The 27-year-old resident of the Zafarobod district (Sughd province) Samandar Qalandarov has got a lengthy jail term for membership in the outlawed Salafi Group.
The Khujand city court sentenced Samandar Qalandarov to six years in prison. He was found guilty of public calls for extremist activities through media (Article 307’ (2) of Tajikistan’s Penal Code). Qaladnarov will serve his term in a high-security penal colony.
Judge Nekrouz Marufzoda, who presided over the trial, says Qalandarov registered himself in the Odnoklassniki social network service and during two years, from 2015 to 2017, was calling on people to join the Salafi Group and propagating its ideas.
According to the judge, the Sughd law enforcement authorities have kept an eye on Qalandarov since 2015, when he returned from Saudi Arabia, where he had attended the religious school.
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.
