DUSHANBE, May 31, 2016, Asia-Plus – The case of six mosque imams from the northern province of Sughd, who are accused of membership in the Muslim Brotherhood, has moved to a court.
A court in the Bobojonghafourov district will consider the case.
Ms. Fayzinisso Vohidova, a lawyer for imam-khatib Sulaymon Boltuyev, says the court will begin to consider the case next week.
The mosque imams were arrested in March and have since been in pretrial detention.
Ms. Vohidova says the men were detained at various locations around the Sughd province and all of them were graduates of the Islamic University of Madinah, in Saudi Arabia.
According to her, the detention of other clerics belonging to this group (the Muslim Brotherhood) is going on. “Investigators argue that the men were recruited to the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1990s, during studying at the University,” Vohidova said.
The Society of the Muslim Brothers, shortened to the Muslim Brotherhood, is a transnational Sunni Islamist organization founded in Egypt by Islamic scholar and schoolteacher Hassan al-Banna in 1928. The organization gained supporters throughout the Arab world. The Brotherhood”s stated goal is to instill the Qur”an and Sunnah as the “sole reference point for … ordering the life of the Muslim family, individual, community … and state.”
The Muslim Brotherhood was banned in Tajikistan in 2006 and declared a terrorist group.
Meanwhile, five mosque imams from Sughd province have been arrested this month for allegedly promoting extremist ideas and recruiting young people to join Islamist militant groups abroad.
Hasan Boboshukurov, the head of the department on religious affairs in Sughd’s Konibodom district, told
Radio Liberty’s Tajik Service
on May 19 that four of the men led mosque prayers and sermons in village mosques in Konibodom.
A local law enforcement official told
RFE/RL
on condition of anonymity that the group “had been actively working to recruit young people to take part in wars abroad.”
The official said the five imams” activities came to the authorities” attention after a tip from three other imams arrested in the same district last month.
Fifteen Muslim clerics were reportedly arrested on extremism charges in Konibodom and other districts of the northern Sughd province between January and April.
It is worth noting that imam khatibs are appointed in agreement with the government’s committee on religious affairs. They are obliged to follow refresher courses annually and must routinely re-register. Also, they are paid salaries from the state budget.
