Azerbaijan, Lankaran, May 14 /Trend News, P.Aliyeva/

Religious books, which were brought to the country by students, who are receiving education abroad, were confiscated in the south of Azerbaijan (Lankaran, Astara, Masalli, Lerik, Bilasuvar, Jalilabad and Yardimli).

"There were found religious books, which were prohibited by the Azerbaijani Government, in the customs points in Bilasuvar and Astara," head of the State Committee on Work with Religious Organizations in Azerbaijan's south zone Mirahya Babirov told Trend News.

An expert department is occupied with prevention of distribution of religious books in Azerbaijan under the State Committee.

The import of 59 religious books was prevented to the country in 2008.

The analysis of previous years shows that the import and distribution of harmful religious literature has recently declined, the State Committee said earlier. This fact confirms the number of harmful religious literature in books, peer-reviewed by the Committee.

Last year, a total of 102 religious communities were registered. There are 533 religious communities in the country.

Out of which 101 are of Islamic and one is the Jewish Kubar religious community in Sumgait.

According to Babirov, the books seized from students were harmful religious literature, mostly in Farsi, Arabic and Russian languages. Compared with previous years, the number of harmful religious books which were imported to Azerbaijan, decreased by 60 percent, he said. This is the result of strengthening religious education.

A total of 133 religious communities have been registered in the south regions of the country. Fifteen communities are designing their documents for registration.

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