DUSHANBE, March 18, Asia-Plus — The Center for Islamic Studies under the President of Tajikistan will be established in Dushanbe in the near future.
A source at the Center for Strategic Studies said that that the structure of the Center for Islamic Studies had been worked out by researchers from the Academy of Sciences and specialists from the Department for Religious Affairs (DRA) within the Ministry of Culture (MoC) and had already been submitted for consideration to the president. According to him, the issue of candidate for heading the new center has still remained unsolved.
As it had reported earlier, addressing a meeting with heads of local administrations, workers of culture and science, experts in art and literature as well as representatives of religious confessions in Dushanbe on May 24, 2007, President Emomali Rahmon ordered relevant bodies to establish the Institute for Islamic Studies at the Academy of Sciences. However, later it was decided to establish the Center for Islamic Studies under the President of Tajikistan.
Local experts assess this decision as an intention to give to the center a political rather than a scientific character.
Political scientist Abdullo Rahnamo welcomed the decision to create the Center for Islamic Studies. In the meantime, he noted that lack of the national school of Islamic studies does not allow forming true and rational policy on religion. “It is very important that not former Soviet “Islamicists [specialists in the study of Islam – Asia-Plus], who are actually specialists in the Arab philology, but really skilled Islamicists, who could promote formation of a new national policy that would really meet our national and cultural interests, will work with the Center,” Rahnamo said.
According to some sources, the most probable candidates for the position of the director of the Center for Islamic Studies are Abdulvohid Shamolov, the deputy director of the Center for Strategic Studies, and the DRA head Murodullo Davlatov.
