The Tajik political scientist Abdugani Mamadazimov urged the authorities to strengthen secular thinking among the people of Tajikistan, and he called the people who practice their religion illiterate. “There is an urgent need today to fight illiterate religious figures who influence the minds of uneducated villagers. Therefore, today we have the moral right to demand the development and adoption of a set of measures to further strengthen the constitutional norms and secular thinking at the state level”, he said. He also noted that there is an unused field for strengthening the secularism, which will “protect the people from religious extremism”.

Comment:

To date, unfortunately, in Central Asian countries, such political scientists and public figures spread dirty secular ideas, wishing to get high status from authoritarian rulers. They, although being ethnic Muslims, attack Islamic values and cross all the red lines, not being at all different from Western Islamophobes.

The political scientist-Islamophobe Abdugani Mamadazimov is one of the ardent fighters against Islamic values in Tajikistan. For several years now, he has not concealed his enmity towards Islam, for which he does not receive any punishment (although in Tajikistan the Hanafi madhhab is approved at the state level), but also receives support from the regime. In 2015, in an interview with “The World and We”, Mamadazimov made a direct accusation against Islam. “Traditionally, from the very beginning, we can distinguish an aggressive origin in Islam. When the famous cavalry came, before the inhabitants arose the question – what to do: convert to Islam, pay taxes as infidels or be killed? And for many centuries this approach has been preserved, you could say”, he said then.

It’s no secret that Rahmon, who never hides his sympathy for the pre-Islamic past of the region and Zoroastrianism, deliberately creates a fertile ground for such Islamophobes, stimulating the emergence of new secularists and anti-Islamic propagandists. And, although the people of Tajikistan are Muslims for more than a thousand years, the authorities without a shade of shame give the “green light” to secular propagandists who provide intellectual and moral justification for the repressive actions of the authorities against Islam. Thus, Rahmon’s regime hopes to prevent the growing Islamic rise in the country.

How should the people of Tajikistan react to this? In no case such statements should be ignored, every resident should condemn such cases and demand to take measures against the detractors of Islam. After all, the final goal of the enemies of Islam, headed by the regime, is the complete erasure of the religious identity of the people and its depoliticization. Allah Almighty said:

يُرِيدُونَ أَن يُطْفِئُوا نُورَ اللَّهِ بِأَفْوَاهِهِمْ وَيَأْبَى اللَّهُ إِلَّا أَن يُتِمَّ نُورَهُ وَلَوْ كَرِهَ الْكَافِرُونَ

“They want to extinguish the light of Allah with their mouths, but Allah refuses except to perfect His light, although the disbelievers dislike it”.

(9:32)

Omar Farisy