The Ban on Hijab

In Azerbaijan, the collapse of the Soviet Union and emergence of an independent republic in 1991 created an environment of relative freedom for those who wanted to practice Islam. Although some expected a sudden return to pre-Soviet religious norms, by the early 1990s, it was clear that Azerbaijani people had embraced the secular nationalism promoted by the Soviet state and perceived religion rather as a marker of national identity (Swietochowski Reference Swietochowski2002, Motika Reference Motika2001). However, the relatively democratic context of the 1990s, as well as increasing globalization, allowed Islamic groups from around the world, most importantly Turkey, Iran, and the Arabian Peninsula, to arrive in Azerbaijan and start preaching an interpretation of Islam that was at odds with what the state understood as the Azerbaijani version of Islam (Sattarov Reference Sattarov2009; Wiktor-Mach Reference Wiktor-Mach2017). Foreign preachers taught their followers to pray five times a day, preferably in the mosque, fast during the month of Ramadan, recite the Qur’an in the original Arabic, and read books written by non-Azerbaijani authors. These practices brought some visibility to this “nontraditional” version of Islam (Bashirov Reference Bashirov2018), but the latter’s most powerful manifestation was the rising number of hijabi women in public spaces. Veiled older women were not foreign to residents of Baku, particularly to those living in the Icheri-Sheher (the Old City). However, the “new Muslim women” of Baku were different in almost all aspects. Contrary to their counterparts in Icheri-Sheher, they were “urban, mobile, educated and often professionally successful” and wore “flowery, colorful or dark headscarves with matching jackets, coats and skirts of diverse fashion styles” instead of “dusty chadras” (Vazirova Reference Vazirova2012, 158; see also Gureyeva Reference Gureyeva2003). Perhaps most significantly, they did not want to be confined to their homes and housework, but aspired to participate in public life, whether in higher education, civil society, or the media.

Nevertheless, these women soon realized that their public presence was not well-received by the general public and government authorities. Sometimes they were ostracized by their friends and even condemned by their families. In some instances, education and employment opportunities were denied to them solely because of their choice of attire (Musavat Reference Musavat2016). While their increasing public visibility caused some discussion in the media, the first major public controversy related to the hijabi women occurred in late 1998 when the Azerbaijani Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) banned the covering of heads (wearing hijab) in passport pictures. As several hijabi women protested the decision by refusing to submit their uncovered pictures, the first “hijab controversy” grew into a public debate involving politicians, the media, civil society personalities, and even celebrities. An appeal launched by hijabi women was turned down by the Supreme Court in 1999, which upheld the ban (Vazirova Reference Vazirova2012, 159–163).

By the early 2000s, along with hijabi women attending universities, the number of hijabi girls in public schools started to increase. This was followed by informal bans by certain school principals and university rectors (presidents), such as the Azerbaijan Teachers’ University (ATU). In addition, all professors in universities were informally banned from wearing hijab at this time (Xural Reference Xural2011c). In late 2010, the Ministry of Education announced a formal ban on wearing hijab in all public schools in Azerbaijan. In explaining the ban, Minister Merdanov referred to the recent changes to the Law on Education.

There were several issues with the law itself and the way it was implemented. To begin with, it was signed by the President in the summer of 2009, but the MoE waited for more than a year to announce the country-wide enforcement of its implementation. Second, in most cases, hijab was not singled out as a prohibited item in school regulations. Rather, the officials designated it as a prohibited item simply by claiming that hijab was an “additional clothing” not mentioned in the description of the uniform (Milli Reference Milli2010). Therefore, it appeared that the law, or at least its interpretation by officials, gave unbridled authority to school principals to designate uniforms for students and prohibit any item that was not specifically mentioned as part of those uniforms. Third, similar to the early 2000s, the ban’s implementation remained ad hoc. In some schools, mostly based on the preferences of the school director, the ban was enforced, whereas in others it was not.

Another controversial aspect of the law was its application to university students. The director of semi-official APA news agency, Vusale Mahirgizi stated that, “based on the new law, if there is no hijab in the uniform of either a secondary school or a university, one cannot enter there with hijab” (Mahirgizi Reference Mahirgizi2010). However, this meant that universities needed to introduce a uniform, as most universities did not have one; therefore, the law could not ban hijab until the universities introduced a uniform. The university ban also contradicted an important argument put forth by many supporters of the hijab ban in secondary schools. The latter asserted that pupils in secondary schools were essentially children who neither understood the religious teachings nor were religiously required to follow them, and that they could wear the hijab after becoming adults. Nonetheless, following the introduction of the ban in secondary schools, universities also started to collectively prevent hijabi female students from attending classes and even denied them entry to university premises.

Among the universities, the Azerbaijan Teachers’ University (ATU) announced, in September 2010, that female students wearing hijab would not be allowed on university premises, claiming that “based on our internal regulations, we do not allow students to wear attire not appropriate for a teacher” (Milli Reference Milli2010). In March 2013, the Azerbaijan National Oil Academy (ANOA) did not allow ten hijabi students onto school premises. The vice president of the school, Gasim Mammadov, argued that “the university has its internal regulations. Based on these regulations, the attire of a student has to be simple, modern, comfortable, secular and free from religious extremism [ifratchilig]. Girls should not wear hijab … there are few radicals who do not follow the rules” (AzVision Reference AzVision2013). The ban remains intact. In September 2017, the president of the Mingachevir State University, Akif Hajiyev, announced that students are not allowed to enter the university premises with hijab based on the school’s internal regulations (Oxu Reference Oxu2017).

The ban on hijab was not limited to educational institutions. In April 2016, several news outlets reported that a hijabi woman was denied appearance on the state-owned AzTV as a guest expert. The producers of the program explained that “there is an order from the top. Women wearing hijab cannot attend programs in our channel as a guest” (Baku.ws 2016).

As the above discussion shows, the ban was asserted in multiple contexts and was interwoven with diverse topics. Therefore, the hijab controversy is a complex, multifaceted phenomenon in Azerbaijan that cannot be explained by either referring to the Law on Education or to simple dichotomies. It is rather entangled with the topics of secularism, politics, modernity, and nationalism.

Secularism

The explicit justification of the hijab ban was secularism, or dünyəvilik, in Azerbaijan. Minister of Education Merdanov justified the ban by invoking the secular character of the Azerbaijani state and its Constitution: “Azerbaijan is a secular state. The Law on Education has a clear stance in regards to hijab” (Lent Reference Lent2010). Hence, in the Ministry’s interpretation, it upheld the secular law over the religious law that mandated wearing hijab. However, the controversy soon moved to a discussion over the principle of secularism itself. The director of the Presidential Administration’s Bureau of Political Analysis, Elnur Aslanov, declared that, “Azerbaijan’s Constitution has embraced the secular model. [As such], it acts as a guarantor of formation of its citizens as capable individuals until they reach adulthood…. Integrating aspects of various religions into education would destroy the status of the school as a neutral guarantor of citizen and character formation” (Azadliq Reference Azadliq2010).

Azerbaijan is clearly a secular republic. The principle of secularism has been inscribed to the Azerbaijani constitution since the country’s independence in 1991. Moreover, as surveys have consistently reported (Gallup Reference Gallup2010), Azerbaijani people are the most secular among all Muslims, and the country’s political leaders, since it gained independence, have been staunchly secular. The political regime has also cooperated with the West, primarily the United States, since the early 1990s in the areas of energy exploration and counterterrorism (Bashirov Reference Bashirov2017, Reference Bashirov2019).

An important aspect of the debate on secularism and hijab was that the principle of secularism, was interpreted as the law itself; in other words, hijab was understood as a religious command, whereas its ban was the law of the secular state. If a religious command and a secular law clash, the Azerbaijani state would clearly follow the secular principle. As the Director of the Permanent Human Rights Committee of the National Assembly, Rabiyyat Aslanova, asserted, “the principles of secular schools are such that secular rules should be obeyed” (Lent Reference Lent2010b). While this argument seems to provide a clear explanation, it is too simplistic. First, It does not explain why, for example, wearing hijab is understood as following a religious command but not an individual right. Two, as Elnur Aslanov’s comment showed, the state perceives religion as a powerful competitor in the area of nation-building, and education is understood as a strategic realm that cannot be left to religion. As Ahmet Kuru (Reference Kuru2007, 569) mentions, “Historical and contemporary debates on secularism” in many countries “have pointed to education as the main battlefield in state-religion controversies.” In Azerbaijan, the competition between the state and religion has a deeper dimension, as they both strive for a sacred status in the hearts and minds of citizens. This notion was apparent in Vusale Mahirgizi’s statement that “Those who want to bring hijab to primary and secondary schools are trying to deal a blow to the fundamental principles of the secular state and the nation’s core” (Mahirgizi Reference Mahirgizi2010).

The debate over hijab is best understood as a battle of two sacred bodies: the state and religion. Not only has the state been sacralized in post-Soviet discourses, but also, as the reference to “the nation’s core” indicates, the state and religion are understood as mutually exclusive parties fighting for the absolute allegiance of the people. In this battle, secularism supplements ideological arguments that justify and legitimize the sacralization of the state and its leadership by dismissing religion as an illegitimate phenomenon. Hijab, on the other hand, supplements the sacralization of religion, and is considered to be in a fierce battle with secularism and the sacred state.

Although secularism was the cornerstone of the pre-Soviet modernist movement in Azerbaijan, the latter’s conception of secularism was not inimical to religion. The first secular state of the Azerbaijani people was the Azerbaijani Democratic Republic (ADR), which was established in 1918. However, the ADR did not have an opportunity to assert itself as a sacred entity due to its short tenure. Moreover, it did not engage in an existential rivalry with the Muslim religion itself, since its conception of the state and secularism did not designate religion as antithetical to these notions. That is, although the ADR was established as a secular republic, in the sense that the state affairs were separated from religion, its leaders such as Mammad Amin Rasulzadah did not embrace an anti-religious ideology for the new state. They were rather inimical of some traditions that denied the progress of the Azerbaijani people under the banner of religion, as well as those clerics who exploited these traditions for their personal benefit. Furthermore, while they had envisioned transforming society through secular education, they emphasized a gradual reform program that would respect the society’s values and would not alienate the people from the state’s transformative effort. For example, not only did the ADR’s educational system allow students to wear hijab, but it also included courses on Islamic shari’a (Goyushov and Askarov Reference Goyushov and Elchin2010, 190).

Instead, I argue that the notions of the sacred state and anti-religious secularism have their roots in the Soviet era. As Luehrmann (Reference Luehrmann2011) argued, the Soviet state’s fight against religion involved replacing God with the state as a sacred entity. The state took “the place of God, equally sacralized and lifted out of the realm of human questioning” (Luehrmann Reference Luehrmann2011, 3), because it was the Soviet state and not God that was providing for the welfare and well-being of Soviet citizens. Bolshevism became a political, totalitarian religion whose prophet was Lenin, and whose God was the Soviet state (Gentile and Mallett Reference Gentile and Robert2000, 41–43). As a “secular” God, the state demanded Soviet citizens’ total allegiance and loyalty, unrivaled with any other sacred entity, which most importantly, included religion. Similar to other modernizing “mobilizational” states such as Kemalist Turkey, the Soviet Union “feared that allegiance to nonhuman agents could present a threat to the new collective of equal citizens” (Luehrmann Reference Luehrmann2011, 5).Footnote ³

Islamist Politics

Secularism was the explicit justification of the ban; however, its subtext was Islamist politics. As seen in Aslanov’s statement (Azadliq Reference Azadliq2010), most of the time, state officials and commentators connected the issue of secularism with the state and with the threat of Islamist political actors emanating from outside of Azerbaijan (Xural Reference Xural2011a). When the hijab protests took place in December 2010, the Azerbaijani media pointed at Iranian Ayatollahs, such as Naser Makarem Shirazi, as the backers of the protesters. The Iranian Cultural Center in Baku and its former director Ali Akbar Ojaghnejad were also accused of constantly interfering in the domestic affairs of Azerbaijan (Jaliloglu Reference Jaliloglu2011). The director of the Azeri-Turk Women’s Union, Tanzile Rustamkhanli, claimed “the hijab issue has been raised by the people who want Azerbaijan’s development to be prevented and who execute the orders of foreign countries.… This is a political game; it has to be prevented” (Lent Reference Lent2010c). One politician claimed that hijab “is a concrete uniform and certain political powers stand behind it … [their] soldiers were educated in Qom and sent to Azerbaijan” (Xural Reference Xural2011b).

There were two inter-related aspects to the debate on Islamist politics and hijab: the political character of hijab and its association with Islamist governments abroad. For Azerbaijani commentators, the political character of hijab was out of question. It seemed that any expression of Islamic religiosity in public spaces—such as growing a long beard, wearing a turban, or donning hijab—was a clear expression of the politicization of religion. What is more, the charge of politicization was accompanied by a charge of following foreign interests (most importantly those of theocratic regimes such as Iran and Saudi Arabia), which is essentially tantamount to an accusation of treason. Shovkat Mammad and others claimed that hijab plays an important role in Iran’s “religio-political expansion” attempts into Azerbaijan (Mammad Reference Mammad2015). The politicization of hijab and association with foreign interests went hand in hand, since one was understood to be a clear outcome of the other: Hijab was brought into Azerbaijan by foreign missionaries who were controlled by governments that pursued hostile political designs.

There are two dynamics in the post-Soviet period that contribute to the association of hijab with Islamist politics. The first is related to the fact that it was mostly (predominantly Shia) Islamist groups, that publicly criticized the state’s prohibitive approach toward hijab and protested against it. When the Ministry of the Interior banned hijabi photos from passports, three Shia groups (Islam-Ittihad, Intibah, and Taraggi) started a campaign to support the cause of hijab. In 2005, when another hijab controversy ensued due to hijabi women not being able to receive national identity cards, the Shia Juma Mosque community started a campaign called “Our Headscarf Is Our Honor” (Bedford Reference Bedford2009, 133). The most controversial events that politicized hijab were violent protests organized by Abdul Suleymanov and Tale Baghirzade in December 2010 and May 2011, respectively. The Azerbaijani regime considered both Suleymanov and Baghirzade to be connected to the Islamic Party of Azerbaijan (IPA) and Iranian religious propaganda. On May 6, 2011, at least 65 members of the IPA were detained for illegally participating in the Freedom to Hijab protests (Azadliq Reference Azadliq2011). Moreover, the leader of the IPA, Movsum Samadov, who was arrested in January 2011 for his harshly critical speech against President Aliyev, claimed during his trial that “We are opposing this government, because it has subjected itself to Zionists. Zionists have put Azerbaijan under their control … the Prophet’s caricatures are being drawn in newspapers, hijab is banned, mosques are being destroyed … these things cannot happen in a Muslim country” (Qafqazinfo 2011). Such statements by Islamist political actors alerted the politicians to the idea that the telos of Islamist politics in Azerbaijan was today’s Iran, and that the hijab was being used as an instrument to achieve this goal.

The second dynamic was the entanglement of hijab with transnational Islamic identities and movements. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, there emerged an impressive interest in religion among the population at large. However, the local religious establishment in Azerbaijan was not well-equipped to provide satisfactory information to believers. This dynamic allowed the foreign religious movements that arrived in Azerbaijan in the early 1990s to establish themselves as credible sources of religious learning and lead the Islamic revival (Wiktor-Mach Reference Wiktor-Mach2017). In addition to the Shia influence from Iran, various Sufi brotherhoods from Turkey and Salafi currents from the Arabian Peninsula arrived and established themselves (Balci and Goyushov Reference Balci and Altay2013, 204). These groups played important roles in politicization of Islam both in terms of reinforcing Sunni and Shia identities (Balci Reference Balci2004) and formulation of alternative representations of Islam that challenged the official Islam in Azerbaijan (Bashirov Reference Bashirov2018, 34–38). They also put emphasis on stricter following of Islamic commands, which were largely forgotten as a result of Soviet propaganda.

In Azerbaijan, the local tradition of hijab had almost disappeared by the time when the Soviet Union collapsed, especially among young generations. Therefore, although not all newly covered women were members of these “foreign” groups, the perception that hijab came from abroad meant that every hijabi woman was perceived to be a member of, or at least as being influenced by, these groups. These Muslim groups were constructed as a threat to national security through associations with instability and the interests of foreign countries, and a threat to national identity because of their allegedly insidious tactics of infiltration into society, forceful conversion of people, and corruption of national identity (Bashirov Reference Bashirov2018). Their securitization as such inevitably led to securitization of hijab as well, given the commonly accepted organic relationship between hijab and these movements. Many times, politicians and commentators argued that the children who wear hijab were “propelled” to do so by religious movements funded from abroad (Lent Reference Lent2010b).

An important dynamic behind the politicization of hijab was suspicion of Iranian influence. Several post-independence–era developments contributed to this. In the early 1990s, Iran’s Khomeini Foundation, a state-run charity for propagating the regime’s ideology under the banner of humanitarian assistance, and the IPA, an Islamist party with strong links to Iran that called for introduction of a shari’a regime, established themselves in Azerbaijan (Sattarov Reference Sattarov2009, 111–114). However, their activities were quickly met with opposition, first by the Turkic nationalist leader Abulfez Elchibey, who denounced Iran for forcefully assimilating its Azeri minority and called for the unification of northern and southern Azerbaijan (Valiyev Reference Valiyev and Jodicke2017, 86–88), and later by Heydar Aliyev, who banned the IPA due to its harsh criticism of the political regime and its radical goal of establishing an Iranian-style Islamic republic in Azerbaijan. Aliyev also expelled Iranian charity organizations due to their connection to the Iranian regime’s religious propaganda. Another factor was the perception that Iran favored Armenia in the Nagorno-Karabakh war (Akbarzadeh and Barry 2016, 16).Footnote ⁴ Iran continued its interventions into Azerbaijan’s internal affairs in later years as well. It criticized Azerbaijan’s cooperation with the United States and Israel, and campaigned against Azerbaijan’s hosting of the 2012 Eurovision song contest. It also criticized the hijab ban and supported Islamist political groups such as the IPA and the Nardaran-based Muslim Unity Movement, which have also been at the forefront of the hijab controversy. However, these post-Soviet–era developments alone do not explain hijab’s entanglement with Azerbaijan’s foreign relations.

I argue that to understand the dynamics behind the politicization of hijab and its association with foreign interests in post-Soviet discourses, one needs to look at Soviet-era discourses. In Azerbaijan, a paranoid fear of transnational Islam in general and of Iran in particular is rooted in this period. In the Soviet center, the hysterical fear of transnational Islam as a competitor was a remnant of the Tsarist Russia. Yet, the roots of this perception in Azerbaijan are located in the Soviet period (Bennigsen, Henze, Tanham, and Wimbush Reference Bennigsen, Henze, Tanham and Wimbush1989). In the Soviet Union, such fear of a supranational allegiance produced strong reactions against expressions of religious identity and practice in the Soviet Muslim republics (Glenn Reference Glenn1999). Sometimes through force, sometimes through ideological indoctrination, the Soviet center transplanted this perception in Muslim republics, including Azerbaijan. People were persecuted for simply performing religious rites, such as reciting Qur’an, performing a prayer, or veiling, all under the name of confronting “pan-Islamism,” in Soviet Azerbaijan. Through pan-Islamist threat, the Soviet state emphasized the political character of religion and “accuse[d] [the practitioners] of carrying out anti-Soviet activities” and of trying to “shatter the foundation of the world’s first socialist state … under the banner of religious rituals” (Goyushov and Askarov Reference Goyushov and Elchin2010, 186). The Soviet attitude toward Islamic expression also emanated from its even deeper hatred of, and animosity toward, Islam as a religion. Islam was understood as a threat against the Soviet regime’s interests and ideology, since it could “undermine values of communism, and eventually even the Soviet regime’s authority, in its Muslim minorities” (Ro’i Reference Ro’i1984).

While the post-Soviet Azerbaijani state does not consider religion itself as an enemy, deep-seated fear of transnational (read: political) Islam remains. Political activism by religious figures, part of which has been directed against the hijab ban, is considered an attack by foreign-supported organizations against the sociopolitical order under the cover of religion. Moreover, in the context of the ongoing crisis in Syria and Iraq, in which three of its biggest neighbors (Russia, Turkey, and Iran) are deeply involved, the state is worried about the recruitment of Azerbaijani fighters and transport of the conflict to Azerbaijan (Altstadt Reference Altstadt2017, 210–214). Particularly worrisome is the prospect of spread of confessionalization between the Sunni and Shia communities through transnational religious groups (Balci Reference Balci2013).

Similarly, anti-Iranian hysteria has its roots in the Soviet period. A major policy of the Soviet establishment, which it inherited from its Tsarist predecessors, was to cut Azerbaijan’s ties with Iran, which was considered a source of religious fanaticism and regressive nationalism. The Soviet regime closed Azerbaijan’s borders with Iran and eliminated pro-Iranian groups such as Ittihad in the 1930s. Further Sovietization reforms in education, the alphabet, and cultural milieu also served this purpose (Yunusov Reference Yunusov2004, 138–164). Nevertheless, the key event that triggered Soviet fear of Iranian influence was the 1979 revolution that established an Islamic Republic in Iran. The Soviet government grew paranoid about the implications of an Islamic theocratic regime at its southern border, including its prospective spread to Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan. In the 1980s, leaders of Azerbaijani SSR, such as Heydar Aliyev and the KGB head Ziya Yusifzadeh, called for more effective measures in Azerbaijan against Iranian efforts (Ro’i Reference Ro’i1984). Indeed, Iran’s interventions into Azerbaijan’s domestic affairs in the post-Soviet era helped to sustain these Soviet-era fears concerning its influence.

Modernity

In addition to associating it with Islamist politics and foreign interests, the supporters of the 2010 ban also declared hijab to be anti-modern and backward, pointing at the cultural character of the controversy. Govhar Bakhshaliyeva, a member of parliament, rhetorically asked: “How appropriate is it to live with the rules and regulations of the 7th century? We need to go to the light” (Bakhshaliyeva Reference Bakhshaliyeva2013; emphasis added). After denying hijabi students from attending classes, the vice president of Sumgayit State University asserted “it is a requirement to come to the school in a modern attire.” When asked why hijab is an obstacle to modernity, he replied “certainly, hijab is a thing that represents religion” (Azxeber Reference Azxeber2014). Many times, the supporters represented hijab as a return to pre-Soviet, backward customs. Bakhshaliyeva (Reference Bakhshaliyeva2013) asserted, “For Azerbaijani women, [hijab] is a passed, finished, completed step [toward modernity]. The problem of hijab has been overcome.” Tanzila Rustamkhanli similarly claimed “Azerbaijani women were emancipated from hijab a hundred years ago” (Lent Reference Lent2010c).

Although the supporters of the ban insisted on representing hijab as a “return to darkness,” many hijabi women resolutely rejected such a view and instead donned hijab as a symbol of their independence, individuality, piety, and even resistance. For example, all seven women respondents of Gureyeva’s (Reference Gureyeva2003) survey claimed they consider hijab “to have an emancipatory and empowering potential, as it helps in stating subjectivity and revealing one’s identity.” Similarly, Heyat (Reference Heyat2008, 366) argued that the new veiling in Azerbaijan “is no return to old traditions of veiling and confinement of women to the home environment, but a voluntary act of self-assertion in adopting a form of dress that signals respectability … while leading an active public life.” Moreover, while the supporters of the ban asserted that wearing hijab is an impediment to women’s employment outside home, most hijabi women in the post-Soviet era have been active, employed women. In this regard, the post-Soviet–era veiling in Azerbaijan is ironically a modern phenomenon similar to those in many other non-Muslim (Roy Reference Roy2004) and Muslim countries (Akbulut Reference Akbulut2015), including other post-Soviet ones (see McBrien Reference McBrien2009; Suyarkulova Reference Suyarkulova2016). If anything, the de-modernization process in post-Soviet Azerbaijan has been going on under the auspices of the state. Arguably two of the most important gains of Soviet Azerbaijani women (equality in marriage and liberal access to divorce) have been systematically eliminated through post-Soviet policies. As Wilson’s (Reference Wilson2017, 298) research revealed, in post-Soviet Azerbaijan, “police refuse to investigate wife-battering cases” and “judges often seek to dissuade wives from seeking divorce,” frequently referring to social norms and community values. With the disappearance of Moscow’s monitoring authority, police and judges systematically violate legal codes that protect women’s rights. Furthermore, domestic policies implemented by the state have worked to strengthen “traditional patriarchal ideology that maintains that a woman’s primary role is with children and family” (Gureyeva Reference Gureyeva2011). Finally, women’s employment in post-Soviet Azerbaijan has decreased substantially, at a much higher rate than men’s. The state-led privatization process resulted in massive unemployment among women who were later unable to establish businesses in the private sector. Their wages also significantly decreased to mere 50–55% of those of men (Habibov et al 2017; Trend Reference Trend2009).

The above discussion shows that the association of hijab with medieval darkness and backwardness does not emanate from the actual activities of the hijabi women, but rather from a peculiar perception of modernity that cannot accommodate hijab. Given that post-Soviet veiling has been rather a modern and activist endeavor, demonstrated by the willingness of the hijabi women to participate in education and employment, it is clear that this image of hijab as an anti-modern tradition is a remnant of pre-independence–era discourses. Indeed, by framing hijab as an anti-modern and backward custom, the supporters of the ban were imitating a famous Soviet representation of hijab. As Tlostanova asserted (Reference Tlostanova2012, 132), the Soviet regime used “the rhetoric of modernity” as a “tool to justify the continuing colonization of time and space, of lives and futures” in Soviet Muslim nations. The official Soviet discourse constructed the veil as a symbol of darkness, ignorance, and backwardness, and called for Muslim women to drop their veil and move to the light of modernity. In the 1920s, the Soviet regime started a massive hujum (attack/crackdown) against the veil in all Muslim republics, including Azerbaijan, that involved forceful unveiling, political pressure, and, in some cases, jailing (Goyushov and Askarov Reference Goyushov and Elchin2010, 178–186; see also Northrop 2004). The hujum led to mass unveiling of Azerbaijani women; however, this change was a forceful one against their will. It also ended the progressive and gradual reform process started by the Azerbaijani intelligentsia during the late 19th and early 20th centuries before the Soviet invasion. Indeed, Azerbaijani intellectuals such as Mirza Fathali Akhundzadeh, Jalil Mammadguluzadeh and Uzeyir Hajibeyov championed women’s education, unveiling, and modernization, and supported their right to initiate divorce, have a job, and receive higher education, long before the Soviet Union came into existence (Altstadt Reference Altstadt2016).

However, the Soviet discourse that emerged after the Stalinist purges put the initiatives of the Soviet state, in particular the hujum, at the center of women’s unveiling, and dismissed Azerbaijan’s pre-Soviet enlightenment movement that also championed women’s rights. In the Soviet version of Azerbaijan’s history, its people “were depicted as languishing in backwardness until the Russians brought them progress” (Atkin Reference Atkin1992, 63). Clearly, such discursive tropes were imitated, as a mimetic performance, in the post-Soviet–era debates around hijab. For example, Govhar Bakhshaliyeva (Reference Bakhshaliyeva2013) argued that, “We are criticizing the Soviet period. It is true, our independence was taken away, our natural resources were exploited by foreigners. However, at the same time … great accomplishments were made in the area of women’s emancipation from hijab and their equality with men before the law.” Similarly, ex-president Heydar Aliyev stated, “Huge changes took place in the life of Azerbaijani women starting in 1920 and within a short period of time—in historical terms—women dropped the chadra, became liberated, independent, received equal rights” (quoted in Vazirova Reference Vazirova2012, 154, emphasis mine). These discourses note women’s unveiling and modernization process as beginning in 1920, the year the Bolshevik army invaded Azerbaijan, and constructed it as a process initiated by Azerbaijani women and for Azerbaijani women, hence the use of the verb “dropped.” They also involve an attempt to whitewash the Soviet-era policies in a post-colonial logic, hence “we are criticizing Soviet Union … however.” These representations point at the ambivalent and ambiguous relationship the post-Soviet Azerbaijanis have built with their Soviet experience, and “the extent to which Soviet domination was not perceived as ‘alien’” (Adams Reference Adams2008, 5).

The post-Soviet representations of hijab as an impediment to women’s employment is paradoxical, especially when compared to such representations in the pre-Soviet era. The native intelligentsia of the latter period supported women’s education and employment, and “denounced the practices of veiling, seclusion and polygamy as being responsible for denying” women such opportunities (Heyat Reference Heyat2002, 67). However, contrary to the modern-day supporters of the hijab ban, the nationalist reformers did not associate such derogatory practices with covered women themselves, but rather blamed tyrannical clergymen and government officials. As such, they tried to bring veiled women to schools, instead of denying them entry. Therefore, although they too had established associations between veiling and seclusion, this had emanated from an almost complete absence of covered women in public life, not from covered women’s attempts to attend schools or gain employment. Indeed, their genuine interest in the modernization of Azerbaijan made them embrace a gradual reform process that did not dismiss religion. They even included religious subjects such as Qur’an and shari’a law in school curricula, despite their own preferences otherwise, in order to convince conservative families to send their children to schools for education. The ADR did not ban hijab in its schools, because its struggles were not directed against the veil per se, but rather toward women’s greater participation in public life, education and employment. Indeed, most female attendees of their schools had hijabs that covered their hair and neck, but left the face open, similar to those worn by today’s hijabi women.

In contrast, the symbolic association of hijab with unemployment, laziness, and asocial behavior, as well as its rejection and prohibition, were parts of Soviet discourses and practices. In the symbolic universe of the Soviet ideology, hijab was the ultimate symbol of backwardness and seclusion, and women’s emancipation entailed their removal of hijab and joining the Soviet workforce. A Soviet resolution in 1928 banned students and teachers from wearing the veil and other traditional headwear. Employment of covered women was also prohibited in the 1930s (Goyushov and Askarov Reference Goyushov and Elchin2010). According to the Soviet regime, it emancipated Muslim women by bringing them into the workforce and removing their veils. Employment and unveiling became undeniable evidence of Muslim women’s emancipation under the auspices of the Soviet state.

This discourse not only dismissed the efforts and progress of the pre-Soviet–era intelligentsia, but it also masked the Soviet regime’s inherently disingenuous and instrumentalist approach to women’s emancipation and modernization, which failed to produce enduring and personal gains for women. The Soviet policy was instrumentalist because its goal of bringing women into the workforce, of which unveiling was understood as a prerequisite, “do[es] not appear to have been motivated by the desire to liberate women but by Stalin’s desire to increase production in order to compete with the West and to strengthen social control” (Freeman Reference Freeman2013, 40). It was disingenuous because, as Alimova (Reference Alimova1998, 147) powerfully argued, “The achievements of women cotton field workers, textile workers and scholars were praised, whilst concealing the problems of women’s lack of social protection, the harm caused by pesticides, high levels of infant mortality and inadequate living standards.” It was also ineffective since the “Soviet state paid only lip service to effecting fundamental changes in gender roles, the patriarchal structure of the family, and the gender-based division of labor in domestic and reproductive domains” for the sake of maintaining political stability and subservience in Muslim republics (Tohidi Reference Tohidi, Bodman and Tawḥīdī1999, 94). In this sense, what is considered as “the Soviet paradox” by (Kandiyoti Reference Kandiyoti2007) appears to be a natural consequence of the disingenious, instrumentalist, and political approach of the Soviet regime to women’s “emancipation.”

Nationalism

The supporters of the 2010 hijab ban also connected the hijab with nationalism and stated that wearing hijab was against “Azerbaijani Islam.” As Rabiyyat Aslanova mentioned, “In the past, our grandmothers, mothers covered their heads with kelagayi and yaylig Footnote ⁵. The niqab, the dark cover that is promoted today, is completely foreign to Islam’s Azerbaijani model” (Lent Reference Lent2010b). Minister of Education Merdanov claimed that “[the ban] is not straying away from Muselmanchiliq [literally, Muslimism]. We all accept our Allah … Obeying the rules of the middle school is not against Muselmanchiliq” (Lent Reference Lent2010a; emphasis added). Tanzila Rustamkhanli echoed these statements: “Turkish women have never worn hijab or chadra. In the past, our women used kelagayi to cover their head” (Lent Reference Lent2010c).

These statements were referring to an underlying concept: the “Azerbaijani model of Islam” that was understood to be national, widely accepted, and practiced. It refers to a specific representation of Islam that is national and indigenous in its character, and one that expresses the Azerbaijani nation’s historical accomplishments of secularism, modernism, and emancipation from external, primarily Iranian, influences (Swietochowski Reference Swietochowski2002). In recent years, a more elaborate notion has been developing in the discourse of Azerbaijani politicians and ideologues, which posits that the “Azerbaijani model of Islam” is secular, respective of religious and sectarian diversity, free from foreign influence, and is based on Azerbaijan’s local and historical traditions. It is clear that, this notion is a myth since it refers to a “distorted representation of reality,” is based on selective reading of history and traditions, and is aimed at constructing an indivisible nation (Jørgensen and Phillips Reference Jørgensen and Louise J2002, 39–40). Nevertheless, it is useful for the Azerbaijani state in trying to prevent sectarian strife, to confront extremism and radicalism, and to project to the world an image of secular, modern, and multicultural, and yet Muslim state. A full discussion of the Azerbaijani model of Islam is beyond the scope of this article. Rather, the key point is that certain symbols of Islamic religiosity, such as long beards and hijab, are considered as inimical to this model because they represent not “national” but “foreign” or “transnational” Islam that is imported from outside of Azerbaijan.

In the discourse of the supporters of the ban, hijab represents anti-secularism, anti-modernism, and subordination to foreign influences, and, hence, loss of national identity, of which the “Azerbaijani Islam” is an indivisible part and an important signifier. On the one hand, the obsession with the national, Azerbaijani form of Islam shows how important religion is for the construction of national identity in post-Soviet Azerbaijan. On the other hand, the focus on hijab points at the socially and politically assigned role of women in embodying the line that signifies the Azerbaijani nation’s historical and geographic boundaries and women’s essential role in cultural reproduction (see Yuval-Davis Reference Yuval-Davis1997).

These discourses revealed that peculiar notions of modernity, secularism, and emancipation have been inscribed in the understanding of Azerbaijani nationalism. Also, the fact that hijab was represented as an abomination of these national values shows that—in contrast to other colonized nations such as India (Chatterjee Reference Chatterjee1993) and Algeria (Fanon Reference Fanon2004), where nationalist elites rejected the colonizer's attempt to influence the inner, spiritual realm that involved family and women—in Azerbaijan, indigenous constructions of nation and nationalism have accommodated and even enforced some of those “foreign” secular conceptions that interfered with women’s attire. This is not to deny a concomitant process of post-Soviet demodernization whereby discrimination against women has been making a comeback under the guises of tradition and national values in both public and private spheres, be it in under-age marriages, polygamy, or apathy toward domestic violence. Rather, I argue that the conception of nationalism in Azerbaijan cannot be reduced to mere dichotomies between religion and secularism, or tradition and secularism, but involves a peculiar combination of all three and has been shaped by historical processes since the 19th century. The fact that the same discourse constructs wife-beating as traditional and hijab as nontraditional tells us to avoid making quick associations between hijab, tradition, and secularism in Azerbaijan, and instead look at the processes through which hijab has come to be understood as nontraditional and nonnational.

In Azerbaijan, the post-Soviet discourses on nationalism have been shaped by historical processed that occurred both before and during the Soviet era (Goyushov Reference Goyushov2008, 66–67). Regarding the pre-Soviet processes, several secular writers, and even a reformist theologian, claimed that the opponents of the hijab ban were the modern-day reincarnations of the religious zealots of the pre-Soviet era, who fiercely opposed girls’ education (Cebhe Reference Cebhe2017; Lent Reference Lent2012). An interesting story that received wide circulation concerned a pre-Soviet era Azerbaijani oil millionaire and supporter of the intelligentsia reforms, Zeynalabdin Taghiyev, and his struggle to open a girls’ school in Baku. When Taghiyev managed to open the school in 1901, the first ever in the Muslim world, he faced harsh opposition from the clerical establishment. The clerics and their followers harassed and even attacked the families who sent their daughters to the school (Heyat Reference Heyat2002, 67).

At the heart of Taghiyev and other reformists’ education agenda was a nationalist goal: “to produce desirable wives for educated men and good mothers for the nation” (Altstadt Reference Altstadt2016, 21). This was connected to a broader issue concerning the role of women in the nation’s development: “the women’s question,” which emerged as the central issue in the agenda of the nationalist intelligentsia in the late 19th century Azerbaijan. As Azerbaijani women appeared in public spaces with covered faces and dark veils, they became the signifiers of “backwardness,” “barbarity,” and “ignorance” that were appropriated to the Muslim nations by the Russian colonial system of differentiation (Swietochowski Reference Swietochowski1995, 23–36). Hence, Muslim women had to show their faces in public and receive secular education in order for Azerbaijan to develop as a nation.

The secular intelligentsia and the leaders of the Azerbaijani Democratic Republic (1918–1920) tried to build the Azerbaijani nation based on secular principles of territoriality, common language, and history. They tried to overcome the Sunni–Shia divide and gradually reform religious traditions, including the face veil, without attacking the religion itself. This process was terminated with the arrival of the Soviet power. The Soviet regime briefly supported the modernization program of the intelligentsia in the early 1920s, especially those works that targeted the veil, such as Jafar Jabbarly’s famous play titled Sevil. However, the regime was against the culturally radicalist works of Jafar Jabbarli and Jalil Mammadguluzadeh, which denounced deeply rooted traditional notions such as namus (chastity) and geyrat (honor) and called for personal and cultural emancipation (Heyat Reference Heyat2002, 99–103). By the 1930s, it was clear that the Soviet regime was not interested in extensive reforms toward modernization and emancipation, which could have threatened its grip over society. Nonetheless, the emphasis on the veil remained in Soviet propaganda discourse because unveiling had instrumental and symbolic benefits in bringing women to the workforce and in giving the Soviet state a so-called “modern” character.

The brutal repression of the Azerbaijani intelligentsia in the late 1930s erased a generation of secular nationalist thinkers and made sure that no local nationalist discourse emerges in Azerbaijan until the mid-1950s. Starting with the Khrushchev’s thaw in 1954, the nationalist idea made a comeback in Azerbaijan, especially in the struggle for Azerbaijani language (Hesenli Reference Hesenli2008). In their struggle against Russification, Azerbaijani writers led a cultural and linguistic revival through their literary works. Nonetheless, these works remained “Azerbaijani in form, socialist in content,” and toed the ideological line directed from the center (Hesenli Reference Hesenli2008, 525).

Furthermore, although the Soviet government rehabilitated many members of local intelligentsia and their works, including ancient epics such as Koroglu and Dede Korkut, not only were these rehabilitations limited in scope, but they also distorted the lives and the works of the intelligentsia by connecting them to Soviet ideology. While the rehabilitated people could be mentioned again, “Only those aspects of their lives that demonstrated their loyalty to Lenin, the party, or Marxist-Leninist principles were acceptable topics for examination, research, and repetition” (Altstadt Reference Altstadt2013, 172).

More important for our purposes here, the opposition to hijab remained a constant current in Azerbaijani cultural and political discourses during this period. Perhaps this was no coincidence, since Azerbaijani writers had been at the forefront of the modernization and secularization movement since the late 19th century. Yet, certain aspects of their anti-veiling differed from that of their predecessors and showed signs of Soviet influence. When Azerbaijani historians and writers started to rewrite Azerbaijani history after the 1950s, they put Islam outside of Azerbaijani (and Turkish) culture and declared it alien. This idea emanated from historians’ tendency to emphasize Azerbaijan’s pre-Islamic history, which appeared less controversial and less political, and fit the Soviet center’s ideological goal of delinking Azerbaijani culture from Islam. By the 1980s, this reading of history became mainstream in Azerbaijan and led to internalization of the colonial prejudices about Islam by the local elite (Adams Reference Adams2008). Hijab, as an ultimate symbol of Islamic religiosity, was disowned by Azerbaijani nationalists in this context.

Indeed, the representations of the supporters of the hijab ban in contemporary Azerbaijan make it clear how they have been shaped by the Soviet period rather than the pre-Soviet discourses. For example, although Azerbaijani women, especially those in rural areas, did certainly wear kelagayi and yaylig in the pre-Soviet period, it is an undeniable truth that most of them in urban areas and towns near the Iranian border donned long, black chadra (Kamp Reference Kamp2014). Therefore, the assertion that Azerbaijani women never donned chadra is a rather Soviet-era fabrication. Similarly, the very concept of Musulmanchiliq, to which Minister Merdanov referred, first emerged in the Tsarist descriptions of Muslim behavior and then moved to the Soviet discourses, and is filled with oriental stereotypes such as accepting bribes, favoritism, and job evasion. Today, it has been internalized by many Azerbaijanis, thanks largely to the Soviet propaganda (Heyat Reference Heyat2002, 110). While a fuller discussion of Azerbaijani nationalism is outside the scope of this article, my goal was to show that the particular notion of Azerbaijani nationalism that constructed hijab as nonnational (hence, non-Azerbaijani) emerged during the Soviet period as a result of the interactions between the Soviet center and Azerbaijani writers and politicians.