Azerbaijan, Baku, April 21 / Trend V.Zhavoronkova /
Religious education should be available to the Tajik citizens who desire it, member of the Tajik Islamic Renaissance Party Mohammed Karim believes.
According to local media, Tajikistan restricted religious schools for children. Parents who send their children abroad to study in such educational institutions may be arrested.
School teachers in southern Tajikistan will now be obligated to look for missing students on Fridays, in case they are in mosques. Appropriate orders were sent to all schools in the region, Interfax reported.
Parents of students who are caught in the mosques will be asked to provide written explanations about why their children visit religious institutions during school hours. In the case of recurrences the prosecutor's office will be informed about these children and their parents.
President Emomali Rahmon submitted a bill "On parental responsibility for child rearing" for public discussion in December 2010. The opposition and human rights defenders voiced particular concern over the prohibition of minors' attending religious services, apart from the memorial.
The country also abolished the subject "Fundamentals of Islam" in schools.
The Tajik officials say that the above measures are a form of "prevention" against extremism.
Karim believes such an attitude is unacceptable to believers in the country.
"Our party repeatedly proposed the government to solve this problem by opening a few Islamic schools here, in Tajikistan, so that everyone could study there," Karim told Trend over a phone from Dushanbe.
He said that the majority of Tajikistan's population, about 97 percent, is Muslim. Some of them want to study in religious schools and it should not be prohibited. But, only one official Islamic Institute operates in the country. This, Karim said, does not lead to an increase in extremism.
"The existence of an official Islamic party in Tajikistan helps the state and ensures that people would not be overly committed to different sects. We do not know why the government does not want to cooperate with us in this matter," Karim said.
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Lack of religious schools in the country, as well as the country's numerous problems including economic and cultural, push the population to leave to study abroad. The government now opposes such behavior.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) representative Rachel Denber said the agency can not yet give a comprehensive assessment of what is happening in Tajikistan, as HRW has not conducted an independent investigation on this issue there.
"However, in general the government has the prerogative to participate in the fight against extremism. But it must respect the right of religious freedom and other rights of citizens of the republic", Denber wrote Trend in an e-mail.