Sheikh-ul-Islam Allahshukur Pashazadeh, Chairman of the Caucasus Muslims Office, made a statement on the statement of Catholicos of All Armenians Garegin II on behalf of the church calling for war until the death of the people and even children.
The statement said:
"Since July 2020, the aggressive Armenian regime has resorted to new military provocations, targeting our settlements and civilians in Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding areas of Azerbaijan, as well as on the state border with Armenia. The failure of the OSCE negotiation process for almost 30 years, the non-implementation of four known UN Security Council resolutions and the recent military aggression of Armenia have exhausted the patience of our people and Azerbaijan will use its sovereign right to restore territorial integrity and liberate its territories recognized by the international community. rose to fight for.
Relevant agreements on a temporary humanitarian ceasefire were reached at meetings in Moscow and Washington with the participation of the Foreign Ministers of Azerbaijan and Armenia, mediated by Russia and the United States. However, the facts show that Armenia is not inclined to peace at all and is abusing the ceasefire to demonstrate its real aggression. Thus, immediately after these agreements, Armenia continues its war crimes and acts of vandalism in gross violation of the known UN resolutions and the 1949 Geneva Conventions, and Azerbaijan is one hundred kilometers from the region where the military operations took place. Heavy artillery continues to fire on remote settlements. As a result, 65 civilians, including minors, were killed, 297 people were injured, 2,243 private houses, 90 apartment houses and 402 civilians were killed as a result of the shelling of Azerbaijani cities and settlements, including Ganja, the second most important city of Azerbaijan, from September 27 to date. The facility was destroyed, and among the surviving children are those who lost both parents.
Since the beginning of the conflict, the aggressor Armenia has terrorized our civilian population and destroyed our temples, cemeteries, historical monuments, museums and libraries in the occupied territories, which are part of Azerbaijan's diverse cultural and spiritual heritage. Not content with this, the invading Armenian extremists turned our captive mosques into barns and did not shy away from unprecedented acts of vandalism, such as keeping animals that are forbidden in Islam. Hundreds of mosques, temples and churches, thousands of graves, 706 historical monuments and museums, 927 libraries, 1107 educational institutions, 40,000 museum exhibits were destroyed and looted by Armenian extremists in the occupied territories of Azerbaijan.
Sheikh-ul-Islam said that despite all this, the Azerbaijani state and society have always supported the peaceful settlement of the conflict, the process of negotiations at various levels, including at the religious level:
"The trilateral meetings of religious leaders in Montreux, Rostov, Moscow, Tbilisi, Yerevan and Baku aimed at the peaceful settlement of the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict are aimed at preventing the conflict from escalating to a religious level," he said.
It should be noted with regret that in return for our constant efforts to resolve the conflict peacefully and fairly, the other side, especially the Armenian Church, continues its aggressive attitude and provocative activities. Thus, the last appeal of the Armenian Catholicos Garegin II a few days ago, the call of the people and even children to war until the death on behalf of the church does not make him proud as a religious leader and the Christian-Muslim confrontation serves to present as.
The main moral duty of a cleric is to protect human life and rely on justice. Garegin II says that Azerbaijan forced them to the current war. I ask - did Azerbaijan invite you to war on its territory, or did it look at your lands? The Armenian religious leader says that Karabakh can never be part of Azerbaijan. Isn't this cleric justifying aggression and inciting people to confrontation? The question is - how quickly did you forget that tens of thousands of Armenian citizens still live in peace in Azerbaijan, the Armenian church and library located in the center of Baku, restored and well-preserved? On the contrary, the destruction of our cultural and spiritual heritage in Armenia and the occupied territories of Azerbaijan is a clear example of your policy of ethnic cleansing and vandalism, in which not a single Azerbaijani is left.
The Armenian Church calls us an enemy and calls on the international community to "get rid of this atrocity."
The question is - since when is the liberation of their lands from invaders called savagery, or the atrocities committed against the civilian population in the territories of Azerbaijan - Khojaly, Ganja, Tartar, as Garegin said, are written in bloody letters "for the protection of homeland and statehood"?
The whole world should know that the current military confrontation is taking place in the territories of Azerbaijan. We are not against any religion or nation in our rightful work, we have not invaded any country, and we consider the Armenians living in Karabakh not our enemies, but our citizens. We are united around our leader Ilham Aliyev and are determined to live together with the Armenians, develop our Karabakh and turn it into a prosperous place after liberating our ancient occupied lands from invaders.
We hope for the support of the whole world community in our intentions to achieve peace and tranquility in our homeland Azerbaijan! ”