Tajikistan Moves Against “Incomer” Faiths

Sunday, 20 November, 2005

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Kayumarsi Ato

“When I came to church for the first time, the Christians accepted me with open hearts, and I immediately sensed their special concern,” said Dushanbe resident Zebo Tavkieva, who recently converted to Christianity from Islam, the traditional faith practiced by Tajiks.

As soon as news of Tavkieva’s decision reached her uncle, with whom she had lived as an orphan since the age of five, he threw her out of the house.

But her new fellow-believers were ready with open arms. “I told them that I had neither money to feed myself nor a place to live,” said Tavkieva. “Soon I had everything I needed – bread and a roof over my head.”

Tajikistan has retained a strong sense of its Islamic heritage despite periodic attempts by the Soviet authorities to repress religious sentiment. Russians and other Slavs who moved to the republic brought Orthodox Christianity, but the two faiths have coexisted equably, with neither trying to poach the other’s congregation.

But after the country gained independence in 1991, an influx of foreign missionaries mainly from Christian Protestant groups, led to thousands of ethnic Tajiks switching faith. It is estimated that more than 124,000 Tajikistan nationals of all ethnicities have converted since then, most of them to religions other than Islam.

That has stirred hostility among Muslim clerics, some of whom accuse the evangelists of “buying” conversions through material enticements, in a country where poverty is endemic.

It is just such antagonism, some observers claim, which led to the government to slap a ban on the activities of three foreign groups.

On July 25, the government’s Committee for Religious Affairs announced a temporary ban on three foreign religious organisations - the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Union of Evangelist Baptists and the Sonmin Grace church.

Formally, the committee explained the decision by saying numerous complaints had been made that the three groups were acting illegally. In theory, the ban can be lifted if the organisations adapt their activities to conform with the law. But the authorities have not publicly explained what it was that they were doing wrong.

According to the Tajik government’s committee for religious affairs, there are currently over 85 non-Islamic organisations active in the country. In Soviet times there was only Islam, Orthodoxy and the Catholicism practiced by small minorities such as Poles.

The incomers include religions new to this part of the world, including Seventh Day Adventists, Hare Krishnas and Baptists.

Their missionaries work mainly in the capital Dushanbe and in the Sogd region of northern Tajikistan.

The one part of the country where they are noticeably absent is the mountain valleys east of Dushanbe, where the Islamic Rebirth Party, IRP, has its traditional stronghold. The IRP led a guerrilla war against the Tajik government for five years, but under a 1997 peace deal its mujahedin disarmed and it was transformed into a legal opposition group, with a share of government posts. It remains Central Asia’s only recognised Islamic party.

Leaders of Tajikistan’s established religions say foreign organisations are able to use their wealth in order to win people’s loyalty, in an environment where some 60 per cent live below the poverty line.

Accounts given by converts suggest that practical assistance as well as emotional support sometimes plays a part in their decision to convert to a particular faith.

A Tajik woman from Wahdat, near Dushanbe, told IWPR that after the death of her husband five years ago she found herself in debt. “When my Russian neighbour Zina invited me to the church, I found solace and material support,” she said. “My relatives had shunned me, and only the Christians supported me in my time of distress.”

Egamberdi Khudoiberdiev, a member of the top Islamic body in Tajikistan, the Council of Ulema (religious scholars), says those who convert to other faiths are “mainly people who are not adequately informed about Islam or who are in a difficult economic position”.

“They are mainly homeless children and vulnerable women,” he added.

Sergei Klimenko, the senior priest at the Russian Orthodox Church in Dushanbe, is an equally outspoken critic of the newcomers. “The path chosen by the missionaries is unacceptable in our society,” he said. “They really are taking advantage of the impoverished position and vulnerability of the population.”

A deputy leader of the opposition IRP, Muhammadali Khait, took a similar line, asking, “How can one imagine a Tajik family where one person is a Muslim, another a Zoroastrian and a third a Christian? For the Tajik people and the government of Tajikistan, Islam should be the foundation.”

Government officials are reluctant to discuss the issue on the record. But a senior official in the presidential administration, who asked to remain anonymous, told IWPR, “Islam is inseparable from our people. Even during the Soviet period we believed in God.

“As a devout Muslim, I do not like the fact that various sects have appeared in our country which attract our young people. We live peacefully with the [Orthodox] Christians, they don’t trouble us. But Baptists, members of the Sonmin Grace church and so on have been banned, and rightly so.”

The Sonmin Grace church referred to by the official is a South Korean Christian group which is perhaps the most active of the faith groups that arrived after independence, and it had been working in Tajikistan for ten years before it was included in the new ban.

In that time it has built hospitals, clinics and education centres in Khujand, capital of the Sogd region. In addition, the church runs cultural programmes and sports activities for young people, who observers say are a prime target for its missionary activity.

Foreign religious groups are aware of the official scrutiny they are subjected to, and are naturally reluctant sensitive matters. But a representative of the Sonmin Grace church, speaking to IWPR on condition of anonymity, strenuously denied suggestions that this group offered incentives to new recruits.

“We never ‘buy’ people who come to our church,” said the representative. “It is their choice whether to come to us or not.”

On a number of occasions in recent years, resentment of foreign missionary groups has spilled over into violence.

In October 2000, ten people were killed and over 100 injured by two explosions at the Sonmin Grace missionary centre in Dushanbe. Three students from the city’s Islamic University, who were alleged to have trained at terrorist bases in Afghanistan, were later found guilty of carrying out the attacks.

More recently, members of a little-known covert Islamic group known as Bayat were convicted of murdering Sergei Bessarab, a clergyman of the Church of Evangelical Baptists, during prayers in the town of Isfara, in the Sogd region.

Some observers suggest that women in particular may be leaving Islam for other faiths because of a ruling by the Council of Ulema last autumn banning them from attending Friday prayers at mosques across the country, until the right facilities have been put in place to create a separate sections where they can worship apart from the men.

Khoji Akbar Turajonzoda, who was Tajikistan’s chief Muslim cleric until he joined the opposition guerrillas in the civil war, and later became an opposition politician, thinks the decision has backfired.

“By driving our women out of the mosques, we created the conditions for future extremist activity by them,” he said.

It is not clear to what extent the ban on the three missionary groups was prompted by pressure from the official Muslim clerical establishment, which is close to the government. The Council of Ulema denies it pressed for the ban, while government officials refuse to talk about it.

One political analyst who wished to remain anonymous suggested that the reason why the officially-favoured senior clerics would make a show of defending the faith was that their own credibility was in doubt within the Muslim community.

“The fact that Muslims are switching to other religions is a serious challenge to the authority of the Council of Ulema, which has already lost its reputation in the eyes of many Muslims. The council is trying to combat the loss of believers by pressuring the government and requesting the closure of non-Muslim religious organisations,” said the analyst.

The civil war has often been viewed, over-simplistically, as a conflict between the Islamic opposition and the secular former communists in a government led by President Imomali Rahmonov. But Rahmonov has tried assiduously to build his own Muslim credentials, for example by going on the Haj or pilgrimage to Mecca.

His government may therefore have political pragmatism in mind when they issued the ban on missionary groups, since Muslim clergy with access to pulpits in mosques across the country will make useful allies in the 2006 presidential election.

A journalist who asked to remain anonymous said, “With the presidential election approaching, the government is currently very keen to find supporters everywhere, including among the Muslim leadership.”

Kayumarsi Ato is an independent journalist based in Dushanbe.