Azerbaijan is an UNTICULTURE country

Azerbaijan is the only Muslim republic in the former Soviet Union where the Shiite branch of Islam is dominant. Various estimates put the number of Shiites at between 60 and 70 percent of the republic's Muslims. Geographically speaking, the Shiites form a majority in the southern oblasts bordering Iran, in central Azerbaijan and in Baku. Sunnis predominate in northern and western Azerbaijan. Another interesting feature of Azerbaijan is that the Caucasus Spiritual Board of Muslims, headed by sheik Ul' Islam Pashe-zade, exerts an influence on both Shiites and Sunnis. Traditionally, the head of this spiritual board is a Shiite and his deputy a Sunni. Interestingly, unlike in most Muslim countries, Shiites and Sunnis often worship in the same mosque.

Notably, even the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan was not seen as a religious war in the republic. The Azeri propaganda machine hardly ever used Islamic rhetoric, and the republic's mufti Pashe-zade refused to declare a jihad against Armenia.

In the Soviet years, Julfa Cemetery was absolutely neglected by Azerbaijan's Monuments Preservation Department; moreover, under state auspices, its khachkars were continually broken to pieces and used as building material.
In November 1998, Nakhijevan's Azerbaijani authorities started destroying the cemetery with bulldozers. UNESCO's intercession was able to stop that unprecedented vandalism only temporarily.
The annihilation of the cemetery resumed on 9 November 2002. The photographs some eye-witnesses took from the Iranian bank of the river Arax revealed that none of the cemetery's khachkars remained standing.

Between 10 and 14 December 2005, the Azeri vandals, who had not been held accountable for their previous crimes, finally succeeded in purging the three hills of Julfa Cemetery of all the remnants of khachkars. Using heavy hammers and pickaxes, about 200 soldiers of the Azerbaijani army reduced the displaced khachkars to a heap of crushed pieces which were loaded onto lorries and emptied into the river Arax.

In early March 2006, Nakhijevan's authorities stationed a shooting-ground on the site of Julfa Cemetery. Lying over thousands of human remains, that firing-ground is an eloquent manifestation of Azerbaijan's moral values. Situated very close to the Iranian border, it can never serve soldiers in need of shooting practice. In fact, it was hurriedly established to conceal Azerbaijan's criminal actions: the Azerbaijani authorities turned the site of the former cemetery into a "military zone" so that they could ban foreign missions and observers from entering it.