States of Belief Symposium - the Blow-back reports

Aix-en-Provence, FRANCE

Under the aegis of the Observatoire du Religieux (World Religion Watch),
Institute for Political Science, Aix-en-Provence,
Scientific supervisor: Prof. Raphaël Liogier
(Professor and Research Director at the Institute),
with the collaboration of the University of Sydney (Australia).

General Outline, by Professor Raphaël LIOGIER, Director, World Religion Watch

Today, certain paradoxes have become imprescriptible when attempting to understand the evolution of humanity. On the one hand, the so-called 'clash of civilisations', the collision of values, the opposition of life-styles, and on the other, the intercultural dialogue, the enhancement of international communication, the build-up of a global culture in terms of world-scale projects, have to be evoked simultaneously.

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The Restructuring of the Religious Landscape and Dynamics of Reform in Azerbaijan.

Since its independence from Moscow at the beginning of the nineties, and like the other predominantly Muslim ex-soviet socialist republics of the Caucasus and Central Asia, Azerbaijan has been undergoing a deep sea-change in its identity. A genuine re-examination of Islamic practices and knowledge, arriving through highly diversified transmission channels originating from abroad, has succeeded to the communist-era symbolic framework characterized by official soviet atheism and more or less moribund dialectical materialism. This process has shattered the strongly secularised character of Azerbaijani society, which since the beginning of the twentieth century, thanks to its precocious oil boom, had witnessed,  in Baku in 1901, the creation of the first school for Muslim girls and that of the first modernist djadid school in Tabriz (Iranian Azerbaijan), with the publication of a satirical journal, Mollah Nasreddin, created in 1906, emblematic of the freedom of speech of the period, and very critical towards the mullahs and the prevalence of Shiism. Above all, these developments were followed on May 28 1918, by the proclamation of the first democratic republics of Azerbaijan ensuring the laicity (secularisation)  of the state, which was to  last until April 28,1920, after successive occupations by the Turks, the British and finally the Soviets.

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Alevi Advocacy

''Analysis of Alevi Advocacy through two comparative fields of study: Strasburg and Istanbul ''

In 2004 according to European Commision reports the number of Alevis in Turkey was between 12 and 20 million people while Turkey's migration to Europe approximately amounts to 3,5 million and represents the highest non-community migration rate. Analysing the nature of the Alevi population in Turkey, which is a ''unitary state'' - except for christian minorities the latter does not nominally designate any islamic cults, except the Sunni group - as a social movement and comparing it with another Alevi group in existence in Europe - here, our chosen field of study will be Strasburg – will be useful in apprehending the multiple forms of interdependance between ''institutions'' and ''social movements'' on both the Turkish and European fields, as two distinct political scenarios.

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Projet de thèse/Research Abstract

« La négociation de la politique européenne en matière d’asile. Enjeux, luttes et dynamiques institutionnelles. »

Research Abstract

The aim of this PHD project is to analyze the process of negotiation and agenda–setting, concerning European Asylum policy. The central question is why the European Union made asylum one of the central issues concerning the process of political integration of European construction. Asylum is a subject which, according to the doctrine of subsidiarity, lies directly with the national sovereignty of the members states. In order to answer in this question, the question of “networking” may provide some interesting elements of reflection.

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