Four residents of the northern Sughd province have been jailed for membership in the outlawed Salafi group.
A court in the Jabbor-Rasoulov district has sentenced four residents of the Gulkhona jamoat Mumin Sodiqov, 23, Bakhtiyor Ahmadov, 23, Mahmoud Fayziyev, 20, and Homid Boymatov, 39, to five years in prison. They will serve the terms in a high-security penal colony.
The chairperson of the Jabbor-Rasoulov district court Sodiqjjon Vahhobov, who presided over the trial, says the sentence followed their conviction on charges of organizing activities of an extremist group (Article 307 (3) of Tajikistan’s Penal Code).
According to him, they were detained by officers of the State Committee for National Security (SCNS)’s office for Sughd in June 2017.
“They voluntarily joined the Salafi group and were propagating its ideas among the population of the Jabbor-Rasoulov district,” Vahhobov added.
The Tajik authorities banned Salafism as an illegal group on January 8, 2009, saying the Salafi movement represents a potential threat to national security and the Supreme Court added Salafists to its list of religious groups prohibited from operating in the country.
The movement claims to follow a strict and pure form of Islam, but Tajik clerics say the Salafists’ radical stance is similar to that of the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Salafists do not recognize other branches of Islam, such as Shi''a and Sufism. The movement is frequently referred to as Wahhabism, although Salafis reject this as derogatory.
The overwhelming majority of Tajiks are followers of Hanafia, a more liberal branch of Sunni Islam.
On December 8, 2014, the Supreme Court of Tajikistan formally labeled the banned Salafi group as an extremist organization. The ruling reportedly followed a request submitted to the court by the Prosecutor-General’s Office. The ruling means that the group’s website and printed materials are also banned.
