Tag: Religious intolerance

Tajikistan Highlights Persian Roots with Novruz Celebration | EurasiaNet.org

Nothing highlights the Tajik government’s efforts to forge a distinct national identity better than the country’s annual Novruz festivities. This year, officials emphasized Tajikistan’s Persian roots during the week-long celebration. Carefully stage-managed public events steered clear of religion and politics.

Banned for much of the Soviet period, the festival of Novruz – also, Nowruz, Nawruz and a few other alternatives – derives its name from the Persian for “New Day” and marks the arrival of spring. The holiday, centering on the vernal equinox, is celebrated in much of greater Central Asia, as well as parts of the Caucasus and by Turkey’s Kurdish minority, and is believed to have originated as the Zoroastrian New Year in ancient Persia. In 2009, it was added to UNESCO’s List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

In Tajikistan, the holiday has become part of the country’s quest for a new, post-Soviet national identity. As in many former Soviet republics, that quest has involved turning to the distant, sometimes mythologized past. For Tajikistan, where the primary language is closely related to modern Farsi and the Dari spoken in Afghanistan, tapping into the lore of ancient Persia is a logical way to distinguish Tajiks from the Slavs and Turkic peoples of formerly Soviet Central Asia.

“Blessed Novruz is the greatest and most beautiful festival for the Aryan people,” read banners quoting President Imomali Rahmon, displayed around the capital, Dushanbe. The ancient Aryans are believed to be forebears of today’s Persian-speaking peoples: “Iran” is a Persian word for “land of the Aryans,” and the ancient Greeks called the greater region including Afghanistan and present-day Tajikistan “Ariana.”

via Tajikistan Highlights Persian Roots with Novruz Celebration | EurasiaNet.org.

On the Rise in Tajikistan, Islam Worries an Authoritarian Government

After decades of enforced secularism, the people of this impoverished former Soviet republic have been flocking to their traditional religion with all the zeal of born-again movements anywhere in the world.

The authoritarian government here could not be more worried. Spooked by the specter of Islamic radicalism and the challenges posed by increasingly influential religious leaders, the Tajik authorities have been working fervently to curb religious expression.

Bearded men have been detained at random, and women barred from religious services. This year, the government demanded that students studying religion at universities in places like Egypt, Syria and Iran return home. The police have shuttered private mosques and Islamic Web sites, and government censors now monitor Friday sermons, stepping in when muftis stray from the government line.

Last month, lawmakers took what many here said was a drastic step further: they passed a law that would, among other things, bar children younger than 18 from attending religious services at mosques.