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CMO Chairman: Armenians sold rare copies of Quran from mosques in Western Azerbaijan at auctions

22 May 2025 12:09 (UTC +04:00)

After the restoration of Azerbaijan's territorial integrity and sovereignty, one of the most crucial issues is ensuring our cultural-spiritual sovereignty and establishing justice in the religious and moral sphere, Sheikh ul-Islam Allahshukur Pashazade, the Chairman of the Caucasus Muslims Office (CMO), said during a meeting of the CMO's Council of Elders, APA reports.

The head of the CMO noted that, as is well known, the traditional qadi (religious judiciary) institutions have historically operated within the spiritual domain of the Caucasus Muslims Office, which has served as a religious center in the Caucasus: "The qadi institutions subordinate to this religious center have not only met the religious and moral needs of our people in the historically Azerbaijani-populated territories but have also played a significant role in fostering national self-awareness, self-affirmation, and representation. They have upheld the high-level representation of the Islamic civilization to which our people belong."

He noted that the gradual expulsion of Azerbaijanis from their ancestral lands in what is now Armenia, through ethnic cleansing and deportations, forced the suspension of religious judiciary (qadi) activities in those regions: "During my tenure as the Qadi (religious judge) of Iravan-Nakhchivan in 1978-79, I traveled extensively through the cities and villages in what is now Armenia, visiting over 300 mosques, shrines, and sacred sites, and had the opportunity to communicate with our compatriots. Today, the situation in those lands is tragic. By subjecting our people to deportations and genocide, the Armenians, who established a state on our historical lands, have committed acts of vandalism against our national and cultural monuments, destroyed our religious heritage, demolished our mosques, looted our properties, and obliterated our cemeteries—all in an effort to erase our presence from our ancestral lands. Examples of material and spiritual culture belonging to our people in the lands of Western Azerbaijan, property belonging to mosques, were looted, and rare copies of the Quran and exquisite manuscripts were sold at auctions in foreign countries."