Azerbaijan, Baku, June 12 / Trend /
The quantity of "harmful" religious literature imported to Azerbaijan is small, since believers in Azerbaijan, in general, adhere to traditional beliefs, as reflected both in our national religious literature and information printed abroad, the head of the State Committee for Work with Religious Organizations Elshad Iskandarov told Trend.
"Surely, religious literature is one of the key elements of the formation of a religious worldview. Religous literature must be printed with care, any wrongly stated idea could lead to very serious consequences. It must be said that the amount of such "harmful" literature is small, since believers in Azerbaijan, in general, adhere to traditional beliefs, as reflected both in our national religious literature and literature printed abroad", the head of the State Committee said.
According to him, the vast majority of this literature is aimed at promoting the eternal principles of the major world religions, which are inherently good.
The State Committee examines religious literature. Recently, the structure has begun to hire independent local experts, not employed in civil service, to make the process transparent.
"And we are very serious about their recommendations. Within two months, it is planned to complete the work to ensure greater transparency of the process. That is, we will publish the list of literature banned for import and production. Unfortunately, we have encountered subjective moments in regards to the preparation of this list during the previous practice. Some people did not like certain literature, and it served as the criterion for including it to the list. Certain literature was not on the list because it was malware. We prevented it both through administrative measures and involvement of independent experts," the chairman of the State Committee said.
As Iskenderov noted, the State Committee considers the importation and publication of literature that preaches religious, racial and ethnic or other discrimination, religious, ethnic, racial hatred and civil strife unacceptable. These are the main areas considered malicious by the state examination board, as well as propaganda which is unacceptable in the civilized world, no matter under which banner it happens - religious or ideological, philosophical or party, he said.
As for stopping the spread of "harmful literature", I think the recently adopted legislation that requires labeling of religious literature will completely solve our problems, he added.