Tajikistan shaves 13,000 men's beards to end radicalism
Police in Tajikistan have shaved nearly 13,000 men's beards and closed more than 160 shops selling traditional Muslim clothing last year as part of the country's fight against what it calls "foreign" influences.
Bahrom Sharifzoda, the head of the south-west Khathlon region's police, said at a press conference on Wednesday that the law enforcement services convinced more than 1,700 women and girls to stop wearing headscarves in the Muslim-majority Central Asian country.
The move is seen as an effort to battle radicalism. Tajikistan's secular leadership has long sought to prevent a spillover of radical traditions from neighbouring Afghanistan.
According to unofficial estimates, there are more than 2,000 Tajiks fighting in Syria.
Last week, the country's parliament voted to ban Arabic-sounding "foreign" names as well as marriages between first cousins.
In September, Tajikistan's Supreme Court banned the country's only registered Islamic political party, the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan, after months of violence that the government blamed on radical Islamism.
A socialist country doing this? In December, the parliament granted the president and his family life-long immunity from prosecution, giving Rahmon the title "Leader of the nation" and officially designating him "the founder of peace and national unity of Tajikistan".
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I thought when they claimed independence, they were moving towards a transition economy with religious freedom?
Police in Tajikistan have shaved nearly 13,000 men's beards and closed more than 160 shops selling traditional Muslim clothing last year as part of the country's fight against what it calls "foreign" influences.
Bahrom Sharifzoda, the head of the south-west Khathlon region's police, said at a press conference on Wednesday that the law enforcement services convinced more than 1,700 women and girls to stop wearing headscarves in the Muslim-majority Central Asian country.
The move is seen as an effort to battle radicalism. Tajikistan's secular leadership has long sought to prevent a spillover of radical traditions from neighbouring Afghanistan.
According to unofficial estimates, there are more than 2,000 Tajiks fighting in Syria.
Last week, the country's parliament voted to ban Arabic-sounding "foreign" names as well as marriages between first cousins.
In September, Tajikistan's Supreme Court banned the country's only registered Islamic political party, the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan, after months of violence that the government blamed on radical Islamism.
A socialist country doing this? In December, the parliament granted the president and his family life-long immunity from prosecution, giving Rahmon the title "Leader of the nation" and officially designating him "the founder of peace and national unity of Tajikistan".
---
I thought when they claimed independence, they were moving towards a transition economy with religious freedom?