Off-Topic / WWWSC General Discussion

Having much free time and noticing new comments on this thread, I have gone to the previous pages to see what happened formerly during past conversations here and found out that, I left your message unanswered. First of all, a very late sorry from me to you for that.

As for your question, I'd like to say that Azerbaijan is known as Muslim-majority country all over the world, but I'd oppose such image of my country. Islam emerged as a major religion in Azerbaijan after Caliphate and Shia branch of Islam became widespread and dominant after the creation of Safavids Azerbaijani state in 16th century. However, as you might have guessed, the Soviet influence in XX century brought about dissemination of atheism in Azerbaijan. Even my parents recall being studied subjects on atheism at universities which was a part of Soviet propaganda back then. After our independence in 1991, people have become freer to express their religious freedoms, but older generations in most cases are very sceptical of religions. New generations, on the other hand, (supposedly) under the Western influence reject the religious beliefs mostly. Most of the latter substantiate their opinions with religions being far from rationality and having a dogmatic nature. Even those who say they are religious do not practice religion strictly. And the tendency of becoming less religious increases more and more. Recently, Gallup International conducted a survey where Azerbaijan was listed in the top 20 least religious countries with only 34% of its population considering themselves religious. Religion is used as a discourse whenever needed for cultural norms and stuff, however, unfortunately. On the other hand, Azerbaijan does not share much cultural proximity with the countries you mentioned in your comment. 

As for me, I try not to identify myself with any labels, but agnosticism would perhaps be the closest to my beliefs. And with that, I am considered as a person with the most faith in my family I was brought up in a highly irreligious family. However, we still sometimes like to comply with some Islamic rules, such as fasting, not because of religious thoughts, however. We see it as to form an empathy for the poor, helpless people and the moral value of fasting is the main reason why we sometimes prefer to do so. This is an increasing tendency as well - more and more non-religious people fast nowadays. 

On the other hand, I am sometimes a bit worried about rising anti-religious sentiments. There have been some but not many cases where students with hijabs were forbidden from entering the school classes just because of wearing them. Even international and regional legal instruments do not have common position on the role of religious liberties in secular education, (e.g. European Convention on Human Rights have some judgments on how legislations of member states banning veils are actually compatible with European Convention on Human Rights, whereas this approach was heavily criticized) but I do support as Amnesty International, that wearing religious stuff, such as hijab is an example of practising religious freedom and such bans amount to the violation of human rights of individuals practising religions. Again, it is a controversial issue, but I think we should not forget human rights aspects of religions. Fortunately, such incidents have not happened a lot, but I would like not to see even one. 

I hope my answer was helpful and I am sorry If my comment was very long  

My favorite Cypriot entry so far has been #28...

Very interesting pick! I personally consider that one and #59 to be my classiest entries in the contest actually...

Yet, you can see the results both had. Of course the #28 entry didn't do badly, it was barely out of the TOP 10 but #59 didn't do that well... However, it isn't really worth questioning whether too much quality is a good idea for online contests, since we know the answer (pretty much )