Azerbaijan, Baku, May 6 /. Trend I. Izzet /
The report of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom is based on double standards, head of the State Committee for Work with Religious Organisations of Azerbaijan Elshad Isgandarov believes.
"If we look at the geography covered in the report, we see double standards. For example, none of the European countries in which there are numerous problems with the construction of minarets, sounding the azan, where there are facts showing the killing of Muslims by neo-Nazis and numerous protests related to hijab, was included in the report," Elshad Isgandarov told Trend on Monday commenting on some of the complaints against Azerbaijan reflected in the above mentioned commission's report.
According to him, the report does not contain a single word about the problems faced by Muslim communities in these countries.
"The report mainly contains information about the Islamic and Eastern countries which are in the sphere of interests of international missionary organisations which turned into transnational corporations. And that is another manifestation of double standards, the head of the State Committee said.
Moreover, a special section of the report notes that Azerbaijan exerts pressure on those who do not do military service on religious grounds. Of course, the authors of the report do not care how dangerous these evasions are for the National Security of Azerbaijan, 20 per cent of whose territory is occupied. But there is not a word about the occupying country, Armenia, Isgandarov said.
"For example, in Armenia a lot of members of the religious sect Jehovah's Witnesses were arrested for refusing to serve in the Armenian occupation army, but Armenia is not the object of this report at all.
On the contrary, the decision of the European Court related to Armenia was placed in the part of the report concerning Azerbaijan. It is called laying the blame on someone else's doorstep," Isgandarov said.