ArmInfo.In 2022, religious freedom conditions in Azerbaijan trended negatively. The government continued to exert significant control over all religious practice, primarily through enforcement of the country's law On Freedom of Religious Beliefs (religion law), according to a report by the US Commission on International Religious Freedom.
The religion law requires religious communities to register to legally engage in religious activity, requires state review and approval of religious literature and related materials, and places numerous other limitations on freedom of religion or belief. In March, President Ilham Aliyev signed into law amendments to the religion law that reassigned the power to appoint imams from the nominally independent Caucasus Muslim Board (CMB) to the official State Committee for Work with Religious Associations (SCWRA), further entrenching state control over the practice of Islam. In May, the SCWRA fired Shi'a imam Mirseymur Aliyev after he reportedly held Ramadan prayers on a different day than mandated by the state.
That same month, the CMB announced the imposition of an age restriction that barred citizens over the age of 65 from performing the Hajj. Authorities also raided, seized religious literature from, and fined about 20 Muslims across the country who met for worship in private homes or held religious events with children.
While religious minorities have generally noted positive strides for religious freedom in Baku, others have shared that local authorities outside of the capital have surveilled Christians.
During the year, the government failed yet again to register any non-Muslim religious communities, leaving some communities of Protestant Christians and Jehovah's Witnesses without registration and therefore unable to operate legally. Meanwhile, the SCWRA disclosed registering approximately 22 Muslim communities. Officials continued to reject requests for a civilian alternative to mandatory military service despite the allowance of such an option in the constitution. In a reversal of recent practice, Azerbaijan resumed detaining Jehovah's Witnesses who sought to conscientiously object. In July, conscription authorities detained Royal Karimov and held him for more than three months. In September, a local court sentenced Seymur Mammadov to nine months in prison for his refusal to serve in the military before converting that punishment in December to a one-year suspended sentence.
Azerbaijani nongovernmental organizations tracking political prisoners in the country documented as many as 19 individuals imprisoned at the end of the year for their religious activism, the majority of whom are members of the Muslim Unity Movement (MUM). Throughout the year, law enforcement regularly detained additional members of the MUM, which the group characterized as a "provocation and pressure against the movement." In June, MUM member Elgiz Mammadov alleged that he was raped while in police custody. In a positive development, a court granted early release to Muslim theologian Elshan Mustafaoglu, who had served seven and a half years of his 10- year prison sentence.
International bodies and other organizations continued to question the Azerbaijani government's willingness to protect and preserve religious and cultural heritage sites in Nagorno-Karabakh and neighboring territories under Azerbaijani control. In February, then Minister of Culture Anar Karimov announced the creation of a working group to remove Armenian Apostolic inscriptions from churches that he characterized as "fictitious." The government seemingly backpedaled on the plan following international outcry, and in March the European Parliament condemned "Azerbaijan's continued policy of erasing and denying the Armenian cultural heritage in and around Nagorno-Karabakh." During the reporting period, Caucasus Heritage Watch, a research initiative supported by Cornell University, documented through satellite imagery the destruction of St. Sargis Church. In past years, Azerbaijan has claimed that Armenian forces also damaged religious sites.