Tajik ban on children in mosques could be 'disastrous'

[Talo alle udaa]

Tajik ban on children in mosques could be 'disastrous'
By Richard Orange (TELEGRAPH/CAN)

Parental responsibility law will be 'disastrous' for the government in Tajikistan, a conflict prevention group saidALMATY - Thursday, June 23, 2011 - A proposed law banning children from mosques in Tajikistan could be "disastrous," the world's leading conflict prevention group has said, arguing it will fuel the growing security threat from a new generation of Islamic militants.

The new law "on Parental Responsibility," which was approved by the lower house of the Tajik parliament last month, bans under-18-year-olds from attending prayers in mosques, and may also allow the authorities to stop parents giving Arabic names to their children.

The law is already sparking outrage in the country, with Hoji Akbar Turajonzoda, a leading religious leader, last week describing it as "openly against the will of God".

"Right now the government's approach to handling any issues connected to Islam is repression, rather than any attempt at dialogue, and this is obviously going to be disastrous," said Paul Quinn-Judge, project director for Central Asia at International Crisis Group.

"I have a very strong gut feeling that the secular side of Tajik society is shrinking quite radically. The government cannot keep using the law, using pressure, and using restrictions to handle the Islamicization of its society."

In a report on Tajikistan last month, the group warned the Tajik government to pull back anti-Islamic measures implemented last year, which included repatriating more than a thousand students from religious schools overseas, forcibly closing hundreds of mosques, threatening long jail sentences for setting up "illegal" religious schools, and even banning a soccer player who wore an Islamic beard.
"It is hard to imagine a series of government measures which, taken together, would be better designed to provoke a groundswell of outrage," the report concluded.

Tajikistan, an impoverished former Soviet republic, is vulnerable both to domestic Islamic extremism, and to organizations based across the long, poorly policed border with Afghanistan, such as the al-Qaeda affiliated Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU).

The country was rocked by a long and bloody civil war in the early 1990s, which pitted forces loyal to President Emomali Rahmon against a coalition of Islamic groups and liberal reformists.

International Crisis Group cautioned President Rahmon against believing that the scars of the war would forever prevent the Islamic opposition from taking up arms.

"A new generation of guerrillas is emerging, both within Tajikistan and in the IMU. They are mostly men in their twenties with little memory of the Tajik civil war," the report concluded.

[Talo alle udaa]

Communist led Russia has turned entire muslim nations into athiest fiefdoms. From as far as Kazakhstan all the way to Uzbekistan, mosques were closed, clerics were killed, and to this day the same practices continue.

[Talo alle udaa]

The Law is only a pen away from being passed.
The president, who apprently went to Hajj and is a "muslim" is suppose to sign it soon.