In the Georgian town of Ghorjomi Highland, Friday’s prayers in the local mosque are always full, says Imam Tamaz Gorgadze.
Hidden in the remote valleys near the Turkish border, Ghorjomi, and the surrounding region of Alto Adjara, are a rare advanced position of Islam in one of the most devoted countries in the world.
“We live in Georgia, a multi -mulonfesional country,” he said Reuters In June, after prayers by Eidul Azha.
Georgia was the second country in the world to adopt Christianity as its state religion around the year 319, only behind neighboring Armenia.
It is still devoutly Christian, and its national identity is closely linked to centuries of fighting Persian and Turkish Muslim invaders.
Even so, the Muslim Georgians of Adjara are called “Tartars” by some, referring to a Muslim ethnic group in Russia.
According to census data, about 10 percent of the 3.6 million people in Georgia are Muslims. Most of them belong to the minority of most of Azerbaija.
But Georgian Muslims ethnically, exclusive to Adjara, are more rare and controversial in a country whose national flag consists of five Christian crosses.
The powerful orthodox church of the country is seen as a custodian of the Georgian identity, and for many, the membership of the Church is a previous requirement to be truly Georgian.
However, for the Georgians of Alto Adjara, who became Islam during the spent centuries as part of the Ottoman Empire, there is nothing contradictory in being both a practical Muslim and a patriotic Georgian.
“We are proud that we are Georgians. We have a shared past,” said Tariel Nakaidze, a native of Ghorjomi and head of the Georgian Muslim Union.
However, Nakaidze said, Georgian Muslims experience social pressures that he compared with anti -religious campaigns under the Soviet Union.
He said: “During the Soviet Union in Georgia, both Christians and Muslims had to live a double life. Abroad, you were an atheist. But at home, you were a believer.”
“Unfortunately, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, that problem was replaced by the Orthodox Christian religion.”
Islam Adearan comes with a clearly Georgian taste, although few locals are delivered to dry wines and pork kebabs favored by their Christian cousins.
Central for local Muslim life are the distinctive Adjara wood mosques.
Its outside is wrapped in corrugated iron to protect from mountain winters, inside, the mosques of the Aderan have intricate wood carvings, vividly painted in a mixture of traditional Ottoman and Georgian designs.
Below on the coast of the Black Sea, 100 km (62 miles) from Ghorjomi, Batumi, the capital of Adjara and the second city of Georgia.
A strident coastal tourist city with casinos and nightclubs that mainly serve tourists from the former Soviet Union, the congregations of the Batumi Mosque are fans by visitors from the other side of the Turkish border, 20 km (12 miles) away, as well as by tourists of the Middle East.
The space is so limited that the faithful are often forced to pray on the outside.
Batumi Imam Tamaz Geladze has been trying to expand its rudimentary mosque and inclined for years. Although the authorities have granted permission, the project remains tied in the bureaucracy.
Even so, Geadze said he valued Georgia’s tolerance history towards religious minorities.
“We have coexisted for centuries here, in friendship and in dialogue.”
“Georgia’s diversity is a treasure,” he added.
