The Caucasus Muslims Office (CMO), expressing the will of Azerbaijani Muslims, has strongly condemned and firmly protested an event held at the historic Blue Mosque in Yerevan that it said was incompatible with Muslim religious practices.

Axar.az reports that, in a statement, the CMO said the incident demonstrated an unethical and distorted attitude towards Azerbaijan’s religious and spiritual heritage, describing it as an act of outright vandalism and provocation.

"We express the will of Azerbaijani Muslims and declare that we strongly condemn and firmly protest the holding of an event at the historic Blue Mosque in Yerevan that is incompatible with Muslim religious ceremonies. Unfortunately, the Blue Mosque in Yerevan, one of the historical religious monuments of the Azerbaijani people, has not been spared the vandalism carried out by Armenians over many decades in our historical lands that they occupied. Following the destruction and burning of our places of worship, including the historic mosques in Shusha, and their desecration through the keeping of animals forbidden in Islam, the naming of a hall in the Blue Mosque in Yerevan after an Armenian poet and the plans to install a bust of that Armenian in a Muslim place of worship in the future are, in general, nothing but blasphemy.

Civilized peoples hold book presentations in their own cultural institutions, not in places of worship belonging to another religion. Organizing a show in a mosque under the guise of a cultural event cannot bring honor to anyone.

Attempts to take revenge in their own way on the historical Azerbaijani cultural and spiritual heritage remaining in present-day Armenia after Armenians were expelled from the Azerbaijani territories they had occupied, to falsify the history of the mosque built in the 18th century by Huseynali Khan, the Khan of Yerevan, one of the rare gems of Azerbaijani architecture, to present it as an Iranian mosque and to organize staged events there are doomed to failure.

We strongly condemn this uncivilized show held under the guise of a cultural event and demand that the Armenian government prevent such incidents. The occurrence of such an incident while Armenia, which capitulated as a result of the 44-day Patriotic War, is demonstrating commitment to peace negotiations casts doubt on the peace process. This only serves the interests of revanchists," he statement said.