Introduction
Georgia is at the crossroads of Europe and Asia, and this is reflected in its religious landscape. Most of the Georgian population, approximately 83.5 percent, belongs to the Georgian Orthodox Church (European Commission, 2025). However, Islam has also been a part of Georgia’s history for a long time, and approximately 10 percent of the population identifies as Muslim, primarily located in the Adjara region and Kvemo Kartli (European Commission, 2025).
Article 8 of the Georgian Constitution guarantees religious freedom and officially separates Church and State. However, the same article states that the Georgian Orthodox Church has an “outstanding role” in the country’s history. The Georgian Church’s special status allowed for the signing of a special concordat that defined relations between the State and the Georgian Orthodox Church (Concordat, Article 1). The agreement was signed in 2002, and it granted the Church special rights in the fields of education (Concordat, article 5) and cultural heritage (Concordat, article 9) as well as privileges, including exemptions from taxes. Moreover, the agreement recognises the material and moral damage to the Church during the loss of state independence in the 19th to 20th centuries, and the State takes responsibility to partly compensate for the material damage. Since the agreement was signed, the Georgian Orthodox Church has been receiving millions of lari (Georgian currency) every year from the state budget as compensation for historical property losses.
This article aims to look closely at the systemic challenges that Muslims in Georgia have to face in practicing their religion. It will focus on how the Georgian Orthodox Church’s privileged position creates real inequalities. The analysis will be based on the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR), especially Article 9 and Article 14, with references to cases from the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). The aim of this article is to show how big the gap is between what the Constitutional guarantees and the reality on the ground. Georgia’s legal system, instead of protecting religious freedom equally, often deepens the problems for religious minorities. The “outstanding role” of the Georgian Orthodox Church is not just symbolic, in the end, it leads to real inequalities for other faiths, including Muslims.
Historical and Legal Background
The presence of Islam in Georgia is not something new, it goes back to the 7th and 8th centuries, when Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, was the center of an Islamic emirate (Arab News, 2012). Nowadays, the Muslim community is mostly residing in Adjara and Kvemo Kartli.
Adjara, the Autonomous Republic, is located in the southwest part of Georgia. As mentioned above, Muslim communities live there, mostly ethnic Georgians who also speak the Georgian language. Muslims who live in Adjara identify themselves as Georgians, but due to widespread stereotypes in society, many people do not consider them fully Georgian because they are not Christians. It is believed that when Adjara became part of Georgia again after the Ottoman period, it was like a return to Christianity (Darieva, 2023). Ethnographic work by Mathias Pelkmans has shown that anti-Muslim sentiment grew stronger after 1991 (Darieva, 2023). This time, it was not Soviet atheists but rather Georgian nationalists and the Orthodox Church that began to see Muslims, especially in Adjara, as potentially “disloyal”. They worried about the historical connections between Adjarians and the Turkish people. Part of this view comes from the Soviet idea that Islam was a backward religion, linked to Ottoman expansionism, while the Soviets were bringing modernity. During the 1990s, it became quite common to baptise the children of converts to Christianity in Adjara. These acts were often interpreted as expressions of loyalty to the newly independent Georgian state (Darieva, 2023). Even though some people in Adjara converted to Christianity after independence, Islam did not disappear. In villages, Islamic practices continued as part of everyday life. Therefore, while Christianity reached the administrative centres of upper Adjara, Islam stayed strong in rural areas (Darieva, 2023). Nowadays, the Christian and Muslim communities live side by side in Adjara, but Muslims often face unequal treatment from the Government.
The fact that after signing the concordat in 2002, the Georgian Orthodox Church received many benefits created a very unequal situation for the Muslim community. But it is not only the concordat that makes life harder for religious minorities in general. The role of the Georgian Orthodox Church, as outlined in the Constitution, is not just about religion; it also supports a form of ethno-religious nationalism. Muslim communities do not have the same status as the Georgian Orthodox Church. The laws do not ban Islam, but they make it very difficult to practice because, for example, they have to pay a lot of different types of taxes, whereas the Georgian Orthodox Church does not pay anything at all. On the other hand, they receive money from the government.
Another big problem for the Muslim community is that they only have one active mosque, Orta Jami, and it was built in the 19th century. The problem is that this mosque is not big enough to fit everyone who wants to go there and pray. Because of this, the Muslim community has been asking for a new mosque for years, but the authorities and the Orthodox church deny their request. Moreover, the Georgian authorities promised to build a new mosque in Batumi, but this plan never came to life (Jam News, 2017).
From taxes and property rights to marriage and education, the system is not equal. This makes the fight for religious freedom more difficult, as it involves not only changing the law but also transforming the whole system that quietly keeps Muslims in a weaker position.
Legal Battles for the New Mosque
The story of the legal battle for the new mosque begins in 2017, when the local Muslim community in Batumi attempted to address their growing need for more worship spaces. They purchased land and applied for a construction permit to build a new mosque (Social Justice Center, 2023). For years, they had used outdoor spaces for prayers and religious holidays because the city’s only active mosque, Orta Jami, is too small (OC Media, 2019). Batumi City Hall rejected their request and said that the area was for high-density housing and religious buildings were not allowed there, however, multiple Orthodox churches were built in the same zone without similar permit requirements (TDI, 2021). Following this rejection from the City Hall, they went to the court, and in 2019, the Batumi City Court determined that the City Hall’s decision was illegal and discriminatory. The Court essentially admitted that Muslims were discriminated against but this did not fix the problem, because the Court did not order the City Hall to grant such permission. The City Hall was merely redirected to reconsider the matter (TDI, 2019).
The next step was the Court of Appeals. The Muslim community appealed to the Kutaisi Court of Appeals seeking a direct order for the permit. In April 2021, the Appeals Court reaffirmed that there was discrimination and the decision was illegal. It once again annulled the City Hall’s refusal and called out the fact that the city permitted Orthodox church constructions but denied Muslims the same right under the same conditions (Social Justice Center, 2023). But similar to the first instance, it did not direct the city hall to grant the permit for construction.
In 2023, the case reached the Supreme Court. After more than six years in court, the case was not resolved, instead, it was sent back again for retrial. In 2023, the Court partially accepted the Muslim community’s appeal and stated that once discrimination was found, the Courts should have directly restored the Muslim community’s rights instead of sending the case back to the City Hall (TDI, 2023). However, the Supreme Court said that there was no discrimination because those Orthodox churches were built illegally, without any permits at all. Since nobody officially asked for permission, the Court deemed that there was no unfair comparison (TDI, 2023). Moreover, the Supreme Court stated that the Appeals Court did not properly consider the interests of local residents and that the Appeals Court should have weighed whether the need for a mosque is more or less important than the “public interest” of the area (TDI, 2023). The Supreme Court tried to justify its controversial reasoning by citing some cases from the ECtHR, but according to the organisations working on this case, many of them did not even fit the facts at all (TDI, 2023). There were either totally different situations or, in some cases, the ECtHR actually ruled in favour of the religious groups, but the Supreme Court used these cases to weaken the argument for freedom of religion. The organisations defending the interests of the Muslim community before the Court believe that the Supreme Court presented “completely subjective, erroneous interpretations of the decisions of the European Court, incompatible with the principle of the right to freedom of religion or belief” (TDI, 2023).
After many years of legal battle, the Muslim community in Adjara still does not have a new mosque. These rulings just show that the problem is deeper and these court decisions can set a dangerous precedent that can hurt not only the Muslim community in Georgia but also any other minority group if they decide to fight for their basic human rights.
What does the Law say?
In every democratic society, states have the positive and negative obligations to protect basic human rights.
According to the Constitution of Georgia, everyone has the right to freedom of belief, religion, and conscience, and these rights may be restricted only in accordance with the law for ensuring public safety, or for protecting health or the rights of others, insofar as is necessary in a democratic society (Constitution of Georgia, Article 16). Moreover, the Georgian Constitution prohibits discrimination. Article 11 of the Constitution states that “all persons are equal before the law. Any discrimination on the grounds of race, colour, sex, origin, ethnicity, language, religion, political or other views, social affiliation, property or titular status, place of residence, or on any other grounds shall be prohibited.” Article 11 of the Constitution also states that “in accordance with universally recognised principles and norms of international law and the legislation of Georgia, citizens of Georgia, regardless of their ethnic and religious affiliation or language, shall have the right to maintain and develop their culture.”
The Georgian government has to take real, active steps to ensure that the rights of the Muslim community are respected and protected. They should act and protect people when and if they see that any minority group is facing discrimination, hate speech, or violence. Moreover, positive obligations include creating conditions that allow religious communities to exist and exercise their rights equally. This might include ensuring fair access to public services, allowing places of worship to be built, etc. The fact that the Muslim community has been fighting for their rights for years in Batumi means that this obligation has not been met. Additionally, states also have negative obligations, which require them to refrain from interfering. For example, the fact that the government is not allowing the Muslim community to build a new mosque to accommodate everyone and let them pray can be seen as interfering with their right, because the government has been preventing this community from building a place to worship without a reasonable basis.
The Georgian government is not only obliged to protect the rights enshrined in the Georgian Constitution, but is also legally bound by the ECHR. When talking about the rights of minority groups, we should also discuss Articles 9 and 14 of the ECHR. Article 9 of the Convention protects the right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion and also states that this right can be limited by the State only in special circumstances when there is a legitimate goal and necessity for the democratic society.
Article 14, which prohibits discrimination, and Article 9 of the ECHR should be discussed together. The connection between Articles 9 and 14 is particularly interesting in the case of religious minorities. Article 14 of the ECHR prohibits discrimination on the grounds listed in the article. It can be said that, in Georgia, many of the challenges that the Muslim community has to face are supported by indirect discrimination. Indirect discrimination is when the laws do not seem discriminatory, but they are applied in a discriminatory way to disadvantage one group. A very good example of this is regarding the places to worship, for example, the Georgian Orthodox Church does not even need permission to build churches ,while Batumi City Hall and the Courts did not protect the Muslim community’s right to build a new, bigger mosque. This kind of unequal treatment violates the Georgian Constitution and the principles and rules of the ECHR.
Conclusion
The main problem for the Muslim community in Georgia is not only about the new mosque, but more so about the right to be treated equally. The Georgian Constitution states that everyone should be treated equally and the freedom of religion should be protected, but in reality, this often does not work the same way for everyone, especially for minority groups. For years, the Muslim community has been asking for a bigger place to pray, but instead of getting help from the government, they have faced rejections and never-ending court battles.
The judicial authorities of Georgia had the chance to fix this; clearly providing that the Muslim community has the right to build the new mosque, but instead, they just stated that there was discrimination and did not do anything to remedy it. The Supreme Court’s decision is particularly dangerous for a democratic society because it sets an example that the rights of minorities can be pushed aside without any real consequence.
Building a new mosque in Batumi would not only be a fair thing to do, but also send a strong message that there is a place for everyone in Georgia, no matter their religion, ethnicity, sex, race, language, color, or political and other opinions.
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