Transitions on Line, Czech Rep.
Jan 10 2005
The Year of Praying Dangerously
by Felix Corley
Turkmen authorities keep up the pressure on unauthorized religious
building and activity. A partner post from Forum 18.
In 2004, the same year that Turkmenistan’s autocratic president,
Saparmurat Niazov, inaugurated what officials describe as the largest
mosque in Central Asia in his home village of Kipchak in central
Turkmenistan, the authorities demolished at least seven other
mosques, apparently to prevent unapproved Muslim worship. Several
Muslim and non-Muslim sources inside Turkmenistan, who preferred not
to be identified, have told Forum 18 News Service of seven specific
mosque demolitions. The sources said they believe that other
unapproved mosques might also have fallen victim to the government’s
desire to stifle unauthorized Muslim worship. Christians and members
of other faiths are still battling to be allowed to open places of
worship, regain those confiscated, or rebuild those destroyed in the
past six years.
The Kipchak mosque–built by the French company Bouygues and
inaugurated with great pomp on 22 October 2004–angered some Muslims
by incorporating on its walls not only quotations from the Koran, but
also from the Ruhnama (Book of the Soul), a pseudo-spiritual work
claimed to have been written by Niazov. Muslims regard as blasphemous
the use of such quotations and the requirement that copies of the
Ruhnama be placed in mosques on a par with the Koran, as well as
instructions to imams to quote lavishly from the president’s work in
sermons. Few Muslims reportedly attend the Kipchak mosque for regular
prayers, though it can house up to 10,000 worshippers. Apparently as
part of a policy of isolating Turkmen religious believers of all
faiths, no foreign Muslim religious dignitaries were permitted to
attend the inauguration.
Islam is traditionally the faith of the majority in Turkmenistan, and
it is the faith under the tightest government control. The president
installed the new chief mufti, Rovshen Allaberdiev, in August after
removing his predecessor, while the government’s Gengeshi (Council)
for Religious Affairs names all imams throughout the country. Only
about 140 mosques–all of them under the state-controlled
muftiate–now have state registration, just a fraction of the number
of a decade ago when religious practice was freer.
Independent mosques have been demolished in recent years–such as
those built by Imam Ahmed Orazgylych in a suburb of Ashgabat and in
the village of Govki-Zeren near Tejen in southern Turkmenistan, both
bulldozed in 2000–while others that reject the forced imposition of
the Ruhnama have been shut down, such as the mosque closed on
National Security Ministry orders in late 2003 after mosque leaders
refused to place the Ruhnama in a place of honor.
Other faiths, too, face severe difficulties maintaining places of
worship. The authorities have refused to allow the two Hare Krishna
temples bulldozed in the Mary region in summer 1999 and the
Seventh-day Adventist church bulldozed in Ashgabat in November 1999
to be rebuilt and have refused to pay any compensation. Neither
community has been allowed to meet publicly for worship despite both
having regained official registration in 2004.
Nor have the Baptist and Pentecostal churches in Ashgabat–closed
down and confiscated in 2001–been handed back, leaving both
communities with nowhere to worship. The government has also refused
to hand back an Armenian Apostolic church in the Caspian port city of
Turkmenbashi confiscated during the Soviet period, despite repeated
appeals by the local Armenian community. Other religious communities
that have been denied registration–including other Protestant
churches, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and the New Apostolic
Church–likewise have nowhere to meet.
The 2004 mosque demolitions appear to have occurred in two waves,
with three demolished at the beginning of 2004 and a further four in
Ashgabat destroyed since October.
“The mosques demolished in the spring had been built without
permission,” one source told Forum 18. “The demolitions were not
reported in the media, but they didn’t take place covertly, either.”
The three mosques known to have been demolished in the first wave
were a Shia mosque used by local ethnic Iranians in the village of
Bagyr near Ashgabat, as well as small Sunni mosques in the town of
Serdar (formerly Kyzyl-Arvat) in western Turkmenistan and in the
village of Geoktepe, 45 kilometers northwest of Ashgabat. “The
Geoktepe mosque was in the middle of the old fortress,” one source
told Forum 18. “The authorities wanted all the Muslims to go to the
main, newly built mosque.” The massive Saparmurat Haji mosque, named
after the president and completed in the 1990s, was, like the Kipchak
mosque, built by Bouygues. The construction cost was a reported $86
million.
The autumn wave of demolitions began with the destruction of two
mosques in Ashgabat. Both were razed on 15 October, just one day
before the start of Ramadan.
“Worshippers in both mosques were told that these mosques were being
demolished because the local government is planning to build a new
road and to widen the existing one,” a source told Forum 18 from
Ashgabat. “Of course, nothing has yet been built there.”
A visitor to the mosque on Bitarap Turkmenistan street in August
found it looking “pretty good,” with people repairing and painting
the inside of the relatively large building. Sources told Forum 18
that local people were “really unhappy” when the local authorities
informed them the mosque was to be demolished.
“According to some unconfirmed rumors, construction of these mosques
was financed by some unidentified Arab charities,” one source added.
“This might have been one of the reasons for their demolition.” Some
local imams referred to the mosque on Bitarap Turkmenistan street as
a Wahhabi mosque, a reference to the brand of Sunni Islam that
predominates in Saudi Arabia, though the term “Wahhabi” is used more
widely in Central Asia as a synonym for “Muslim extremist.”
Soon afterward, a privately built mosque in the Garadamak area of
southern Ashgabat was demolished along with many houses in the same
area. A source from Ashgabat who visited the mosque in July told
Forum 18 that the imam, who used to live in a nearby house, seemed at
that time to be unaware of the government’s imminent plans to
demolish his mosque.
The most recent demolition, in November, was of another private
mosque in the Choganly area of northern Ashgabat, near the city’s
largest market. It, too, was not registered with the government but,
unlike the mosque in the Garadamak district, could not operate due to
strong opposition from the local authorities. No other houses around
this mosque are known to have been demolished.
One local Muslim suggested that all four of the Ashgabat mosques
demolished in the autumn were targeted because their imams refused to
read Niazov’s Ruhnama in their mosques.
Other Muslims trace the start of the latest wave of demolitions of
private mosques to a presidential speech complaining of alleged
attempts to sow discord in the country. “Some people are coming here
and taking our lads to teach them,” Niazov told a meeting in the city
of Turkmenbashi in September. “Eight lads have been taken in this way
to make them into Wahhabis. This means they will come back later and
start disputes among us. Therefore let us train them here, in
Ashgabat, at a faculty of theology.”
Sources have told Forum 18 that Khezretkuli Khanov, head of the
Ashgabat Gengeshi, has complained to visitors to his office in recent
months that he constantly faces the problem of dealing with mosques
functioning without the required permission. Unregistered religious
activity is illegal in Turkmenistan, in defiance of international
human rights norms.