or other opinions, national, ethnic and social affiliation, origin, property or social status, place of residence’.4 However, the Constitution recognises both the long historical role of the Georgian Orthodox Church and its independence from the state (article 9.1). The amendment to the same article (9.2) on 30 March 2001 states that relations between the state of Georgia and the Orthodox Church should be governed by the Constitutional Agreement (hereafter the Concordat) and be in full compliance with the universally recognised principles and norms of international law, especially in the fields of human rights and fundamental freedoms. In line with the same constitutional amendment, the Georgian Orthodox Church had an official status in 2002 when the Concordat was signed between the state and the Georgian Orthodox Church.5 The Concordat, which defines the legal status of the Church, grants it important privileges such as tax
4‘The Constitution of Georgia Adopted on 24 August 1995 Last Amendment 27.12.06’, Parliament
of Georgia, available at: http://www.parliament.ge/files/68_1944_951190_CONSTIT_27_12.06.pdf, accessed 25 September 2018.
5
An unofficial translation of the Concordat is available at: https://forbcaucausus.files.wordpress. com/2014/08/concordat.pdf, accessed 21 August 2018.
exemption6and ownership of all the Orthodox churches and monasteries, including their ruins and land plots in Georgia.7
Until 2011 religious organisations other than the Georgian Orthodox Church had no official status. In 2011 minority religions including Islam obtained the right to be registered as a ‘legal entity of public law’. The Administration of Muslims of All Georgia, led by Sheikh Vagif Akperov, was one of the first religious organisations to be registered. This institution included a Sheikh and a Mufti representing respectively Shia and Sunni Azeris and another Mufti representing Muslim Ajarians. Three years later, in 2014, the Administration was divided on a regional basis: an Eastern Mufti representing not only Azeris but all Muslims in the eastern part of Georgia including Kists; a Western Mufti representing Muslim Ajarians and other Muslim communities in the western part including Meskhetian Turks; and a Sheikh representing Shias of Georgia. Before this, the lack of legal basis in Georgia meant that Georgian Muslims were de facto subordinated to the Caucasus Muslim Board in Baku. By contrast, the Georgian Orthodox Church had official status as early as 2002 as a result of the Concordat.8
In 2014, the establishment of the State Agency for Religious Issues (hereafter, the Agency) as a consultative body of the government was an important step. The remit of the Agency was defined as:
analysis of the situation in the sphere of religions, an elaboration of draft legal acts and recommendations, drafting recommendations for the implementation of the goals set forth in the Constitutional Agreement, as well as the adoption of recommendations on the construction of religious buildings, education in the sphere of religion, mediation in cases of conflict between religious organisations, fostering tolerance, etc.9
Although Agency officials stressed during our interviews that their responsibility was to act as mediators between religious organisations and the state, the establishment of the Agency was perceived by many of our Muslim Ajarian interviewees and some experts from the Caucasus Institute for Peace, Democracy and Development (CIPDD) and the Tolerance Centre10 as a mechanism for control and surveillance of Muslims in
6Eight religious organisations—the Georgian Muslims Union, the Roman Catholic Church in
Georgia, the Evangelical Baptist Church, the Pentecostal Church of Georgia, the Seventh-day Adventists, the Word of Life Evangelical Church, the Holy Trinity Protestant Church and the Church of Christ— interpret the Georgian Orthodox Church’s tax exemption as discriminatory to other religions and in 2015 sued for the same tax exemption. For details see ‘Religious Minority Groups Challenge Tax “Discrimination” to Constitutional Court’, Civil Georgia, 15 October 2015, available at:http://www.civil. ge/eng/article.php?id¼28655, accessed 22 January 2016.
7For more details, see Study of Religious Discrimination and Constitutional Secularism in Georgia
(Tbilisi, Tolerance and Diversity Institute, 2014, pp. 16–31).
8See Tsintsadze (2007, p. 760), Tsutskiridze (2012, p. 390) and Council of Europe (2012,
pp. 33, 75–6).
9Study of Religious Discrimination and Constitutional Secularism in Georgia (Tbilisi, Tolerance
and Diversity Institute, 2014, p. 14).
10Interviews with two officials from the State Agency for Religious Issues (one with the Head of
the Legal Office, the other with the Head of Information-Analytical Office), Tbilisi, 29 May 2015; an expert from the Caucasus Institute for Peace, Democracy and Development, Tbilisi, 28 May 2015; and an expert from the Tolerance Centre under the Office of the Public Defender of Georgia, Tbilisi, 28 May 2015.
Georgia.11 For them, it resembles the Soviet-era institution, the Council for the Affairs of Religious Cults (CARC).12 Accordingly, the majority of Muslims respondents emphasised the controlling function of the Agency. This view was supported by an expert from the Tolerance Centre under the Office of the Public Defender of Georgia,13who interpreted the establishment of such an institution as an intervention into the internal affairs of religious minorities, saying:‘to give money is to control; Muftis have a very high salary’.14 What is meant here is that the main priority of Muftis is to implement state policies towards Muslims rather than meeting their demands. A former Sheikh opposed the idea that mullahs, hocas and ahunds be salaried,15as this made them ordinary officials of the state who come and go, and do not represent the Muslim population.16In another interview, a leading figure from the Evangelical Baptist Church of Georgia agreed that the Agency was created to control the Muslim community and to shield it from foreign influence.17
From the interviews carried out during our field research in Batumi and Tbilisi, it was clear that the dominant opinion among the respondents, including leading Muslim figures, was that the current Muftis and Sheikh in Georgia had been appointed by the state, although, according to the official narrative, they are elected by a council of Muftis.18 Almost all Muslims interviewed were aware of this fact, and many of the
11From the views of many interviewees, it can be argued that following the break-up of the USSR,
little changed for the religious organisations of Muslims in Georgia until 2011 when the Administration of Muslims of All Georgia was founded.
12
CARC was founded in 1944 with the principal task of controlling religious activities all over the USSR (Ro’i2000, pp. 11–3). It was an all-Union institution acting as a mediator between the state and all religious organisations including Spiritual Directorates of the USSR similar to the State Agency for Religious Issues in post-Soviet Georgia. However, the head of the Agency stated that the Agency was the first institution of its kind in Georgia, responsible for defending the rights of the traditional religions of the country. See G€urc€ustan M€us@lmanları (Tbilisi, B€ut€un G€urc€ustan M€us@lmanları _Idar@sinin N@s¸ri, 2014, p. 36).
13
The Office of Public Defender of Georgia is a state institution, operating independently under the protection of a special law. See‘The Organic Law of Georgia on the Public Defender of Georgia’, Public Defender of Georgia, available at:http://www.ombudsman.ge/uploads/other/5/5299.pdf, accessed 2 October 2018.
14
Interview with an expert from the Tolerance Centre under the Office of the Public Defender of Georgia, Tbilisi, 28 May 2015.
15Mullah is an Islamic title given to religious scholars or to those who have had some education in
a madrasah (religious school). According to the cleric interviewed here, the term is used in the Caucasus to indicate a religious official (in Azerbaijani language din xadimi). Hoca is an honorific title used for Islamic religious teachers. Ahund is a Shia Islamic title given to religious scholars. The cleric used ahund in the sense of imam, the one who leads prayers in a mosque.
16
Interview with a former Sheikh of the Shia community, Tbilisi, 29 May 2015.
17Interview with a leading figure from the Evangelical Baptist Church of Georgia, Tbilisi, 28
May 2015.
18Currently, the Azeri Sheikh and the Azeri Mufti follow the century-old tradition and share the
Tbilisi mosque. As for the Georgian Muslims in Ajaria, an Ajarian Mufti occupied the post until 2004 in the only mosque in Batumi, known as Orta Cami. After Aslan Abashidze fled Ajaria, the Ajarian Mufti Mahmud Kamashidze resigned, or according to another version of events, was expelled by Georgian Muslims, and Bekir Bolkvadze was elected or appointed by the state, depending on the source. At the time of writing, the Mufti of Western Georgia was Beglar Kamashidze; Iasin Aliyev was the Mufti of Eastern Georgia and Ramin Igidov was the Sheikh of the Shia Muslims. This administrative restructuring divided Georgian Muslims on the basis of ethnicity and increased the likelihood of internal confrontation. During the interviews, the distrust of the state among Muslims became apparent, and this restructuring should be interpreted as an attempt to break the influence of Azerbaijan over Georgian Muslims. Furthermore, some of the interviewees argued that this recent division into three meant the abolition of the Muftiate of Ajaria. Since the autonomy of Ajaria was based on religion, the title‘Mufti of Western Georgia’ should be considered as a step on the way to the abolition of this autonomy.
interviewees mentioned that being in such a position required negotiation, concession and even obedience. The same leading figure from the Evangelical Baptist Church of Georgia said: ‘Muftis are appointed by the government. They cannot say what they think. Voting is a cover. Georgia is a small country, everybody knows everything’.19 A former Mufti supported this argument: ‘this Muftiate does not belong to us. This is a representative of the state to the Muslims’.20 Another former Mufti said:21
From the Russian period up till the end of the world, we will not have had a Mufti who is not appointed by the state. This is not good, this is not correct. We should form a Mejlis [religious council] and vote for one from among those who want to be Mufti. The one who wins should be the Mufti. The state should accept this, but it is very difficult.
A point elaborated by some of the interviewees—and confirmed by Agency officials— was that with the establishment of the Agency, besides the Georgian Orthodox Church, only four religious organisations—Muslim, Catholic, Jewish and Orthodox Armenian— are entitled to financial support from the state in compensation for the material and moral damages inflicted during the Soviet period. Mostly, the interviews demonstrated that the principle of neutrality of the state and the equal protection of all religions was not fully respected. Furthermore, many experts argued during our interviews that despite the compensation paid to the four religious organisations, the Georgian Orthodox Church still maintains a privileged position, stressing that the limitation of the compensation of damages to only five religions and the exclusion of others was proof of this discrimination.22 According to them, the criteria behind the selection of these four religions besides Orthodox Christianity remains unclear, since other religious communities, such as the Yezidis, Lutherans and Pentecostals, were also persecuted during the Soviet period.
The interviews further revealed that the funding of the Muftiate does not meet the needs and demands of Muslims of Georgia in general, and Muslim Ajarians in particular, as apparent in the case surrounding the construction of a new mosque in Batumi.23 Although most Muslim Ajarians among our interviewees argued that a new mosque was one of their primary needs, the Mufti of Western Georgia declared that there was no need, asking instead for a Muftiate office and a building for religious education. Neither was this demand welcomed by Orthodox Christians, who were, according to Muslim clerics interviewed in Batumi,24 encouraged in their opposition by the Georgian Orthodox Church. Religious education is another issue that was frequently mentioned in the interviews conducted while researching this article: there is currently no institution in Georgia providing a
19
Interview with a leading figure from the Evangelical Baptist Church of Georgia, Tbilisi, 28 May 2015.
20
Interview with former Mufti of Ajaria 1, Batumi, 23 June 2015.
21Interview with former Mufti of Ajaria 2, Batumi, 23 June 2015. 22
Interviews with experts from Human Rights Monitoring and Education Center (EMC), Tbilisi, 29 May 2015; European Centre for Minority Issues (ECMI), Tbilisi, 25 May 2015; and the Caucasus Institute for Peace, Democracy and Development (CIPDD), Tbilisi, 28 May 2015.
23Interviews with an expert from the Tolerance Centre under the Office of the Public Defender of
Georgia, Tbilisi, 28 May 2015; and former Mufti of Ajaria 3, Batumi, 24 June 2015.
Muslim religious education.25However, the negative perception of Islam and Muslims among the Orthodox Christians, especially in Ajaria, manifests in public resistance to any initiative taken by the Muslim community related to the observation of Islam and the opening of Islamic educational institutions. This resistance has shown itself in several acts of religious intolerance, including damage to mosques and threats to imams (Mikeladze2013, pp. 39–47).
The Agency’s 2015 draft strategic plan for the development of a state religious policy was criticised for not being open and transparent.26 An assessment report published the same year argued that this document gives priority to national security rather than to minority rights, creating a hierarchy among religious minorities by categorising them as major, non-major, traditional and non-traditional.27 Many of the interviewees,28 including the leading Muslim figures interviewed in Batumi and Tbilisi, highlighted the preferential treatment of the dominant religious group, namely the Orthodox Christians.29 In the words of a former Mufti, ‘there are tens of people working in the Agency; none of them are Muslim’.30 The issue of preferential treatment has also been addressed by experts from the Tolerance and Diversity Institute (TDI), who argued in a 2014 report, Assessment of the Needs of Religious Organizations in Georgia that the Agency representatives ‘have never mentioned the issue of the accountability of the Patriarchate in any of their statements’.31 The same report goes on to criticise the establishment of the Agency without consultation with religious organisations, the Ombudsman or human rights NGOs, and claims that its
25
During the interviews conducted in 2015, officials from the Agency have stated that, as part of the Strategy for the Development of Religious Policy, religious education institutions would be established for Muslims in Georgia. They also stated that permission would be granted for the use of two buildings—one for religious education (Koran courses) and the other to house the Muftiate—that were given to the Muftiate in March 2015. This was confirmed by the TDI‘Muslims in Batumi Buy the Land to Build a New Mosque’, Tolerance and Diversity Institute, available at: http://www.tdi.ge/en/news/360-muslims-batumi-buy-land-build-new-mosque, accessed 25 September 2016. This can be considered as a positive step by the government, although no initiative has to date been launched related to higher religious education, which means that Muslim Ajarians will continue to travel to countries such as Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia.
26
‘TDI on the Report and the Strategy of Religious Policy Prepared by the State Agency for Religious Affairs’, Tolerance and Diversity Institute, 19 March 2015, available at: https://tdigeorgia. wordpress.com/2015/03/19/tdi-on-the-report-and-the-strategy-of-religious-policy-prepared-by-the-state-agency-for-religious-issues/, accessed 2 October 2018.
27
The Assessment of the Strategy for the Development of Religious Policy of the State of Georgia (Tbilisi, Georgian Democracy Initiative, 2015), available at: http://gdi.ge/en/news/the-assessment-of-the-strategy-for-the-development-of-religious-policy-of-the-state-of-georgia.page, accessed 15 January 2016.
28
Interviews with three experts from Human Rights Monitoring and Education Center (EMC), Tbilisi, 29 May 2015; European Centre for Minority Issues (ECMI), Tbilisi, 25 May 2015; the Caucasus Institute for Peace, Democracy and Development (CIPDD), Tbilisi, 28 May 2015; student 1, a Muslim Ajarian, Batumi, 24 June 2015; and middle-aged businessman 1, a Muslim Ajarian, Batumi, 24 June 2015.
29This view is also supported by the following GDI report. The Assessment of the Strategy for the
Development of Religious Policy of the State of Georgia (Tbilisi, Georgian Democracy Initiative, 2015), available at: http://gdi.ge/en/news/the-assessment-of-the-strategy-for-the-development-of-religious-policy-of-the-state-of-georgia.page, accessed 15 January 2016.
30Interview with former Mufti of Ajaria 1, Batumi, 23 June 2015. 31
Assessment of the Needs of Religious Organizations in Georgia (Tbilisi, Tolerance and Diversity Institute, 2014, p. 62).
regulations and activities have the potential to limit religious freedom and violate secularism.32
During our interviews with officials from the Agency,33 we were told of plans to promulgate a law on religion in 2016,34as mentioned in the Assessment of the Strategy for the Development of Religious Policy of Georgia. According to Georgian Democracy Initiative (GDI)35experts, this law is designed:36
to create a special legislative framework and determine the concept and content of the ‘religious association’; regulate the activities of religious associations; determine the procedure of registration, legal statuses, rights and obligations, and rules of procedure of religious associations; regulate property and financial issues, as well as issues of religion and education; etc. In the document [the 2015 draft strategic plan], this aim is substantiated by the argument that ‘the existing norms either have private character and fail to encompass the full spectrum of rights and relations, or are scattered without systematisation and fail to create a unified legislation’.
Many experts interviewed voiced the view that the main problem is not the existing legal framework but its implementation. Representatives of NGOs such as GDI, TDI, and the Human Rights Education and Monitoring Center (EMC) argued in the Assessment that the Strategy for the Development of a Religious Policy and the proposed promulgation of a law on religion will deepen the already existing inequalities among different religions, strengthen the mechanisms of control over religious communities, and restrict their autonomy and activities.37These critiques have played an important role in the shelving of this law.
As mentioned previously, besides the legal framework and the strategies developed to change this framework, the perception of the majority Orthodox Christian community regarding religious minorities is the most influential factor in the daily experiences of the minorities. Almost all the Muslim Ajarians interviewed stressed the influence of the Georgian Orthodox Church over local Christians, in particular in forming their views of Islam and Georgian identity as Christian. Several interviewees38 claimed a high level of trust and support for the Orthodox Church,
32
Assessment of the Needs of Religious Organizations in Georgia (Tbilisi, Tolerance and Diversity Institute, 2014, p. 61).
33
Interviews with two officials from the State Agency for Religious Issues (one with the Head of the Legal Office, the other with the Head of Information-Analytical Office), Tbilisi, 29 May 2015.
34
As of October 2018, it is still not promulgated.
35
The Georgian Democracy Initiative is an NGO that aims to support the democratic development of Georgia, and to protect human rights and the rule of law. The website is available at:http://www.gdi. ge/en/, accessed 24 August 2018.
36The Assessment of the Strategy for the Development of Religious Policy of the State of Georgia
(Tbilisi, Georgian Democracy Initiative, 2015), available at: http://gdi.ge/en/news/the-assessment-of-the-strategy-for-the-development-of-religious-policy-of-the-state-of-georgia.page, accessed 15 January 2016.
37
The Assessment of the Strategy for the Development of Religious Policy of the State of Georgia (Tbilisi, Georgian Democracy Initiative, 2015), available at: http://gdi.ge/en/news/the-assessment-of-the-strategy-for-the-development-of-religious-policy-of-the-state-of-georgia.page, accessed 15 January 2016.
38Interviews with academic 1, Tbilisi State University, Tbilisi, 27 May 2015; a leading figure of the
Evangelical Baptist Church of Georgia, Tbilisi, 28 May 2018; and a member of parliament from the United National Movement Party, Batumi, 24 June 2015.
referring to specific surveys,39and suggested that this was one of the main indicators of the close relationship between state officials and the Church, which fostered violations of equality among citizens before the law and acts of intolerance against non-Orthodox people, especially Muslims.40 An expert from the Tolerance Centre commented on this issue:
I am not speaking in the name of the Tolerance Centre, but rather express my own views … we are in touch with all the minority groups. When they have problems, they call us. The Ombudsman informs the government about the problems reported by the minorities. Unfortunately, although some of the problems are taken into consideration and resolved, when they are related to religious matters we do not get positive results. Some local people entered the house of an imam in Kaheti and threatened him; others pulled down a minaret; others nailed a pig’s head to the front of a Muslim school in Kobuleti. Nothing happened. The perpetrators should be punished and jailed, but nobody was punished because the government and the state are afraid of the reaction from the Orthodox majority, and especially the Church.41
The historical and cultural roles played by the Georgian Orthodox Church in keeping the Georgian people together, were often mentioned during the interviews, not only by those who recognised and respected these roles, but also by those critical of the power the Georgian Orthodox Church and its influence over Orthodox Christian Georgians, who also underlined the pressure to convert, either direct or indirect, imposed on Muslim Ajarians.
The religious factor in the Georgian nation-building process and the inseparability of Orthodoxy from being Georgian are clear indicators of the fragile position held by Muslim Ajarians, and the consistent pressure they experience from state, Church and society. Following an analysis of the fieldwork findings it is possible to suggest that Muslim Ajarians, as ethnically Georgian, are under heavier pressure to convert to Orthodox Christianity when compared to Georgia’s other Muslim groups. One of our Azeri respondents remarked: ‘if you are Georgian, you have to be Christian; they do not
39
See ‘Georgia’, Caucasus Barometer, 2013, available at: http://caucasusbarometer.org/en/ cb2013ge/TRUGOCH/, accessed July 17 2015; Georgian National Study, 2011, available at:http://www. iri.org/sites/default/files/2011%20June%2028%20Survey%20of%20Georgian%20Public%20Opinion,%20 April%2026-May%204,%202011(1).pdf, accessed 17 July 2015; Georgian National Study, 2012, available at: http://www.iri.org/sites/default/files/2012%20August%2020%20Survey%20Georgian%20 Public%20Opinion,%20June%2026-July%204,%202012.pdf, accessed 17 July 2015; Georgian National Study, 2013, available at: http://www.iri.org/sites/default/files/2013_August_6_Survey_of_Georgian_ Public_Opinion_May_17_June_2_2013.pdf, accessed 17 July 2015.
40
For more details, see the report entitled‘Joint Submission on Minority Rights in Georgia for the United Nations Universal Periodic Review’, prepared by UNAG, MDF, GDI, TDI and ECMI (2015), available at: http://www.ecmicaucasus.org/upload/UPR%20Submission%20-%20ECMI%20%20March% 2022.pdf, accessed 15 January 2016. There have been several recent incidents of intolerance and violations of Muslim rights, such as the dismantling of the mosque in the village of Chela (Adigeni); anti-Muslim attitudes in many public schools; and problems related to prayers in Nigvziani and Tsintskaro in 2012 and 2013. For more information, see the‘Annual Report of the Public Defender of Georgia: The Situation of Human Rights and Freedoms in Georgia, 2013’, available at: http://www. ombudsman.ge/uploads /other/1/1934.pdf, accessed 15 January 2016. While carrying out fieldwork in Ajaria, one interviewee underlined the intolerance of the locals, saying that it is no longer possible to break one’s fast in Kobuleti during Ramadan (interview with the Mufti of one of the districts in Ajaria, 25 June 2015).
41
Interview with an expert from the Tolerance Centre under the Office of Public Defender of Georgia, Tbilisi, 28 May 2015.
say it openly but they think so. We are in a different position to the Ajarians; the pressure on us is not that strong’.42 The same interviewee said that when compared to the other Muslim groups in Georgia, Muslim Ajarians appear to be the most disadvantaged, in that their religious identity since the late 1980s and in the post-Soviet era has been defined throughout as a deviation from being Georgian. This is clearly apparent in the speeches of the upper clergy. On 26 May 1991, soon after independence, in one of his public sermons in Ajaria, the Catholicos-Patriarch of All Georgia, Ilia II declared:
People who live here are our blood and flesh. Ominously, many were converted to Islam, but they know very well where their roots are and where our salvation is. The only truth is a path of Christ; this is the Christian religion, and thanks to God that people are converting to their ancestral faith again. (Khalvashi & Batiashvili2011, p. 247)
Very much in line with the Patriarch, Metropolitan Dimitri of Batumi explained his own understanding of the issue of the conversion of Ajarians:
When the Soviet Union was collapsing, patriotic sentiments grew strong all across Georgia. Ajarians realised that they had been forced to accept Islam. Our primary task was to convert the intelligentsia. After all, the intelligentsia here and everywhere constitutes a role model for the other strata of the population. Once we had converted the intelligentsia, it helped us later in proselytising. People, after seeing that the cultural and scientific elite had taken the side of Christianity, also adopted Orthodoxy, thanks be to God! The Ajarians understood that they are Georgians, and therefore Christians, and so converted. (Nikiforova2012)
The views of the Patriarch and the Metropolitan of Batumi reflect a systematic conversion policy, and demonstrate how Orthodox Christianity is considered to be an integral element of being ethnically Georgian. This is the main reason for the proselytising policies that are supported by the Orthodox Church. In some cases, the pressure was overt, such as in places and institutions where the Church is active, including schools, hospitals, prisons and orphanages. According to the Tolerance Centre, the ‘principle of religious neutrality is not observed in public schools’,43 where persecution, intolerance, religious discrimination, indoctrination and proselytism are commonplace, and where Muslim Ajarian students are subject to permanent pressure’ (Ghvinianidze & Barkaia 2014, p. 7).44 Furthermore, according to members of the elite and Muslim Ajarian students interviewed,45 teachers and members of school boards in particular are actively engaged in proselytising in public schools. This was mentioned in
42
Interview with a leading ethnic Azeri Muslim cleric, Tbilisi, 26 May 2015. This view was shared by other leading Muslim clerics.
43
See Recommendations Developed by the Council of Religions under the Auspices of the Public Defender of Georgia (Tbilisi, Tolerance Centre of the Public Defender of Georgia with Assistance from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Georgia, 2017, p. 8).
44See Recommendations Developed by the Council of Religions under the Auspices of the Public
Defender of Georgia (Tbilisi, Tolerance Centre of the Public Defender of Georgia with Assistance from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Georgia, 2017, p. 6).
45
Interview with three Muslim Ajarian students, Batumi, 24 June 2015. This view was also shared by leading Muslim figures and some NGO experts from EMC.
NGO reports as well.46A number of interviewees told us that the symbols of Orthodox Christianity were dominant in the school space, and that the teachers promoted Orthodox Christianity, both openly and implicitly.47 One of the most problematic issues in this regard was the mandatory collective Orthodox prayer in public schools in which all students must participate, regardless of religion. A Muslim Ajarian interviewee said:
Teachers made children hate Islam, mocking Muslims and oppressing them. In the end, children became fed up with this treatment and began wearing crosses to stop it. I know some who wear a cross but are still Muslim.48
Many interviewees stressed that although there are no statistics on the number of Muslim to Christian converts, the number is known to be significant as a result of the systematic policies implemented by the Church and state, especially since the late 1980s. A Turkish businessman who had lived in Batumi for more than 15 years said:
Priests were trying to baptise women in hospital when they were in labour. They were visiting sick prisoners; they were putting pressure on those who were weak, and on those in need of help.49
Some of the Muslim Ajarian interviewees gave examples of cases where a recent Christian convert had died and the Orthodox priest had put pressure on the bereaved Muslim family, including parents, saying that if they wanted to be together with the deceased in the next world, they too would have to convert.
As put forward by an expert from the Tolerance Centre conversion policies appear to be more significant among the younger generations:‘the main reason for conversion is the influence of the state. Psychological pressure is put on young people’.50A number of interviews also revealed that conversion to Orthodox Christianity had often been voluntary following a search for religious identity and due to the influence of the promotion of Orthodox Christianity by state institutions and the Church.51 One interviewee noted that‘going to the church, having a spiritual father and wearing a cross became very trendy among young people after independence’.52
In our respondents’ views, soon after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, at a time when people were in search of moral support, the religious vacuum was very successfully filled by the Georgian Orthodox Church and the state, which promoted Orthodox Christianity. The ancestral Orthodox Christian identity is used to justify the current politics of proselytising and the official narrative related to the conversion of
46
For more details, see Assessment of the Needs of Religious Organizations in Georgia (Tbilisi, Tolerance and Diversity Institute, 2014, pp. 52–9).
47
Interview with three Muslim Ajarian students, Batumi, 24 June 2015; interviews with three experts from the Human Rights, Monitoring and Education Center, Tbilisi, 29 May 2015; interview with expert, European Centre for Minority Issues, Tbisili, 25 May 2015.
48
Interview with former Mufti of Ajaria 3, Batumi, 24 June 2015. This view was also supported by student 2, a Muslim Ajarian, 24 June 2015.
49
Interview with a Turkish businessman, Batumi, 22 June 2015.
50Interview with an expert from the Tolerance Centre under the Office of Public Defender of
Georgia, Tbilisi, 28 May 2015.
51Interviews with two Muslim to Christian converts: a female shop owner, Batumi, 22 June 2015;
and a United National Movement MP, Batumi, 23 June 2015.
Ajarians to Orthodox Christianity. After elaborating on this official narrative, we will discuss the narrative of Muslim Ajarians who have rejected conversion.
Narratives of conversion: Muslim Ajarians, the Georgian Orthodox Church and the state The fieldwork for this study unveiled two contrasting narratives of conversion in Ajaria and Georgia that define different processes of conversion that took place at different times. Below, the main arguments of the two narratives are explained and supported by quotes from the interviews conducted in Tbilisi and Batumi.
First narrative: the Georgian Orthodox Church and the state
The official narrative has always presented Islam in Ajaria as being a result of a forced conversion during the Ottoman period. The Georgian state, the Georgian Orthodox Church and publications such as the Great Soviet Encyclopedia (GSE) and history textbooks of Soviet Georgia have all fed this narrative.53According to the GSE, Muslim Ajarians exposed to forced Turkification and Islamisation, yet preserved their national culture, consciousness and language.54
Soviet policy on religion in Ajaria needs to be contextualised in post-Stalin Soviet historiography, focusing mostly on the period of Ottoman rule. At that time, local historians and ethnographers rewrote Ajarian history to remove its Ottoman past, which was seen as an unfortunate era of suppression, poverty and economic decline coming after the ‘Golden Age’ of united Georgia (Pelkmans 2002, pp. 259–60). In Soviet historiography, Ottoman rule in Ajaria was presented as foreign domination, during which massive forced conversions to Islam were made (Balcı & Motika 2007, p. 346), and accordingly the‘evil Turk’ and Islam were denounced as historical enemies of both Ajaria and Georgia (Pelkmans2002, p. 260).
This narrative of forced conversion was also put forward by the Georgian Orthodox Church. The Metropolitan Dimitri of Batumi (David Shiolashvili) argued that, as a result of historical Turkish aggression against Ajaria, Ajarian Georgians gradually, yet forcefully, converted to Islam, as the Turkish invaders destroyed churches (Nikiforova
2012). In line with this negative perception of past Muslim rule over Georgia, an Ajarian expert on religious studies claimed that Georgians were socialised with the dominant narrative of Turkey and Iran committing violence against Georgians.55 Officials interviewed at the Agency appeared to follow this narrative and emphasised further that Orthodox Christianity was an ancient religion of Georgia, hence enjoying a special historical status.56
53For more information on textbooks, see Ghvinianidze and Barkaia (2014, pp. 30–1); ‘Adzhar
Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic’, Great Soviet Encyclopedia, vol. 1 (3rd edn) (New York, NY, Macmillan, 1973, pp. 120–23); ‘Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic’, Great Soviet Encyclopedia, vol. 7 (3rd edn) (New York, NY, Macmillan, 1975, pp. 198, 209, 214, 219).
54‘Adzhar Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic’, Great Soviet Encyclopedia, vol. 1 (3rd edn)
(New York, NY, Macmillan, 1973, pp. 120–23).
55Interview with a senior researcher, Batumi Shota Rustaveli University, Batumi, 22 June 2015. 56
Interviews with two officials from the State Agency for Religious Issues (one with the Head of the Legal Office, the other with the Head of the Information-Analytical Office), Tbilisi, 29 May 2015.
Both Georgian and Ajarian historiographies narrated Georgian history as Kartvelian [Georgian] and Orthodox Christian. Almost all our interviewees stressed the inseparable nature of Orthodox Christianity and Georgian identity, citing the myth behind Georgia’s adoption of Christianity.57 During our fieldwork, many Ajarians mentioned similar legends and said Ajaria is considered by the Georgian Orthodox Church to be the birthplace of Christianity in Georgia. Some Georgian sources indicate that Christianity spread across Georgia in the first century AD, although it was not an official state religion until the early fourth century (Alasania 2006, pp. 117–18). It is a commonly pronounced fact that Georgia was the second country to adopt Christianity, right after Armenia (Sanikidze & Walker2004, p. 3).
These views about the significance of the Georgian Orthodox Church and its role sustaining a Georgian identity throughout history were mentioned by respondents from official institutions. An archpriest from the Patriarchate explained the historical and present role of the Church:
Since the fourth century, thanks to Saint Nino, Orthodox Christianity has been the state religion, and the Church has been very influential since then. We are all moulded by the Christian tradition and this will continue. During the Soviet period, people were desperate and faithless, but after the dissolution, thanks to the high spirituality of our Patriarch, they all returned to the Church. This is his success. The Church, once again, united the Georgian people.58
On the issue of conversion, he said:
People convert because they want to. Christianity was first adopted in Ajaria, and it was from Ajaria that it spread to other places. It is not possible to force people to convert. Our church is very tolerant.59
Patriarch of All Georgia Ilia II (Irakli George Gudushauri-Shiolashvili) spoke about the symbolic significance of Ajaria for the Georgian Orthodox Church: ‘it should not be Georgia that converts Ajaria to Christianity; Ajaria should convert us’ (Nikiforova2012, p. 4). Based on relevant sources and the interviews carried out during our fieldwork in Georgia,60it was clear that the official Georgian narrative presents the conversion of the Ajarians to Orthodox Christianity as a ‘sincere return’ to the ‘original religion’ of their ancestors. All the interviewees stressed that many Georgians consider Muslim Ajarians to be descended from the Orthodox Christians who converted to Islam at the time of the Ottoman Empire. Some interviewees also claimed that Christian Ajarians converted to
57According to one legend, during the reign of King Mirian and Queen Nana from Kartli-Iberia, a
miracle occurred one day while the King was out hunting. The sun disappeared suddenly from the sky and it became dark. Mirian first asked his pagan gods to help him but the sun did not reappear until he had turned to the God of Nino from Cappadocia‘whose name is inseparably connected to the spread of Christianity in Georgia’. After that, the legend goes that King Mirian adopted Christianity as the official state religion in Georgia, with an approximate date of 326 AD (Kiladze et al.2007, p. 137).
58Interview with an archpriest/protopresbyter from the Patriarchate, Tbilisi, 29 May 2015. 59
Interview with an archpriest/protopresbyter from the Patriarchate, Tbilisi, 29 May 2015.
60Interviews with two Muslim to Christian converts: a female shop owner, Batumi, 22 June 2015;
and a United National Movement MP, Batumi, 23 June 2015; interview with an archpriest/protopresbyter from the Patriarchate, Tbilisi, 29 May 2015.
Islam under duress but did not fully observe Islam in private.61 Recent research conducted by the Human Rights Education and Monitoring Center (EMC), a Georgian NGO, supports this view, claiming that the collective memory and self-consciousness of Christians ‘is fed by historical narratives’, some of which tell the story of the forceful conversion of Ajarians to Islam. This narrative is kept alive today by the Orthodox clergy and teachers in schools (Mikeladze2013, p. 94).
This official narrative influenced some Muslim Ajarians who were educated in the Soviet period. During the interviews, some Muslim Ajarians who had converted to Orthodox Christianity in the late 1980s claimed to be traditionally Orthodox Christians and said that they had converted to the religion of their forefathers. An MP in the Ajarian parliament who had converted to Orthodox Christianity said:
My grandfather was a Muslim preacher; I grew up in a Muslim household. Now, I am an average Orthodox Christian. My grandfather used to say that what is essential is belief in God. In Ajaria, Muslims were not observant. The main reason for this was that they were Muslims on the outside, but inside, they did not feel like Muslims. The first Georgian Church was built in Khulo. Khulo is my place.62
A female shop owner in Batumi who was baptised at the age of 20 and was in her late 40s at the time of the interview explained her conversion to Orthodox Christianity in the following way:
I was born to a Muslim family but from my childhood I did not really practise my religion. We were children of the Soviet period. We believed in God but we were not observant. When I was a student, everybody was converting and I was influenced by them. When I was a child, most people in Ajaria were Muslims, but our original religion is Orthodox Christianity. This is why many families converted. When my grandmother cooked bread, she would put a cross on it; she didn’t know why. If she knew of my conversion, she wouldn’t be happy, but she would probably not oppose it.63
This historical view of conversion as occurring under duress in the Ottoman period, from Orthodox to Islam, was opposed by the advocates of the second narrative, which is explained in the following section.
Second narrative: Muslim Ajarians who reject conversion
Advocates of the second narrative define conversion as a policy that started at the end of the 1980s (Jones 1993, p. 296) and continued after Georgia had become an independent state, and underline the systematic nature of policies discriminating against Islam and the Muslims of Georgia in general. For Muslim Ajarians who remain faithful to their creed, ‘conversion’ refers to the process by which Muslims
61
Interviews with two Muslim to Christian converts: a female shop owner, Batumi, 22 June 2015; and a United National Movement MP, Batumi, 23 June 2015.
62
Khulo is a predominantly Muslim district of Ajaria where inhabitants are generally observant. Interview with an MP in Ajarian Parliament who is also a Muslim to Christian convert, Batumi, 23 June 2015.
convert to Orthodox Christianity, as a result of the either direct or indirect but always systematic, pressure from the Georgian Orthodox Church and the state. This narrative suggests that Muslim Ajarians who convert do so to be treated as equal citizens of Georgia, and to be perceived as ‘full Georgians’, and that in reality many of them do not fully observe Christianity.
Advocates of this narrative mentioned during their interviews that Islam in Georgia, in line with the Soviet historiography, has always been negatively associated with the Ottoman Empire, and that the official claim that Islam was forcibly imposed on Ajarians by the Ottomans has been the main reason given by those promoting conversion to Orthodox Christianity. This view resembles that of Pelkmans (2002, pp. 259–69), who claims the attempt to convert Muslim Ajarians was not only an attack on their identity but also an attempt to remove all traces of the Ottoman Empire in the region. A Muslim Ajarian politician said during the interview that ‘the attitude towards and struggle against Islam is an old story’ and that‘it goes back to the Ottoman period’.64
The persistent historical connection of Islam with foreign invasion was mentioned in interviews by Muslim Ajarians, who told us that Islam was equated with the Ottoman Empire, and Muslims were and are still defined as ‘Turks’. ‘If you have a headscarf, they call you a Turk’, noted one respondent, who also added ‘Even a beard is not welcomed, depending on where you are’.65 Another interviewee said: ‘we are always in a position of having to remind them that we are Georgians’,66
while yet another told the story of a female student who wanted to go to Istanbul on an exchange programme to learn Turkish. The teacher said, ‘Yes, of course you can, but don’t convert to Islam and don’t come back with a headscarf’. The student remarked:
[My teacher] thought automatically that I was an Orthodox Christian. I said, I am Muslim, and walked away from her. She thinks, as do many others, that all Georgians are Orthodox Christians. If you are not Orthodox, even if you are ethnically Georgian, something is missing, you are not considered fully Georgian.67
A former Mufti of Ajaria explained how Muslim Ajarians are not perceived as Georgians by many:
You send your child to school, they ask‘Are you Georgian?’ The child says ‘yes’. When they ask the child about their religion, the child says‘I am Muslim’. Then, they say ‘so you are a Turk’. If the family of this child is ignorant of these issues, the child can easily convert … . They used to teach Orthodox Christianity in school; the students hated Islam. Islam was presented as violent and polygamous. Muslim children either stay silent or fight. At the end they give up and start wearing a cross on a necklace.68
64
Interview with an MP from the Our Georgia-Free Democrats Party, Batumi, 24 June 2015.
65
Interview with a Koran course teacher, Batumi, 25 June 2015.
66Interview with former Mufti of Ajaria 3, Batumi, 24 June 2015. 67
Interview with student 3, a female Muslim Ajarian, Batumi, 24 June 2015.
This quotation sheds light on the lack of knowledge about Islam among Muslim Ajarians, a feature which facilitated their conversion to Orthodoxy. A Muslim Ajarian politician told us:
The communist period was a time when all religions were prohibited. It was a period when everybody was told to be atheist. This entailed a great loss of knowledge. Not only was obtaining a religious education impossible, the transfer of existing knowledge was also difficult. Nobody spoke Arabic. People were praying without knowing what they were saying. We [still] lack educated people. Christians have a deep-seated theological tradition; that is what we lack. When independence was declared, Christians filled the vacuum. For us, nothing much has changed in 25 years.69
One of the former Muftis of Ajaria concurred with this opinion by saying:
Nobody knew how to read Arabic, so they called me hoca when there was no hoca [in Batumi], just because I could read Arabic. I was obliged to go to Rize [a city in the Black Sea region, Turkey] to attend a Koran course, and became a hoca where there was no hoca. Later, I was appointed Mufti. I said I am not that educated … . I sent many people to Turkey for religious education, to higher education institutions. I wanted them to be educated. Now maybe 90 percent of the hocas have been educated in Turkey. At the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union nobody had a religious education; knowledge of Islam was very limited … . The lack of education during the Soviet period was the reason for this.70
A number of Muslim Ajarian respondents put forward this lack of Islamic knowledge and education as the main reason behind the high number of conversions in the post-Soviet period.71The same interviewees stressed that to overcome this problem, Muftis have cooperated with religious communities in neighbouring (Turkey and Iran) as well as other Muslim countries such as Saudi Arabia. They also stressed that in post-Soviet Georgia, many external actors have become active in promoting Islam. Some Muslim Ajarian respondents had been to Turkey for religious education, enrolling in both state and private educational institutions. The latter category included schools run by different tariqats [religious orders]—S€uleymancılar, for instance, a Turkey-based religious order also active in Germany, the United States and Georgia—or, in other cases, by the followers of Fetullah G€ulen.72 Our research revealed in this sense that external influences were often perceived as a threat to national unity by Georgian governments, confirming that, in some cases, this context facilitated conversion policies.73
69
Interview with an MP from the Our Georgia-Free Democrats Party, Batumi, 24 June 2015.
70Interview with former Mufti of Ajaria 1, Batumi, 23 June 2015. 71
All the former Muftis and leading Muslim religious figures interviewed shared this view.
72Our field research gave us the opportunity to observe, for instance, the impact of S€uleymancıs and
the Fetullah G€ulen movement on the local Muftis and on the general population through mosques, student dormitories and gatherings of young Muslim Ajarians aimed at raising awareness of their religion.
