JAN. 7 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — A secretly filmed sex video involving Kyrgyz Grand Mufti Rakhmatulla-Hajji Egemberdiev has rocked Kyrgyzstan’s establishment.
The video of Mr Egemberdiev having sex with a younger woman appeared on the internet on New Year’s Eve. His opponents accused him of adultery and organised street demonstrations, common in Kyrgyzstan, to force him to resign.
After a week of resistance, Mr Egemberdiev handed in his resignation. He blamed his opponents for setting up a trap and called on the government to intervene.
The whole tawdry episode means that Kyrgyzstan now has to look for its seventh religious leader in four years — a destabilising effect that even a more secure country would have problems dealing with. Mr Egemberdiev’s predecessor was sacked a year ago because of tax evasion issues.
It also throws up the issue of polygamy in Kyrgyzstan. This is technically banned but is still relatively commonplace in Kyrgyzstan and is accepted in the Sufi form of Islam.
Mr Egemberdiev’s defence was that the woman in the video was one of his additional wives.
The destabilising effect of losing another religious leader, the political in-fighting and open debate about polygamy means it’s been a messy start to the year for Kyrgyzstan.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 166, published on Jan. 8 2014)