DUSHANBE, March 29, 2015, Asia-Plus — The first deputy head of the Islamic Revival Party of Tajikistan (IRP), Saidumar Husaini, says the March 27 sermon at mosques calling for the closure of the IRP is “the handiwork of the authorities.”
“Let the Council of Ulamo and pseudo patriots prove that it is our party’s fault that a systematic crisis has hit all sectors of the country’s economy, that corruption is rampant in the country, that thousands of people leave the country seeking better employment opportunities,” Husaini told Asia-Plus in an interview.
“If they prove that the Islamic Revival Party is to blame for all this, we will go out of political arena ourselves.”
Husaini said that the Islamic Revival Party’s activities were conducted in accordance with all international norms and Tajik laws.
We will recall that imams at some mosques across Tajikistan on March 27 urged Muslims to support the closure of the Islamic Revival Party.
IRP leader Muhiddin Kabiri Husaini noted in his interview with Asia-Plus in early March that they are going to organize a roundtable discussion in the near future to find out if the IRP is, in fact, an obstacle in the way Tajik society’s further development and poses threat to the country’s national security.
Founded in October 1990, the Islamic Revival Party of Tajikistan is the only Islamic party officially registered in former Soviet Central Asia. The IRP was registered on December 4, 1991. It was banned by the Supreme Court in June 1993 and legalized in August 1999. Its official newspaper is
Najot
(Salvation). According to some source, the IRP now has some 50,000 members.
Parliamentary elections too place in Tajikistan on March 1 and for the first time since Tajikistan gained independence in the 1991 Soviet collapse, the Islamic Revival Party failed to clear the five-percent threshold needed to win parliamentary seats.
