DUSHANBE, March 4, 2015, Asia-Plus — The Islamic Revival Party of Tajikistan (IRP) intends to organize a roundtable in the near future to discuss issues related to functioning of a religious political party in Tajikistan, IRP leader Muhiddin Kabiri told Asia-Plus in an interview.
According to him, representatives of all strata of the population, government, intelligentsia and political parties as well as lawyers and political scientists will be invited to participate in the roundtable the will discuss political, legal, religious and security aspects of existence of religious political party in modern Tajik society.
“Our party is ready to consider all sober and unbiased views of any group on the issue whether Islamic party will exist in Tajikistan or not,” Kabiri noted.
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.
