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Tajikistan looks to be an interesting case of Islam being kept in check without resorting to either extremism or terrorism. But this is neither free nor assured

Tajikistan looks to be an interesting case of Islam being kept in check without resorting to either extremism or terrorism. But this is neither free nor assured, and it probably requires constant wilful effort. In the long term, I can see it bleeding more territory to China due to the significant difference in military power and aggression. This is so long as there isn't a NATO-like structure to keep Chinese aggression in check, constituted of its neighbors.

alephnerd 2y ago
> Tajikistan looks to be an interesting case of Islam being kept in check without resorting to either sharia or terrorism. Because it's done through extreme human rights violations such as torture, kidnapping, kangaroo courts, etc [0]. This only radicalizes the Jihadist movements, who's hardcore believers went into exile Afghanistan, Pakistan, Chechnya, Syria, etc and became extremely prominent in the Islamic State movement (eg. The former head of Tajikistan's Spetznaz defected to ISIS back in 2015 and became their War Minister). ISKP is extremely Tajik in leadership, and this has helped them commit mass casualty attacks like the Kerman Bombings and the Moscow Theatre Siege Once Emomali Rahmon dies, the Civil War will restart. > bleeding more territory to China due to the significant difference in military power and aggression. This is so long as there isn't a NATO-like structure to keep Chinese aggression in check, constituted of its neighbors. Countries like India have had Air Force bases and boots on the ground in Tajikistan for decades [1] --------- If in San Francisco or New York, I recommend checking out Halal Dastarkhan or Farida's, Tandir Rokhat (Bukharan Jewish), Aziza 7, and Salute (Bukharan Jewish) respectively. The owners are all ethnic Tajiks from Uzbekistan. Bukhara is ethnic Tajik but in Uzbekistan because Stalin. [0] - https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2023/country-chapters/tajikistan https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2023/country-chapters/tajik... [1] - https://www.tribuneindia.com/2006/20060422/main6.htm https://www.tribuneindia.com/2006/20060422/main6.htm
- slt2021 2y ago
  really tough choice for a government: violate human rights of opposition or descend into ISIS/afghon
  - alephnerd 2y ago
    I disagree - the best solution to minimizing radicalism would have been raising living standards and allowing civil society and institutions to form, yet it's the same Soviet apparatchiks who continue to tenuously hang on to power to this day. By preventing civil society from forming, perpetuating the same autarkic and autocratic economic and political system that has been in place since the 1980s, and failing to raise living standards these leaders exacerbated Jihadist movements, as they were the only semi-organized opposition left. And banning minors from attending any religious service except funerals, de facto banning the Hijab, and using unrestrained violence in the face of even the smallest protests is not a lasting solution to preventing radicalism. None of the wounds from the civil war were actually rectified, and it will bubble over into a second civil war once Rahmon dies. It's the same story in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkemenistan, and Kazakhstan (eg. The riots in 2021). This is the exact same playbook that happened in Afghanistan 50 years ago - living standards were trash, inequality was high, and any opposition was violently removed. It didn't matter if it was Zahir Shah, Taraki, Massoud, or Omar - they were all authoritarian criminals who prevented civil society and institutions from forming.
    - ffgjgf1 2y ago
      > allowing civil society and institutions to form To be fair if they tried that Islamists would have just taken over. Those things don’t tend to just form on their own when you let people do whatever they want without supervision (you need very specific conditions). The most effective path for countries in similar positions is probably balanced authoritarianism + focus on education and economic growth and then starting to introduce democracy and other civil rights gradually after a generation or two. Pretty hard to pull off, though (especially in the Muslim world).
      - alephnerd 2y ago
        Living standards (based on HDI, life expectancy, literacy rate, and other development indicators) in Tajikistan are still approximately at the same level as they were when Tajikistan was the poorest member of the Soviet Union 30 years ago. Stagnant living standards over 30 years and repression is all Rahmon has to show. This is why radicalism grows. If Rahmon raised living standards similar to peers like Uzbekistan (who also neighbors Afghanistan and also has a major issue with Afghan Uzbeks supporting the Taliban, and who are equally as repressive such as the Andijan Massacre) then Tajikistan wouldn't be in the mess that it is in today.
rvense 2y ago
Islam is extremely important to Tajik identity. But Tajikistan is making the same mistake many other Muslim dictatorships and authocracies did. By not having a real open political system, the only place for dissent to take root is in Islamist circles, and then that's the opposition you get.
- slt2021 2y ago
  Tajikistan had civil war in 1990s where Islamist radicals were the opposition and wanted to turn TJ into sharia run state. open political system actually makes islam opposition stronger (and easy to influence with $$$ from Gulf monarchies). Keeping islam in check, also means keeping in check Gulf oil $$$$ that install their own version of islam. the pipeline of volunteers from *stans to join ISIS/Al-Qaeda was funded and enabled by Gulf monarchies. If there is another big war in the Middle East - guess from where all the islamist volunteer fighters will be coming from - from these poor 3rd world islamist countries, the *stan countries
  - aprilthird2021 2y ago
    > open political system actually makes islam opposition stronger (and easy to influence with $$$ from Gulf monarchies). No it doesn't. Provide one example where this has happened?
    - protomolecule 2y ago
      Russia. [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_al-Khattab https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_al-Khattab
      - aprilthird2021 2y ago
        [flagged]
    - slt2021 2y ago
      i lived there, gulf monarchies are financing construction of mosques all over the *stans, and are sending people to "study islam" in ... Pakistan and Bangladesh, where they are radicalized and brainwashed. various conflicts in Causasus in russia - where caucasians were bankrolled and brainwashed via gulf money (dagestan and chechnya)
geoka9 2y ago
I think there's more danger of bleeding territory to the Taliban, at least it has been the case until recently. Especially if Russia (who has had a big military base there forever) becomes irrelevant.
- ashilfarahmand 2y ago
  I think they were on high alert up until recently and are now in the process of trying to figure out how to get along with them. On the border areas, there were a handful of markets in the mountain villages where they allowed Afghans to cross the border to sell products. These markets were shut down once the Taliban took over but have recently been re-opened.
- wavefunction 2y ago
  The article mentions that China has a military base in the east of Tajikistan and touches on Chinese attitudes towards islam and their behavior internally (in Xinjiang for example) and externally in Tajikistan. Russia appears to be unable to prosecute their own defense let alone the defense of "allies" as Armenia found out.
  - jajko 2y ago
    Russia has no allies. Every single 'compatible' nation ran the hell away from them as soon as it become marginally possible in late 80s, and in typical russian victim fashion west and US specifically is to blame. Just look at what they are doing to their supposed brothers in Ukraine, for one old man's greed and twisted view on reality and his legacy, 0 other reasons. This is how they treat everybody, including other russians. What they have are temporarily aligned forces who see some benefit in such action, nothing more. Most of them would take over russian territory and its mineral riches without blinking an eye if they could.
    - holoduke 2y ago
      [flagged]
ssijak 2y ago
[flagged]
- lye 2y ago
  Yeah, "the West" lost a lot of goodwill in the region in the last couple of decades to be able to talk from such a high moral ground. I don't have any studies — they're probably impossible to run in an autocratic state — but in my country among people I've talked with through my life all major powers are viewed with roughly the same suspicion. It depends a lot on who you're talking to. If people are worried of possible secession of territory to China or Russia, they're equally worried about Western powers supporting "the fifth column" and color revolutions. Let's not pretend here they don't have any reasons to be worried.
  - bartvk 2y ago
    You are being downvoted, but I think it has to do with your last paragraph. Check the guidelines link at the bottom, it has some related remarks.
    - lye 2y ago
      That's fair, thanks, I edited it out.
  - wbl 2y ago
    The people or the corrupt autocrats who send secret policemen out and about?
  - kkfx 2y ago
    The west in Central Asia want natural resources, like China, partially like Soviet Union, BUT Soviet Union back than have created most of the local infra, bad maybe, oppressing people maybe, but still modernize these countries. The west have financed Arkadag, Innopolis, ... meaning giving much to very few and nothing for the rest. Back than, hearing my grandmother stories (she have a political activity in Europe that link her to the Soviet a bit), all was Soviet Citizens, of course the non-Caucasian looking was discriminated, the child of Russian there got better schools and services, the locals got far less, but they was still free to learn and move, the western experiment have given exactly NOTHING for 99% of the locals and have instead exacerbated local corruption... That's why many might dream an European future, but definitively not like being under the IMF rules, they even prefer a historic enemy, China, since at least the Chinese nowadays build a bit of infra, just to pick natural resources or link themselves to EU, but still creating something that give some breadcrumbs to the locals. The western and middle-east economical initiative have only displaced people. That's how we lost an opportunity...
pythonguython 2y ago
All of the central Asian “stan” countries have a Muslim majority and Tajikistan is actually the most extreme of them. But Kazakhstan, kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Indonesia, Turkey and Iran are all examples of islam without extremism (although Iran has fundamentalism)
- lye 2y ago
  Kazakhstan has a problem with Islamic extremists and the government is very much worried about it and spends a lot of money fighting it. They put cameras in every mosque, for example, and work their people into every religious group of any significance. There's not much info on it in English, but here you go: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Aktobe_bombing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Aktobe_bombing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Aktobe_shootings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Aktobe_shootings https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Контртеррористическая_операция_в_Темирском_районе https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Контртеррористическая_операция...
  - pythonguython 2y ago
    It’s certainly on the governments radar, and they do have an interest in preventing it. Kazakhstan banned hijab in schools and engages in anti terrorism like you mentioned. But overall, the country has a large secular population (due to the Soviet Union) and the country practices a moderate form of Islam called Sufism. I would attribute this to their nomadic culture, which meant the Quran was more of an oral tradition for Kazakhs in the past. The difference between Kazakhstan and Tajikstan is that you can actually find daesh cells in the pamir valley of Tajikistan, while that’s not really a thing in Kazakhstan. Extremism in KZ has manifested as a few isolated attacks and a small amount of individuals who chose to travel to fight in the Syrian war. I spent 9 months in KZ last year and - visited mosques, talked to many locals in various cities and feel comfortable saying that Islamic extremism is rare there.
- _DeadFred_ 2y ago
  When your police are free to abuse girls all the way up to abusing them to death for not wearing hats like Iran is, I'm pretty sure that's extremism.
mkoubaa 2y ago
Saying "Islam being kept in check" in this way sounds an implication that religion (or perhaps just this one) ought to be suppressed. This sort of attitude and policy coming from it is like gasoline for religious extremism, and the fact that Tajikistan exports extremists should be enough evidence for that
- jl6 2y ago
  “Suppressed” would be more extremism. “Kept in check”? Yeah, that’s probably a good treatment for any religion.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - mkoubaa 2y ago
    Keeping religions in check as such is incompatible with liberalism. Secular societies need to be maintained, but antagonizing religious people with phrases like that is not how.
    - stef25 2y ago
      Make sure to use right words so they don't have a meltdown, like toddlers.
      - mkoubaa 2y ago
        It is important for government actions to be communicated clearly
    - surfingdino 2y ago
      On the flip side, religions are incompatible with liberalism so there's constant tension.
      - mkoubaa 2y ago
        The bedrock of liberalism is religious freedom
_ddbw 2y ago
[flagged]
- dang 2y ago
  Religious flamewar will get you banned here, regardless of which religions you're for or against. Please don't post like this to HN again. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - adhamsalama 2y ago
    Interesting. So why haven't you said the same about those other comments about Islam?
    - dang 2y ago
      When people get a mod response they often jump to the conclusion "the mods must be against me / my side". This is understandable but not accurate. We've moderated and/or banned many accounts doing religious flamewar against Islam, just the same as any other religion. If you see some posts where people are doing that and didn't get moderated, please don't take that to mean "the mods don't care" or "the mods must tacitly support this". Far more likely is we just didn't see it. We don't come close to seeing everything that gets posted here. If you see a post that ought to have been moderated but hasn't been, you can help by flagging it or emailing us at hn@ycombinator.com. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=likeliest%20explanation%20by%3Adang&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
  - gromneer 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - dang 2y ago
      I understand how and why such feelings come up—it makes a lot of sense given the cultural context and the history. But I'd ask you to pause and consider taking 'yes' for an answer, i.e. to consider that we might genuinely intend to treat all sides, including yours, fairly and equally. I've been telling HN users that they can't attack Islam (same as any other religion) for as long as I've been a moderator here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10590568 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10590568 (Nov 2015) It's easy to run into a few (maybe only one or two) datapoints and jump to "these assholes are just like all the others". That's how sample bias (and whatever bias this is: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20notice%20dislike&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...) work. But if you do that, you'll miss many cases where someone is on your side and has good will towards you. That's not in your interest—it just leads to more of the same. How about let's for something else.
aenopix 2y ago
They are exremist, they banned Eid celebrations, they banned the Hijab....
- throwaway2037 2y ago
  The blog post specifically mentions that about 90% of countryside women wear the hijab. I am confused by your comment.
cyberax 2y ago
> Tajikistan looks to be an interesting case of Islam being kept in check "In check" in this case means a 7-year civil war that ended up with 1% of the country _dead_ and around 15% of the population displaced.
aprilthird2021 2y ago
What a lot of Westerners don't realize is this kind of sentiment is exactly why Islamist parties and political groups are so popular in the Muslim world. If your only choice is extremely socially conservative, democratic groups like the Muslim Brotherhood (or worse) or a literal Kim Jong Un alike, then it's pretty obvious who you'd choose. This is resorting to extremism and terrorism, it's just conducted by the army and police. Did you not hear how many people were assassinated and killed by this dictator to maintain iron grip control over the country? How is that not terrorism?
- adhamsalama 2y ago
  Democratic groups like the Muslim Brotherhood? Care to explain that one more?
  - ffgjgf1 2y ago
    They want to democratically abolish democracy. What’s undemocratic about that?
  - aprilthird2021 2y ago
    They are the only party to have ever fielded a democratically elected leader in all of their home country of Egypt.

alephnerd 2y ago

> Tajikistan looks to be an interesting case of Islam being kept in check without resorting to either sharia or terrorism. Because it's done through extreme human rights violations such as torture, kidnapping, kangaroo courts, etc [0]. This only radicalizes the Jihadist movements, who's hardcore believers went into exile Afghanistan, Pakistan, Chechnya, Syria, etc and became extremely prominent in the Islamic State movement (eg. The former head of Tajikistan's Spetznaz defected to ISIS back in 2015 and became their War Minister). ISKP is extremely Tajik in leadership, and this has helped them commit mass casualty attacks like the Kerman Bombings and the Moscow Theatre Siege Once Emomali Rahmon dies, the Civil War will restart. > bleeding more territory to China due to the significant difference in military power and aggression. This is so long as there isn't a NATO-like structure to keep Chinese aggression in check, constituted of its neighbors. Countries like India have had Air Force bases and boots on the ground in Tajikistan for decades [1] --------- If in San Francisco or New York, I recommend checking out Halal Dastarkhan or Farida's, Tandir Rokhat (Bukharan Jewish), Aziza 7, and Salute (Bukharan Jewish) respectively. The owners are all ethnic Tajiks from Uzbekistan. Bukhara is ethnic Tajik but in Uzbekistan because Stalin. [0] - https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2023/country-chapters/tajikistan https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2023/country-chapters/tajik... [1] - https://www.tribuneindia.com/2006/20060422/main6.htm https://www.tribuneindia.com/2006/20060422/main6.htm

slt2021 2y ago
really tough choice for a government: violate human rights of opposition or descend into ISIS/afghon
- alephnerd 2y ago
  I disagree - the best solution to minimizing radicalism would have been raising living standards and allowing civil society and institutions to form, yet it's the same Soviet apparatchiks who continue to tenuously hang on to power to this day. By preventing civil society from forming, perpetuating the same autarkic and autocratic economic and political system that has been in place since the 1980s, and failing to raise living standards these leaders exacerbated Jihadist movements, as they were the only semi-organized opposition left. And banning minors from attending any religious service except funerals, de facto banning the Hijab, and using unrestrained violence in the face of even the smallest protests is not a lasting solution to preventing radicalism. None of the wounds from the civil war were actually rectified, and it will bubble over into a second civil war once Rahmon dies. It's the same story in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkemenistan, and Kazakhstan (eg. The riots in 2021). This is the exact same playbook that happened in Afghanistan 50 years ago - living standards were trash, inequality was high, and any opposition was violently removed. It didn't matter if it was Zahir Shah, Taraki, Massoud, or Omar - they were all authoritarian criminals who prevented civil society and institutions from forming.
  - ffgjgf1 2y ago
    > allowing civil society and institutions to form To be fair if they tried that Islamists would have just taken over. Those things don’t tend to just form on their own when you let people do whatever they want without supervision (you need very specific conditions). The most effective path for countries in similar positions is probably balanced authoritarianism + focus on education and economic growth and then starting to introduce democracy and other civil rights gradually after a generation or two. Pretty hard to pull off, though (especially in the Muslim world).
    - alephnerd 2y ago
      Living standards (based on HDI, life expectancy, literacy rate, and other development indicators) in Tajikistan are still approximately at the same level as they were when Tajikistan was the poorest member of the Soviet Union 30 years ago. Stagnant living standards over 30 years and repression is all Rahmon has to show. This is why radicalism grows. If Rahmon raised living standards similar to peers like Uzbekistan (who also neighbors Afghanistan and also has a major issue with Afghan Uzbeks supporting the Taliban, and who are equally as repressive such as the Andijan Massacre) then Tajikistan wouldn't be in the mess that it is in today.

rvense 2y ago

Islam is extremely important to Tajik identity. But Tajikistan is making the same mistake many other Muslim dictatorships and authocracies did. By not having a real open political system, the only place for dissent to take root is in Islamist circles, and then that's the opposition you get.

slt2021 2y ago
Tajikistan had civil war in 1990s where Islamist radicals were the opposition and wanted to turn TJ into sharia run state. open political system actually makes islam opposition stronger (and easy to influence with $$$ from Gulf monarchies). Keeping islam in check, also means keeping in check Gulf oil $$$$ that install their own version of islam. the pipeline of volunteers from *stans to join ISIS/Al-Qaeda was funded and enabled by Gulf monarchies. If there is another big war in the Middle East - guess from where all the islamist volunteer fighters will be coming from - from these poor 3rd world islamist countries, the *stan countries
- aprilthird2021 2y ago
  > open political system actually makes islam opposition stronger (and easy to influence with $$$ from Gulf monarchies). No it doesn't. Provide one example where this has happened?
  - protomolecule 2y ago
    Russia. [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_al-Khattab https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_al-Khattab
    - aprilthird2021 2y ago
      [flagged]
  - slt2021 2y ago
    i lived there, gulf monarchies are financing construction of mosques all over the *stans, and are sending people to "study islam" in ... Pakistan and Bangladesh, where they are radicalized and brainwashed. various conflicts in Causasus in russia - where caucasians were bankrolled and brainwashed via gulf money (dagestan and chechnya)

geoka9 2y ago

I think there's more danger of bleeding territory to the Taliban, at least it has been the case until recently. Especially if Russia (who has had a big military base there forever) becomes irrelevant.

ashilfarahmand 2y ago
I think they were on high alert up until recently and are now in the process of trying to figure out how to get along with them. On the border areas, there were a handful of markets in the mountain villages where they allowed Afghans to cross the border to sell products. These markets were shut down once the Taliban took over but have recently been re-opened.
wavefunction 2y ago
The article mentions that China has a military base in the east of Tajikistan and touches on Chinese attitudes towards islam and their behavior internally (in Xinjiang for example) and externally in Tajikistan. Russia appears to be unable to prosecute their own defense let alone the defense of "allies" as Armenia found out.
- jajko 2y ago
  Russia has no allies. Every single 'compatible' nation ran the hell away from them as soon as it become marginally possible in late 80s, and in typical russian victim fashion west and US specifically is to blame. Just look at what they are doing to their supposed brothers in Ukraine, for one old man's greed and twisted view on reality and his legacy, 0 other reasons. This is how they treat everybody, including other russians. What they have are temporarily aligned forces who see some benefit in such action, nothing more. Most of them would take over russian territory and its mineral riches without blinking an eye if they could.
  - holoduke 2y ago
    [flagged]

ssijak 2y ago

[flagged]

lye 2y ago
Yeah, "the West" lost a lot of goodwill in the region in the last couple of decades to be able to talk from such a high moral ground. I don't have any studies — they're probably impossible to run in an autocratic state — but in my country among people I've talked with through my life all major powers are viewed with roughly the same suspicion. It depends a lot on who you're talking to. If people are worried of possible secession of territory to China or Russia, they're equally worried about Western powers supporting "the fifth column" and color revolutions. Let's not pretend here they don't have any reasons to be worried.
- bartvk 2y ago
  You are being downvoted, but I think it has to do with your last paragraph. Check the guidelines link at the bottom, it has some related remarks.
  - lye 2y ago
    That's fair, thanks, I edited it out.
- wbl 2y ago
  The people or the corrupt autocrats who send secret policemen out and about?
- kkfx 2y ago
  The west in Central Asia want natural resources, like China, partially like Soviet Union, BUT Soviet Union back than have created most of the local infra, bad maybe, oppressing people maybe, but still modernize these countries. The west have financed Arkadag, Innopolis, ... meaning giving much to very few and nothing for the rest. Back than, hearing my grandmother stories (she have a political activity in Europe that link her to the Soviet a bit), all was Soviet Citizens, of course the non-Caucasian looking was discriminated, the child of Russian there got better schools and services, the locals got far less, but they was still free to learn and move, the western experiment have given exactly NOTHING for 99% of the locals and have instead exacerbated local corruption... That's why many might dream an European future, but definitively not like being under the IMF rules, they even prefer a historic enemy, China, since at least the Chinese nowadays build a bit of infra, just to pick natural resources or link themselves to EU, but still creating something that give some breadcrumbs to the locals. The western and middle-east economical initiative have only displaced people. That's how we lost an opportunity...

pythonguython 2y ago

All of the central Asian “stan” countries have a Muslim majority and Tajikistan is actually the most extreme of them. But Kazakhstan, kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Indonesia, Turkey and Iran are all examples of islam without extremism (although Iran has fundamentalism)

lye 2y ago
Kazakhstan has a problem with Islamic extremists and the government is very much worried about it and spends a lot of money fighting it. They put cameras in every mosque, for example, and work their people into every religious group of any significance. There's not much info on it in English, but here you go: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Aktobe_bombing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Aktobe_bombing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Aktobe_shootings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Aktobe_shootings https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Контртеррористическая_операция_в_Темирском_районе https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Контртеррористическая_операция...
- pythonguython 2y ago
  It’s certainly on the governments radar, and they do have an interest in preventing it. Kazakhstan banned hijab in schools and engages in anti terrorism like you mentioned. But overall, the country has a large secular population (due to the Soviet Union) and the country practices a moderate form of Islam called Sufism. I would attribute this to their nomadic culture, which meant the Quran was more of an oral tradition for Kazakhs in the past. The difference between Kazakhstan and Tajikstan is that you can actually find daesh cells in the pamir valley of Tajikistan, while that’s not really a thing in Kazakhstan. Extremism in KZ has manifested as a few isolated attacks and a small amount of individuals who chose to travel to fight in the Syrian war. I spent 9 months in KZ last year and - visited mosques, talked to many locals in various cities and feel comfortable saying that Islamic extremism is rare there.
_DeadFred_ 2y ago
When your police are free to abuse girls all the way up to abusing them to death for not wearing hats like Iran is, I'm pretty sure that's extremism.

mkoubaa 2y ago

Saying "Islam being kept in check" in this way sounds an implication that religion (or perhaps just this one) ought to be suppressed. This sort of attitude and policy coming from it is like gasoline for religious extremism, and the fact that Tajikistan exports extremists should be enough evidence for that

jl6 2y ago
“Suppressed” would be more extremism. “Kept in check”? Yeah, that’s probably a good treatment for any religion.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- mkoubaa 2y ago
  Keeping religions in check as such is incompatible with liberalism. Secular societies need to be maintained, but antagonizing religious people with phrases like that is not how.
  - stef25 2y ago
    Make sure to use right words so they don't have a meltdown, like toddlers.
    - mkoubaa 2y ago
      It is important for government actions to be communicated clearly
  - surfingdino 2y ago
    On the flip side, religions are incompatible with liberalism so there's constant tension.
    - mkoubaa 2y ago
      The bedrock of liberalism is religious freedom

_ddbw 2y ago

[flagged]

dang 2y ago
Religious flamewar will get you banned here, regardless of which religions you're for or against. Please don't post like this to HN again. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- adhamsalama 2y ago
  Interesting. So why haven't you said the same about those other comments about Islam?
  - dang 2y ago
    When people get a mod response they often jump to the conclusion "the mods must be against me / my side". This is understandable but not accurate. We've moderated and/or banned many accounts doing religious flamewar against Islam, just the same as any other religion. If you see some posts where people are doing that and didn't get moderated, please don't take that to mean "the mods don't care" or "the mods must tacitly support this". Far more likely is we just didn't see it. We don't come close to seeing everything that gets posted here. If you see a post that ought to have been moderated but hasn't been, you can help by flagging it or emailing us at hn@ycombinator.com. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=likeliest%20explanation%20by%3Adang&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
- gromneer 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - dang 2y ago
    I understand how and why such feelings come up—it makes a lot of sense given the cultural context and the history. But I'd ask you to pause and consider taking 'yes' for an answer, i.e. to consider that we might genuinely intend to treat all sides, including yours, fairly and equally. I've been telling HN users that they can't attack Islam (same as any other religion) for as long as I've been a moderator here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10590568 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10590568 (Nov 2015) It's easy to run into a few (maybe only one or two) datapoints and jump to "these assholes are just like all the others". That's how sample bias (and whatever bias this is: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20notice%20dislike&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...) work. But if you do that, you'll miss many cases where someone is on your side and has good will towards you. That's not in your interest—it just leads to more of the same. How about let's for something else.

aenopix 2y ago

They are exremist, they banned Eid celebrations, they banned the Hijab....

throwaway2037 2y ago
The blog post specifically mentions that about 90% of countryside women wear the hijab. I am confused by your comment.

cyberax 2y ago

> Tajikistan looks to be an interesting case of Islam being kept in check "In check" in this case means a 7-year civil war that ended up with 1% of the country _dead_ and around 15% of the population displaced.

aprilthird2021 2y ago

What a lot of Westerners don't realize is this kind of sentiment is exactly why Islamist parties and political groups are so popular in the Muslim world. If your only choice is extremely socially conservative, democratic groups like the Muslim Brotherhood (or worse) or a literal Kim Jong Un alike, then it's pretty obvious who you'd choose. This is resorting to extremism and terrorism, it's just conducted by the army and police. Did you not hear how many people were assassinated and killed by this dictator to maintain iron grip control over the country? How is that not terrorism?

adhamsalama 2y ago
Democratic groups like the Muslim Brotherhood? Care to explain that one more?
- ffgjgf1 2y ago
  They want to democratically abolish democracy. What’s undemocratic about that?
- aprilthird2021 2y ago
  They are the only party to have ever fielded a democratically elected leader in all of their home country of Egypt.