According to imam Tamaz Gorgadze, Friday prayers in the local mosque in the Georgian highland village of Ghorjomi are always full.
Ghorjomi and the adjacent Upper Adjara region, tucked away in the isolated valleys near the Turkish border, are a unique Islamic enclave in one of the most pious Christian nations on earth.
“We live in Georgia, a multi-confessional country,” he told Reuters in June following the religious celebration of Eid ul-Adha prayers.
Around the year 319, Georgia became the second nation in the world, after neighboring Armenia, to declare Christianity its official religion.
Its national identity is strongly tied to centuries of resistance against Muslim Persian and Turkic invaders, and it is still firmly Christian.
