Religion in Tajikistan
[6] A small minority group, the Pamiris, are members of a much smaller denomination of Shia Islam, Ismailism, which first won adherents in Central Asia in the early 10th century.
Together with three similar organizations for other regions of the Soviet Union having large Muslim populations, this administration was controlled by the Kremlin, which required loyalty from religious officials.
Typically, such campaigns included conversion of mosques to secular use; attempts to re-identify traditional Islamic-linked customs with nationalism rather than religion; and propaganda linking Islam to backwardness, superstition, and bigotry.
From that time through the early post-Soviet era, some officials in Moscow and in Tajikistan warned of an extremist Islamic menace, often on the basis of limited or distorted evidence.
Despite all these efforts, Islam remained an important part of the identity of the Tajiks and other Muslim peoples of Tajikistan through the end of the Soviet era and the first years of independence.
[4] In any case, Tajiks have disproved the standard Soviet assertion that the urbanized industrial labor force and the educated population had little to do with a "remnant of a bygone era" such as Islam.
A noteworthy development in the late Soviet and early independence eras was increased interest, especially among young people, in the substance of Islamic doctrine.
Long before the Soviet era, rural Central Asians, including inhabitants of what became Tajikistan, had access to their own holy places.
Besides Sufism, other forms of popular Islam are associated with local cults and holy places or with individuals whose knowledge or personal qualities have made them influential.
[4] By late 1989, the Gorbachev regime's increased tolerance of religion began to affect the practices of Islam and Russian Orthodoxy.
[4] By 1990 the Muslim Board's chief official in Dushanbe, the senior qadi, Hajji Akbar Turajonzoda (in office 1988-92), had become an independent public figure with a broad following.
The communist old guard evoked domestic and international fears that fundamentalist Muslims would destabilize the Tajikistani government when that message was expedient in fortifying the hard-liners' position against opposition forces in the civil war.
[4] After the Soviet era, the Tajik government closed hundreds of unregistered mosques, drawing locals to believe that the crackdown is actually against the religion of Islam.
[7] In 2009, the Assembly of Representatives attempted to make the Hanafi school of Sunni Islam the official religion in Tajikistan, but this measure failed.
[8] Tajikistan also marked 2009 as the year to commemorate the Sunni Muslim jurist Abu Hanifa, as the nation hosted an international symposium that drew scientific and religious leaders.
The number of adherents to these minority religions probably decreased sharply in the 1990s because of the wave of emigration from Tajikistan in the early independence period.
As of 2013, Tajikistan was unique in the world because it was illegal for people under age 18 to practice religion publicly, which includes attending mosques.
[17] Additionally, the government places strict limits on hajj visits and reportedly harasses devotees by forcibly shaving their beards after rounding them up.
