“The World of Islam” and the Secular Political Regime

The de-privatization of religion in post-Soviet Azerbaijan was perceived as a sign of decreased control on the part of political regimes over everyday life and a reappearance of the national tradition. Sevil Huseynova uses this premise to investigate the discursive modes of the relationship between the authorities seeking to preserve the secular neutrality of power, on the one hand, and the religious institutions entering the public space, on the other hand. Evidently, the relationships between secular power and various religious communities are adopting a more competitive and even conflicting character. The author concentrates her analysis on how the secular state and religion (Islam) coexist, compete, and conflict in modern Azerbaijan by comparing the narratives in textbooks for the school subjects “Humans and Society” and “Knowledge of the World.”