Episode Transcript
[00:00:13] Speaker A: Hello and salam. Dear listeners, today I have the joy of introducing the fascinating work of Dr. Akif Taheed on Shi' ism in Eastern Europe. Recently I came across a scholarship when I was serving as an editor of Religion Compassion, where we publish pieces that are descriptive and more encyclopedic in nature rather than thesis heavy.
One day I checked my email and I saw that Akif had submitted an article on Shiasm in Eastern Europe. As I read it, I felt the familiar academic moment when you suddenly see the edges of your own knowledge. When I was younger, that feeling was sharp. It made me doubt myself. Now I treasure it. It's humbling in the best way. There's something deeply beautiful about realizing, wow, this whole world of knowledge exists and I never knew. And it comes with another kind of beauty too, the awareness that someone else has been paying attention, doing the slow, quiet work of learning, and now I get to witness it and grow from it.
That gift of someone else's labor is one of the things I love most about being an academic and really about being human. We are a team, each doing different works so that we can all benefit.
I genuinely had no idea there were Shia communities in Eastern Europe. And that's why I'm so excited to share Aaqif's work with all of us today.
It opened a door for me and I hope it does the same for you. Let's dive in together, but first let me introduce you to Dr. Akif. Aqif is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute for the Study of Islamic Culture and Religion and at Goita University, Frankfurt.
His work explores Shia Islam, Islamic law, digital religion, and the lived experiences of Muslim communities in Eastern Europe.
Akif earned his PhD from the National Law University in Kharkiv with a dissertation in the contemporary applications of Shia Islamic law.
He has held research appointments at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, the University of Vienna, and the Institute for Human Sciences. His scholarship has been recognized with numerous awards, including the Ukrainian Ministry of Education and Sciences, Best PhD Thesis Award, and various honors at international conferences.
Without further ado, Akif, could you tell the audience what drew you to research Shia Muslim communities in Eastern Europe and why you think that religion is often overlooked in Shia studies.
Also, if you don't mind telling the audience, since Eastern Europe isn't a fixed category and different fields define it differently, which countries are you including when you use that term?
[00:02:57] Speaker B: Thank you very much, Roshan. Thank you for having me for your interest to this topic.
So I would say first of all that the topic of Shia Islam in Eastern Europe is being quite overlooked. It's not new phenomena. So it's something what we have a lot, especially from the perspective of the minority studies and minority research.
So basically what we have here that quite often research of Shia, of scholars of Shia Islam, quite a lot been focused on the regions of Middle East.
Now South Asia started to get more and more recognition and more research we have in this field. However, research on Shia Islam in the region of Eastern Europe and in general of the post Soviet countries, for example, it's been quite very limited.
So from another perspective, we have scholars of Islam in Eastern Europe basically being focused more on research of Sunni Muslim communities because obviously they constitute the majority of Muslims in the region. So quiet. Once again we have this topic being overlooked by scholars focusing on Shia Islam neglecting the region and at the same time the regional scholars neglecting this religious tradition of Shia Islam, for example. Obviously it can be said about some other minorities, minority traditions in this region or around the world also.
So my own research interest was also included and started from this perspective because I've seen a lot of research on Shia Islam in Europe, for example, and in South Caucasus for example, and obviously in other regions of the world. And then I see that a lot of patterns or phenomena which happens in those regions are present in the region of Eastern Europe. But at the same time Eastern European Shiism has also its own unique attributes and features which cannot be observed in other parts of the world. So I thought that it would be very nice to pay attention to this region also as about regional characteristics, obviously it's very hard to say what is Europe at all and especially what is Eastern Europe. So in my research I focus mostly on Russia, Ukraine and Belarus because of their a lot of commonalities. First of all, meaning that they all are Slavic nations, meaning the majority of populations are Slavic people, Orthodox Christians, even to nominally it can be also. And they all share post Soviet experiences. And also for last few hundred years they're all part of fossil Russian Empire, then Soviet Union. And there also religious structures are quite similar, meaning that for for example, all Muslim communities are being governed by spiritual administrations of Muslims along the region, which the practice started during the times of Russian Empire and inherited by Soviet Union authorities. And then it's still present, even though in much more transformed way in these countries.
[00:06:03] Speaker A: The gap you've identified, which is that those who study Islam don't study Shia Islam and those who study Shia Islam don't study Islam in Eastern Europe sets the stage for us to understand these communities and where they actually live. Which brings me to the next question.
How are Shia communities in Eastern Europe geographically distributed and what have you found through your efforts to map them?
[00:06:30] Speaker B: So first of all I would like to say about ethnic composition of Shia Muslim communities in the stud region.
So in other parts of Europe majority of Shia Muslims they're being migrants from Iran, Iraq, from Middle east or South Asia also. So basically they would be Iranians, Arabs, Indian, Pakistanis and so on. What is different about the region of Eastern Europe that the core of the communities are migrants from Azerbaijan mostly. So what we have here is mostly migratory movements within Russian Empire and later Soviet Union and close connections even after the fall of USSR and respectively the Azerbaijanians being the core of these communities.
Also we have indigenous Muslim population in Shia Muslim population in South Russia, in South Dakistan region also consisting mostly of Azerbaijanians. And Azerbaijanians are recognized among numerous indigenous communities of Dagestan, which is very multiethnic republic. So but all other indigenous Muslims in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus they're being Sunni Muslims. So which means majority of Shia Muslims are being migrants. And their arrival started mostly during the Soviet times. However there were already movements depending on the region we are talking about. For example, in Ukraine and Belarus it started much later, most in Soviet times, but in Russian Empire it was already after they took control over the territory of nowadays Azerbaijan. And therefore Shia Muslims presence started to be more obvious within the Russian empire, for example.
So obviously migration moves people mostly to the urban areas and the capitals where there is more opportunities to work and live and therefore share presence. In Russia, Ukraine and Belarus is mostly very urbanized. So biggest communities are located in the capitals of each of countries, namely Moscow, Kiev and Minsk, and also in some other industrialized and urbanized areas. For example, in Russia it would be the city of St. Peterborough, which has more than 7 million people population and quite huge city. And also in urbanized regions of Volga Ural region, where Muslim presence was already long before. And then during the migration processes also it increased with migrants from Azerbaijan and from other Shia populated countries, for example. And the same can be said about Ukraine, where the biggest communities they are in Kyiv, in Kharkiv, in Odessa, the biggest cities of Ukraine. And also they were very present in Eastern Ukraine, in Luhansk and Donetsk regions, which were the most urbanized and industrial regions of Ukraine.
[00:09:37] Speaker A: So I mean I see how these communities, how they were they are placed and how they are structured. But when you think of that, another layer kind of emerges, right?
The new people sort of joining them. So let me ask you about conversion. Can you speak to us about cases of conversion to Shi' aism in this region?
What motivates these shifts and how are they received by the wider Muslim or non Muslim communities in these regions?
[00:10:09] Speaker B: So if starting about conversions to Shia Islam, especially in Russia, it's quite actually research topic. So we have some research on these topics. But we have known about conversion to Shia Islam in Ukraine and especially in Belarus, obviously.
But when you talk about Shia converts in Russia and Ukraine especially, we have some prominent names. By prominent I mean well known within regional Shia Islam, meaning they made a lot of impact onto the production of knowledge about Shia Islam themselves. So it's quite familiar phenomena which happens around the world also when converts, they start to produce a lot of knowledge once they convert to the religion themselves. So here what we see mostly conversions to Shia Islam. In Russia, for example, they started some very few cases started in 1990s after Russia gained independency. And these conversions were primarily intellectual. Meaning, for example, very well known case of Taras Cherniyanka. Taras Abdul Karim Chernyenko. He was among the founders of the National Organization of Russian Muslims which was uniting all Russian Muslims converting to Islam in general. And he's considered something in some journalistic works in Russia he was called as Russian Tariq Ramadan before he was talking about Russian Shia Islam, Europe as part of, in general Russian Islam as part of European Islam, that it is indigenous tradition, it's not something important and so on. So and he, for example, he translated Nachca, which is quite a prominent book. And he himself learned Arabic and Farsi. Another Shia convert, for example Amin Ramin, he translated Hadith collections from Sheikh Saduk, for example, or Tafsirs Bal al Bahraini. So for them it was primarily intellectual conversions. And there were also many other cases when for example, people would convert because of their political aspirations being inspired by policies of Iranian government, for example, being inspired by Islamic Republic of Iran. And it was also I observed this in my research in cases of some people and obviously now it's very hard to say because there is no field work on this topic in the Russian context, for example. But I think considering political events of the last few years, it can be more motivating for some people to convert to Shia Islam. Obviously being inspired by political events and inspired by being attracted by political aspects of this ideology, for example, from this perspective.
But in the case of Ukraine, this is actually very interesting because there were very few cases when Orthodox priests would convert to Islam and there is even less cases, maybe it's only one when Ukrainian Orthodox priests converted to Shia Islam, for example, this is quite interesting case of Oleg Ali Balekhov from Kharkiv and he converted around 20 years ago to Shia Islam.
But previously he served as Orthodox priest of Ukrainian Orthodox Church. So it was quite interesting transformation.
And he actually recently, as far as I know, he was working on translation of Quran to Ukrainian language, for example, according to the Shiiteological positions and so on. So we can see that this conversion happen. And the last point, I would like to say from this perspective that conversion happens not only among Slavic people, but also among Turkic people people, for example, or other people considering, for example conversion from Tatar people or numerous people from North Caucasus region when they would be converting or reorienting depending which academic position on conversion. We take moving from transitioning from Sunni Islam to Shia Islam, for example. And a well known case, for example in Russian context of Irad Bayeshem, who was technically Tatar and he converted from Sunni to Shia Islam and received religious education. And he is preaching and he was active also in translating some works from Arabic and Farsi into Russian, for example. So we can see this transformation happen a lot. And obviously it's also heavily inspired by Soviet past. Meaning that many people are not religious at all.
So there are many people who are for example ethnical Azerbaijanians, they're born into Azerbaijani families, they consider themselves to be Shia Muslims, but they do not know anything about it. They do not practice their religion. And obviously with this so called Islamic revival in post Soviet spaces, we have many people who are finding their religion through this. So I think it can be also considered as form of conversion because this is most, I would say numerous form of conversion because many people finding their religion and also even though they were nominally Shia Muslims, they never practice it. But now they do practice and they themselves consider from my interviews, for example, with some of them, they consider these experiences as a form of conversion.
[00:15:28] Speaker A: I mean, hearing your stories right now and then reading your paper, it really like. And all these sort of people seeking their roots, it makes it like one gets is left with a sense of how dynamic these communities are. But then this also raises a broader question about how identity works in these spaces.
So how do religious, ethnic and national identities intersect in these communities that you have studied?
[00:15:57] Speaker B: So in this aspect I would like to say that obviously each of us has multiple identities from the persuadi can be according to each criteria which we can choose to describe. I focused on these three because in my opinion they are most entangled in this context.
And they can also be observed most well. For example, I didn't really see a lot of influence of gender roles, for example, on local Muslim communities.
I didn't focus on these questions, but I didn't observe anything very prominent from this perspective. For example, however, in these entitlements of national, ethnic and religious identities, I see a lot of peculiarities and they're quite fascinating, I would like to say, because, for example, many of them considering their immigrant background, for many Shia Muslims in the region, many of them growing up in new countries, they will be having a lot of attraction and identity ties to the new homeland. So we can see this entanglements being, for example, someone being Russian Azerbaijani or Ukrainian Arab, for example, and so on. But at the same time they will be also relying on their religious identity. And it's also quite well seen in the context of conversions which we have discussed before, especially in the statements, for example, from Russian Orthodox Church saying that Russian people should be Orthodox Christians or Tatar people should be Muslims and so on and so on. Or for example, many Azerbaijani people saying we are Shia Muslims because we are Azerbaijanians. Obviously in Azerbaijan this situation is quite different, diffused because not all Azerbaijanians are identified as Shia Muslims, because in Azerbaijan it's quite complicated situation. But in general, for example, when you talk about Uzbek people or Crimean Tatar people, many of them, they will be highlighting they were returning to their original religion roots, as they would call it, because of their ethnic identity, they would be considering that we are Crimean Tatars, we are Muslims, we are Ukrainians, we are Orthodox Christians. Therefore it will complicate life for the converts because they will not be finding the place for them. And also from another perspective, when converts would be trying to identify their religious leaning and try to align it with their national or ethnic identities, when for example, support for Ukraine or support for Russia in this ongoing war, it would be also highlighted from the perspective of religious identities and ethnic identities by some saying, it's not my war, it's not part of my religion or my ethnicity. But many would say opposite and highlight their national identity together with their ethnic and religious identity respectively. And as we will discuss further some cases, they would show how this entanglements happens more in detail.
[00:19:08] Speaker A: Yeah, actually this was going to be my next question. I was, I'm interested in the interplay of identities which, you know, you have sort of mentioned. But then that leads me to the next question of national expressions of Shiism, especially in the Russian context, because it's the larger of all the three that you study, have there been efforts to establish a distinctively Russian Shiite Islam?
What does that mean in practice? What does it look like?
Who, if anyone, is behind it? Is there, is it organized?
[00:19:43] Speaker B: First of all, I would like to distinguish what is this local Shia Islam. I wouldn't, please.
How do I understand it? Yes, so basically it is some.
It's the same part of Shia Islam around the world, but at the same time it has some distinguished features which would not be understood for outsiders.
And for example, as I said, majority of Shia Muslims here in the region are Azerbaijanians, for example, they celebrate Id Al Adha, for example, as all other Muslims around the world. They celebrate Kadir Hum as all Shia Muslims around the world. But they also commemorate the days of Black January, for example, or Hojali genocide, which are highlighted directly to their identity as Azerbaijanians. And for example, if someone, for example Indian Shia Muslim or Arab Shia Muslim would come on this day, you will not understand the sense of this congregation. It will be sort of alien for them because they don't know the reason for this congregation. The same way, for example, some Iranian communities commemorate the birthday of Khomeini, for example, and so on, creating a new identity. And it's also for example present in some of Russian Shia communities, for example.
So when I talk about Russian Shia Islam, I talk about attempts to create new sphere, new knowledge also.
So for example, the first attempt to create organizations of Russian Muslims, ethnic Russians, it was actually done by shia Muslims. In 2004, National Organization of Russian Muslims was established and amongst its founders was Anatolia, but Stepchenko and already mentioned Taraz, Abdulkarim Chernienko. So they were initiating the organization of Russian Muslims and all ethnic Russians who converted to Islam were welcome, no matter what Mashab, what denominations they followed. But because of this, it didn't play well for them because in 2006 it was so many Salafi members of this organization that they kicked out founders of this organization, including basically they kicked out Shia Muslims out of organizations. And therefore, and quite interestingly, they adopted Malikimashab as part of their organization because Hanafi Mashab is associated mostly with Takars and Shafi Mashab is associated with people of Norse Caucasus and it's most widespread there. So they distance themselves from other Muslims of Russia, but at the same time they also distance themselves from Shia Muslims and so on. So this was also quite interesting thing.
And Tarasch Nyenko, he also spoke a lot about this European Islam, Russian Islam, that is indigenous tradition. It's not new religion, not imported Religion. And for that reason, as I said, he was called Russian Tariq Ramadan, for example. But also they created a lot of knowledge, meaning they were very active. Even though it was in early 2000s, it was around 10, 15 Shia converts.
They created a lot of produced a lot of religious literature in Russian language, which also obviously was very important for children of migrants who grew up in Russia who wouldn't be so fluent in other vagina, Arab or other languages. And Russian language was obviously primary language of conversation, communication. And for example, Sit observed this in his research saying that 2000s it was start of the Russification of Shia Islam in the region, meaning they started to produce a lot of prominent works in the Russian language. But also obviously it was also done not only by ethnical Russian people, but also by other. For example, there were some Azerbaijani preachers who would start preaching in Russian language specifically to attract more audiences.
So it's also, for example, in case of Ukraine, all preaching is always what's happening in Azerbaijani language. In Azerbaijani mosques and actually quite often Shia mosques. In Russia and Ukraine they are called Azerbaijani mosques. They are not referred as Shia mosque, but referred to as Azerbaijani mosque. Or for example, in Arab centers it would be held in Arabic language. There were not really a lot of attempts to have speech, to have khutbahs and speeches in Russian language or Ukrainian language, for example. So in the Russian context it was quite different and they would pay more attention to it and especially because of active work of converts. And the last aspect, which I think very unique to the studied region, is somewhere in early 2000s, it's very hard to trace when exactly that happened in a blog, which I couldn't trace the original of it, but it was reposted by many users later.
So it's really not clear who was the author of the blog.
And in the blog the person talks about Russian Shia Islam and they describe it as Shia Islam being compatible with Russian Fitra, with Russian innate nature.
And quite interestingly, that's what I'm currently working on and I'd like to produce paper on this because in this blog, the author, he starts talking about how all people around, mostly meaning Europeans and Americans, how they're trying to reprogram Russian people, saying that always Russian people were always criticized for being obedient to their rulers, that they never experienced freedom and it was considered as something, as a mistake, as something wrong with Russian people. But the author argues that it is not true that it was not the failure of Russian people, that they blindly followed their leader, but it was mistake of their leaders that the leader was incompatible, it was unjust and so on was a dictator and something on.
However, there is a religion which offers you infallible leader which can lead you to justice and where being obedient to your ruler is not to your leader is not something which is criticized but is something encouraged. And therefore author in many examples analyzing starting before even the Peter the Great, Peter the first Russian Emperor and to the times of Soviet Union and nowadays taking all the history examples saying how all these leaders were failure but it was always Russian people who were loyal to their leaders and therefore that Shia Islam is the ideal religion for Russian souls and is compatible with Russian Fitra. And this sort of argumentation I found fascinating from the perspective of not only thinking that this religion is not something important or is compatible with their values, but they identify it as an means by using which Russian people can go out of this crisis.
So author says Russian people are in existential crisis now.
So if they accept this model of Shia Islam following the infallible leader which will never betray you and you have Russian people who always loyal to their leader, even if they are just, however with just leader they can prosper and so on. So this level of argumentation found fascinating where they don't take history just to find out there was context with Shia Islam and so on, but the reprogram ethnical identity into something which can be directly influenced by religious identity.
[00:27:46] Speaker A: I look forward to reading your paper on how the Russian Fitra is a good fit for Shia Islam.
But I'm also sort of interested in asking you about a little bit more about and you started like hinting on it here and there in your last answer about local religious scholars and the forms of scholarship and how does knowledge circulate in these communities both offline and digitally. And you gave us like an example. You started out with the blog you read, but is there something more you would like to say to us about that?
[00:28:22] Speaker B: Yeah, on the first level I would say that obviously there are the same religious authorities around the world, meaning Maraji, Marja, Taqlid and nowadays in face of Grand Ayatollahs and similar to other parts of the world, Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Ali Sistani. They are most popular religious authorities among Shia Muslims in this sad region.
However, there is also Nasir Makarim Shirazi, which is also quite popular among Shia Muslims, especially in Russia and Fazil Linkarani.
However, he died in 2008, but before that he was actually very popular, especially among Azerbaijani people.
So it's once again for many people that having Marja, your religious authority of the same ethnic origin as you was quite influential factor. So many people followed Fazel Lenkarani which refers to his. Even though he lived most of his life in Iran, Lenkaran is a city in South Azerbaijan. And therefore for many people it was not only his religious scholarly attributes inspiring them to follow him in practical matters of religion, but also his ethnical identity. Also for many people the fact that Khamenei is ethnic Iranian Azerbaijani also is a factor. So it's like quite not new phenomena also, but also we have a lot of people producing new religious knowledge, meaning obviously they do not held speeches in their languages and for example they have their offices. For example there is office of Khamenei and office of Sistani in Moscow of both of them.
However, there is obviously no offices in Ukraine and Belarus because of not so big communities of Shia Muslims in these countries.
However, there are a lot of mid level clerics as I would call it, who are quite popular and who are responsible for producing the knowledge. For example, there is a Shia translation of Quran by Nazim Zinn Alev prepared in 2015 and he was very active in translating works also for example, then also obviously Amin Ramin which was mentioned before, he translated so many Hadith collections which is quite actually very different from trajectories of other preachers who focus on translating Fatfa religious rulings compilations for example and so on. However, he goes straight to the source and translate Hadith compilations for example and he was criticized by some other religious scholars, e.g. local ones for these practices, for example. So we see a lot of different trajectories and obviously there are also for example Ismaili Shia Muslims and so on present in the region and from other communities.
Actually in the last decade there was one Ukrainian man who claimed to be Mahdi and he was using Shi doctrines to dispute Ukrainian Sunni Muslims, for example. He was not popular but he was visible in online spaces for example. So we see how some voices also receive some attention, but obviously digital spaces.
Especially considering that when someone is interested in Islam they would go to mosque to find out about it or they would go online.
So obviously most of information is about Sunni Islam, but most of mosques are Sunni mosques. So find out information about Shia Islam. You have to go specifically to the Shia mosques or specifically to the Shia websites and it's quite well produced field nowadays and there is a lot of scholarly developed websites also. For example there is websites featuring this Nazim Zen, all of Zen all of Shia Quran translation, for example. There is special portals and there is actually full websites which dedicated to the topic how to dispute with Sunni Muslims and their criticism of Shia Islam, for example. And obviously it was response to the Salafi websites criticizing Shia Islam directly. So we have this rich field also here. But obviously it's mostly about local scholars who are most active, I would say, in this field. And many of them received their religious education in Iran and some of them in Iraq, because there is no really religious institutions where you can study in the local region. For example, in Moscow a couple of years ago, they have opened office of Al Mustafa University of Iranian 1 in Kum.
However, most people still go directly to Iran or to Iraq to study in Hawza because there you can receive proper religious education. Some of them study in Azerbaijan also because Azerbaijan has such religious institutions. But obviously they're not prestigiously the same. And also they're not free of charge as that would be in Hausa of Iran and Iraq.
[00:33:25] Speaker A: I mean, I've increasingly become very interested in the role of digital Islam.
And so I found like hearing you speak about it and reading your work, very fascinating.
I also, I mean all of this is not happening in a vacuum, right with what's happening right now in the region. The recent conflict probably has shaped these communities, which leads me to ask about the impact of war. How have the recent wars and conflicts impacted Shia communities in the region both spiritually and materially?
[00:34:03] Speaker B: So I would start with material which is easier to trace. Easier to trace, I would say. So first of all, obviously the most affected were Shia Muslims of Ukraine, especially because already in 2014, mostly, as I said before, geographically wise Shia Muslims in Ukraine, they have lived in biggest cities in Kyiv, Ukraine, Dnipro and Odessa. But also there was strong presence of them in Donetsk and Luhansk regions. And actually it will be true to say the same about all Muslims in general. So the war was affecting a lot Muslims in general, all Muslims of Ukraine, because most of them lived in Crimea and Donbass region.
So obviously it was affected in 2014. So many people they moved to further to the parts of Ukraine which were directly affected. In 2022, so many people they had to migrate, flee the war second time, for example. But if you talk about the religious life, obviously after 2014, there were three religious Shia religious centers in Donetsk and Luhansk cities which had to close because of most people they moved from there. There were attempts to reopen the one in Donetsk in the period between 2014 and 2022. However, it was not successful due to the lack of people, lack of resources and so on.
So. And obviously actually they were much more of Sunni mosques in the region and much more of them actually were damaged and destroyed, for example, directly because of the war.
Because of this, obviously it's very hard to trace how many Muslims and Shia Muslims including, are there in the region, because many of them, they moved to the western Ukraine, which are a little bit more safe. And many of them mostly migrated to Europe and to other countries or returned to their ethnic homelands, for example. And so on.
Spiritually talking, it was quite interesting because I remember talking to some of my friends who were Shia Muslims of Ukraine. And I observed their religious life also when I was there. And it was quite interesting to see how the Iranian support to the Russia, it was quite interesting how it was affecting their religious life and religious views, because as I have mentioned, Khomeini and Sistani are the two most popular scholars to emulate in religious. In practical religious matters. In Ukraine also, however, because of the war, it affected some of them to change their source of emulation. And I made some questionnaires, asked different people of different ethnicities in Ukraine. And it was quite interesting to see how it was also tracing to some other political decisions made by Iran, especially considering that most of people are of Azerbaijani ethnical origin. So many people they were drawing the parallels to the war in Karabakh, for example, and in that war, in the first Karabakh war in 1990s, for example, Iran supported more Armenia because of influence of Turkey on Azerbaijan. It was increasing and so on. A lot of political complications, which we are not talking now. But however, many Azerbaijani people, they were expecting much more support because of this and they were disappointed in it. And therefore the political decisions they make them change their religious behavior also meaning their source of emulation in practical religious matters. So it's quite interesting phenomenon. Also it was quite interesting to see how many Azerbaijani people they were referring to their collective memories, Azerbaijani people, not only Ukrainian people, saying that.
So we have Armenia taking Karabakh, threatening Azerbaijanian territorial sovereignty in the same way as Russia taking parts of Ukraine threatening Ukrainians. International law recognized sovereignty. And they were drawing straight parallels, saying that this is not new and something on. And most obvious references were to the Shia collective memory in general, saying the fight for injustice, fight against injustice, and referring to these as a primary motive, saying we are being attacked and we have to respond respectively, and so on. And it was quite interesting to see how some mosques or religious centers also they were transformed into a humanitarian hub where they would provide food for people who needed it or some accessories they would need. And also many people would be volunteers and so on. So it was quite also interesting to see from this perspective.
[00:38:44] Speaker A: Wow.
Given all the complexity you have shared with us, the history, identity, geopolitics and lived experience as we wrap up, I want to underscore something that sits at the heart of the conversation like this, the importance of accurate and complete information. And we know so little about the region that you've studied, so as an academic and just as a person living, I am grateful for you for studying this. And when we talk about Muslim communities in Europe or anywhere really, the stories that are missing often shape public imagination just as much as the ones that we are told.
And learning about minority communities like you have done so that we can learn from you, especially those understudied as Shia Muslims in Eastern Europe widens our understanding of Islam, of Europe, and of the countless ways identity is lived.
So Akib, thank you not just for sharing your research with us today, but for doing the quiet, careful work of documenting a world many of us did not know we were missing. It has been a true pleasure to learn from you.
[00:39:54] Speaker B: Thank you very much for the invitation and thank you for the listeners.
[00:40:02] Speaker A: Sam.
