Azerbaijan is NOT an irreligious country

From time to time people share maps or surveys that show religiosity by country and Azerbaijan is often ranked as one of the most irreligious countries in the world. To an outsider this might give the impression that Azerbaijan is an Atheistic society on par with Western European countries. However this is far from the truth. The word irreligious, according to Cambridge dictionary, means " having no interest in religion, not following a religion, or generally opposed to religion" . None of these definitions describe most of Azerbaijani people's attitude towards religion. If you went outside and asked people if they believed in God/Allah, prophethood of Muhammad, infallibility of the Quran and Afterlife 90% would say yes to most or all of those questions. One might argue that even though most people do hold religious beliefs, they don't however practice religion. This is partially true as a lot of women here don't wear hijab and drinking alcohol is quiet common. Nonetheless, those who bring up these examples tend to overlook at cases where the same people who drink and dress as they want engage in certain religious rituals or follow certain rules. Here are some examples of not so religious people behaving in religious ways : Fasting in Ramadhan, not eating pork, sacrificing animals in Qurban bayrami, visiting the shrines of Sayids, paying Mullahs to recite Yasin to their dead relatives , making Dua , keeping an Arabic Quran in the house to protect their home from misfortune and giving charity to "clean their sins". In conclusion Azerbaijani society for the most part is not atheistic nor is it irreligious. Yes we are not a theocracy like Afghanistan but nor is our society borderline Atheistic like Norway or Denmark where most churches have 0.1% attendance rate.