APRIL 23 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Devout Muslims in Tajikistan say officials are waging a campaign designed to intimidate and humiliate them by shaving off their beards and limiting access to the annual Haj to Mecca, the AFP news agency reported. Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon has steadily cracked down on Islam.
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(News report from Issue No. 229, published on April 29 2015)
MARCH 10 2015 (The Bulletin) – Muhammad-Sodiq Muhammad-Yusuf, Uzbekistan’s most prominent Islamic scholar, died aged 63. Reports said he died while playing basketball in Tashkent. Muhammad-Sodiq was influential because he was Uzbekistan’s first post-independence religious leader.
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(News report from Issue No. 222, published on March 11 2015)
MARCH 11 2015 (The Bulletin) – Religious leaders in Kyrgyzstan issued a statement saying that it was not un-Islamic to vaccinate children against the measles virus, the Eurasianet website reported. This is important because health experts have blamed fears vaccinations were anti-Islamic for a surge in measles in Kyrgyzstan
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(News report from Issue No. 222, published on March 11 2015)
JAN. 29 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — The authorities in Kazakhstan have jailed a woman in the western city of Aktau for spreading audio files online that supported the Islamic extremist group IS. Kazakhstan has become increasingly sensitive to IS propaganda. IS has targeted Central Asia as a recruitment ground.
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(News report from Issue No. 217, published on Feb. 4 2015
JAN. 29 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Imams in south Kyrgyzstan urged people to boycott French goods, especially perfume, or at least counterfeit versions, which is stocked in markets. The boycott is in retaliation for the printing of the cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed by French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.
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(News report from Issue No. 217, published on Feb. 4 2015)
JAN. 26 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — At least 2,500 people protested in the city of Jala-abad in south Kyrgyzstan against the publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed in the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, media reported. The protest was sanctioned by the authorities and is a reminder of the strong Islamic sentiment in the region.
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(News report from Issue No. 216, published on Jan. 28 2015)
JAN. 18 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — The head of Georgia’s Orthodox Church, Patriarch Ilia II, stepped into the debate on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo’s right to publish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, images that Muslims find offensive. In a statement, he said that freedom of expression doesn’t grant the freedom to offend.
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(News report from Issue No. 215, published on Jan. 21 2015)
NEW YORK, JAN. 20 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — The radical group IS is recruiting heavily in Central Asia, the influential think tank International Crisis Group (ICG) wrote in a new report, a phenomena that could destabilise the region in the medium and long term.
In perhaps the most detailed assessment of the recruitment drive by IS in Central Asia so far, the ICG estimated that between 2,000 and 4,000 men and women had been attracted by IS propaganda to travel to Syria and fight for the radical group.
“Should a significant portion of these radicalised migrants return, they risk challenging security and stability throughout Central Asia,” ICG wrote in its 16-page report.
“Their [the five Central Asian states] security services — underfunded, poorly trained and inclined to resort to harsh methods to compensate for a lack of resources and skills — are unable to deal with a challenge as intricate as radical Islam.”
Among the incentives for Central Asians to enlist in IS ranks, the ICG points to three main triggers: The opportunity to join a religious cause abroad otherwise suppressed at home; the rejection of gloomy economic prospects; the chance to express repressed political views.
Other causes are outlined. The lack of a proper education with youth members of Islamic congregations resorting to unofficial Muslim training; the lack of social safety nets for women; the accessibility to Turkey, the major entry point for the northern battles in Syria.
The ICG argues that IS is reviving the violence among extremist groups in Central Asia as well. The ICG called for the enforcement of strict rules on terrorism and tighter security monitoring by the states in the region.
In the short-term at least, ICG wrote, preventative measures are essential for combating the IS recruitment.
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(News report from Issue No. 215, published on Jan. 21 2015)
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>>Crowds attracted across much of the region>>
JAN. 20 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — An estimated 1,000 people demonstrated in a Bishkek park against the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo for publishing cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed.
Eyewitness accounts from the city centre park said that protesters held posters declaring: “I am not Charlie. I love my Prophet.”
Other posters read: “We’re against cartoons of our Prophet”.
The “I am Charlie” slogan swept across much of the Western world after Islamic radicals murdered 12 people during an editorial meeting at the magazine’s headquarters in central Paris earlier this month.
Much of the Islamic world, though, has been far more reticent. Reports from Baku and other cities across Central Asia have also suggested that anti-Charlie Hebdo demonstrations have drawn relatively large crowds.
The protests are a reminder that for all the rhetoric of Westernising and of supporting Western military action in Afghanistan, that Kyrgyzstan and Azerbaijan, and other countries where anti-Charlie Hebdo demonstrations emerged, are predominantly Islamic countries.
And these countries are not simply nominally Islamic, as they are often pictured in the West. There is a strong strain of fairly pious Muslim thought running through these societies.
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(News report from Issue No. 215, published on Jan. 21 2015)
>>IS have been recruiting heavily from Central Asia>>
JAN. 15 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan is desperate not
to get dragged into the debate over IS recruitment from Central
Asia.
Its intelligence services issued a rare statement denying that two
men murdered on a video last week were Kazakh. In the video the two
men spoke Russian and were accused of being members of the Russian
spy agencies. One man identified himself as coming from south
Kazakhstan.
The Kazakh intelligence services, though, said that this was not
the case.
In the IS video a young boy, who could be of Kazakh ethnicity,
shoots the two men in the head.
IS, a radical Islamic group based mainly in war-torn Syria,
recruits heavily from Central Asia and is a growing threat to the
region’s stability.
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(News report from Issue No. 215, published on Jan. 21 2015)