Tag Archives: religion

Turkmenistan forces military conscription

MARCH 21 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — The authorities in Turkmenistan have imprisoned a seventh man for refusing to sign up for conscription, the Forum 18 website reported.

Forum 18 reported that Pavel Paymov, a 23-year-old Jehovah’s Witness member, was sent to one year in prison in January for dodging conscription.

According to the article, Turkmenistan does not offer an alternative to military service. This, apparently, breaks international human rights laws.

Turkmenistan’s constitution calls on men to serve for two years in the military between the ages of 18 and 27.

Earlier this month, Turkmenistan mobilised its reserve forces after an attack on its border with Afghanistan.

ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved

(News report from Issue No. 177, published on March 26 2014)

Kyrgyzstan elects new mufti

MARCH 4 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — A religious council in Kyrgyzstan appointed Maksat Hajji Toktomushev as its seventh grand mufti in four years. Toktomushev is best known for issuing a fatwa against same-sex relations in January. His election highlights the issue of human rights in Kyrgyzstan.

ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved

(News report from Issue No. 174, published on March 5 2014)

Uzbekistan restricts religious freedom

FEB. 12 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — A law specifically banning books and pamphlets that encourage people to switch religion came into force in Uzbekistan last month, the Forum 18 news service reported. The law, which was formalised on Jan. 27, also allows the authorities to confiscate Muslims’ literature when they return from a Hajj to Mecca.

ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved

(News report from Issue No. 172, published on Feb. 19 2014)

Kazakhstan controls religious content

FEB. 4 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — If you think it sounds Orwellian, you wouldn’t be alone.

Kazakh officials announced that the Agency for Religion will now vet all religious content before it is run on state-owned media.

The plain speaking chief of the agency, Marat Azilkhanov, explained the move: “It’s a matter of the government’s ideology.”

Or this is just plain censorship, depending on how you look at it.

If truth be known this is the way it’s been going in Kazakhstan for some time.

In 2011, Kazakhstan introduced a law restricting religious activities and gatherings. This was generally regarded as an attempted crackdown on Islamic extremists.

New figures released by Mr Azilkhanov showed that over 500 different religious groups have failed to meet these new requirements and have been banned.

Human rights groups have complained that Kazakhstan uses the new religion laws to get rid of groups it finds troublesome.

ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved

(News report from Issue No. 170, published on Feb. 5 2014)

Madrasah collapses in Kyrgyzstan

FEB. 3 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — The second floor of a madrasah in southern Kyrgyzstan collapsed during a memorial service for a local imam injuring 49 people, local media reported. The accident highlights some of the poor building construction in rural Kyrgyzstan.

ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved

(News report from Issue No. 170, published on Feb. 5 2014)

Kyrgyz mufti resigns after scandal

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)

Tajikistan persecutes religious literature

NOV. 18 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Police in Tajikistan have confiscated religious literature from Muslims, Protestants and Jehovah Witnesses this year, the Forum 18 news agency reported. It said that many of the people who carried the literature were fined for carrying banned religious texts.

ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved

(News report from Issue No. 161, published on Nov. 20 2013)

Kazakhstan wants to become a centre for Islamic finance

OCT. 31 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — At a conference in London, Kazakh officials were eager to talk about plans to turn Kazakhstan into a centre for Islamic finance.

Islamic finance is the term used to define investments made, basically, with Islamic principles in mind. It’s a fluid concept but one that has picked up advocates in the Muslim world over the past few years. Kazakhstan though, has been a bit slow off the mark.

Although nominally a secular country, most people in Kazakhstan are Muslim and it has a fairly developed banking sector in Almaty.

Last year, the Kazakhstan Development Bank issued a $75.5m Islamic bond in Malaysia, which has become something of a centre for Islamic finance.

That, though, appears to have been just the start.

Now Asset Issekeshev, the Kazakh minister for new technology, has said Kazakhstan wants to join the International Islamic Financial Market (IIFM), a global watchdog for Islamic finance.

Yerlan Baidaulet, a Kazakh board member at Jeddah-based bank Islamic Development Bank (IDB), went further though. He said now that Kazakhstan had a new head of its Central Bank, Islamic finance would really take off.

Mr Baidaulet told Reuters at the conference that IDB was introducing an Islamic bank and a leasing company in Kazakhstan next year.

(News report from Issue No. 159, published on Nov. 6 2013)

Kyrgyzstan issues sexually graphic stamps

OCT. 9 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — For a few weeks at least stamp collectors around the world were captivated by Kyrgyzstan. Online reports had emerged, with apparent photographic evidence, that Kyrgyzstan had issued stamps featuring pictures drawn by the 20th century American artist Eric Stanton.

Eric Stanton specialised in sexual fetish drawings, particularly of dominant women. The online photos of the Kyrgyz stamps showed scantily-clad women spanking men. On one of the six stamps, a man wore a dog collar and leash while he knelt on the floor and ate from a bowl.

For Central Asian watchers, news that Kyrgyzstan had issued these stamps came as a surprise. Kyrgyzstan is a predominantly Muslim country with traditional, fairly macho, conservative mores.

For collectors discussing the issue online, the reason Kyrgyzstan had apparently released the stamps was all too obvious; to make money from selling them.

Now, though, they have been revealed as fake. The head of the Kyrgyz department that issues stamps, Abdykadyr Abdallayev, told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that this year Kyrgyzstan has released several sets of stamps. They featured mountains, animals, fruits and nuts.

Kyrgyzstan has not, Mr Abdallayev confirmed, issued stamps featuring women wearing stockings and brandishing canes.

(News report from Issue No. 155, published on Oct. 9 2013)

Azerbaijan’s new bank card features compass

SEPT. 25 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — The International Bank of Azerbaijan (IBA), half owned by the Azerbaijani government, released a new debit card with an in-built compass pointing to Mecca so that Muslims know which direction to pray. The new card may be a bit of a gimmick but Azerbaijan has been strengthening Islamic aspects of its banking system.

(News report from Issue No. 154, published on Oct. 2 2013)