An interagency commission is currently exploring the issue of reopening more than 590 mosques that had been closed down in the previous years, the eh dot the Committee on Religious Affairs (CRA) under the Government of Tajikistan, Sulaimon Davlatzoda, told reporters in Dushanbe on July 24.
According to him the interagency commission members include representatives of the Prosecutor-General Office, Interior Ministry, President’s Executive Office and some other agencies.
“Over the first six months of this year, we have registered 98 mosques in Vahdat Township,” said Davlatzoda, “Over the report period, no one mosque has been closed down in the country.”
An official source at the CRA told Asia-Plus in early May that the Committee has sent the list of 594 mosques for consideration to President’s Executive Office with the request to reopen them. The mosques were supposed to reopen at the beginning of the holy month of Ramadan, but they still remain closed.
According to CRA data, 48 central Friday mosques, 326 Friday mosques and 3507 five-time prayer mosques now function in the country.
The government allows “Friday” mosques, which conduct larger Friday prayers as well as prayers five times per day, in districts with populations of 10,000 to 20,000 persons; it allows “five-time” mosques, which conduct only daily prayers five times per day, in areas with populations of 100 to 1,000. In Dushanbe, authorities allow Friday mosques in areas with 30,000 to 50,000 persons, and five-time mosques in areas with populations of 1,000 to 5,000. The law allows one “central Friday mosque” per district or city, and makes other mosques subordinate to it.
At a February 5, 2019 news conference, CRA officials stated that the government had converted 1,938 mosques that were functioning without authorization into cultural spaces, medical centers, kindergartens, teahouses, or residences for needy families.
Tajik authorities often closed mosques for lack of appropriate documentation, because many mosques were not registered at relevant offices as religious organizations after they were built. The government gave mosques a deadline to obtain proper documentation and those that failed to meet the deadline were shut down and public facilities set up at their location.
