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Taking on ‘alien clothing’ The context and consequences of Tajikistan’s hijab ban

Source: Meduza

Last month, the Tajik parliament approved a law banning “alien clothing” that appears to mainly target the hijab and other traditional items of Islamic attire. Though the authorities claim the ban aims to safeguard “national values” and combat “extremism,” many see it as part of a decades-long struggle to define Tajik identity and stamp out political Islam as an opposition force in this Muslim-majority country. And as past attempts to restrict Islamic clothing have shown, women and girls will be most likely to suffer the consequences. Researcher Niginakhon Saida and freelance journalist Sher Khashimov report for The Beet.

This story first appeared in The Beet, a weekly email dispatch from Meduza covering Central and Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. Sign up here to get the next issue delivered directly to your inbox.

Anisa was on her way to visit relatives in the suburbs of Dushanbe when two police officers accosted her over her light-colored hijab, an Islamic headscarf. “They kept asking me why I wear [the hijab] and do I not know that it’s not a Tajik tradition,” said Anisa (who asked not to use her full name, fearing reprisals). The interaction quickly turned hostile, with one officer threatening to take Anisa to the police station. “They kept tugging at my headscarf and saying that soon it will be absolutely illegal to wear one before finally letting me go,” she told The Beet.

On June 19, soon after Anisa’s run-in with the police, Tajikistan’s government passed a law banning the “import, sale, promotion, and use of clothing alien to the national culture.” With the ostensible aim of “protecting the national culture’s true values,” the law institutes fines starting at around $740 for individuals for each violation, with fines for civil servants and religious figures as high as approximately $5,400. However, the current language of the law doesn’t specify what exactly constitutes “alien clothing.” 

As evidenced by the June 22 arrest of a young woman for posting on social media “while dressed inappropriately,” the ban seemingly applies to modern apparel like ripped jeans or “revealing” tops, too. But many see it as primarily targeting traditional Islamic clothing and as the latest move in the Tajik government’s decades-long campaign of curtailing Islam as a potential political opponent.

‘Asserting authoritarian control’

Shortly after gaining independence from the USSR in 1991, Tajikistan fell into a civil war involving several competing militias and different regional and ideological factions. The five-year conflict took tens of thousands of lives and displaced more than a million people, as attempts to negotiate a peace deal failed repeatedly. But the rapid rise of the radical Islamist Taliban movement in neighboring Afghanistan in the mid-1990s dramatically changed geopolitics in the region. 

Fearing the violence in Afghanistan could spill over into post-Soviet Central Asia, foreign governments pressured the warring sides in Tajikistan to negotiate a settlement. In 1997, Emomali Rahmon, elected as Tajikistan’s president three years earlier, and a coalition of Soviet elites from the north and south of the country secured a peace agreement that put him firmly in power but also brought representatives of the moderately Islamic opposition into the new national government. (Rahmon remains Tajikistan’s president to this day.)   

Although almost three decades have passed since the civil war, memories of suffering still hold significant social and political currency in Tajikistan. Neighbors and family members pressure each other to conform to social norms to avoid rocking the boat, largely out of fear of triggering a descent into another bloody civil conflict. The Tajik regime has enforced this social order from above, designating itself as the guarantor of post-war stability. The government exaggerates the potential for social fractures and external threats, capitalizing on the population’s wartime memories to justify its iron grip on civil liberties and political rights.

The U.S. war on terror launched after the September 11 attacks unleashed a global wave of Islamophobia and allowed undemocratic governments around the world to scapegoat Islam for their own ends. The Tajik regime has played up the threat of domestic and foreign Islamic extremism to demand more foreign aid, securitize the country, and shore up power. 

“There is a long-standing tendency for the Tajik government to overstate the threat of terrorism and counter-extremism as a means to consolidate its powers,” said Edward Lemon, the president of the Oxus Society for Central Asian Affairs and an assistant professor at the Bush School of Government and Public Service. “The U.S. has long viewed Tajikistan, which has the longest border in the region with Afghanistan, as a frontline in the war on terror. [...] Historically, U.S. counter-terrorism training certainly helped strengthen the coercive apparatus of the Tajik state, [which] has been deployed against its own people, most recently in the Pamirs.”

While most of Central Asia has witnessed the emergence of Islamic civil society movements, this phenomenon has not spread to Tajikistan as the government has created arguably the most hostile environment for religion in the region. The state closely monitors the activities of Islamic civil society groups, tightly controls local mosques and religious figures, and discourages the population from pursuing religious education abroad. Tajik police even reported forcibly shaving the beards of some 13,000 men in an alleged attempt to fight Islamic extremism. 

Under the same pretext, the regime gradually pushed out of the government all former opposition politicians, culminating with the banning of the main opposition party in September 2015 over an alleged Islamist coup. The party was declared a terrorist organization, with its rank and file imprisoned across the country and its leadership forced to live and work in exile in Europe.

“Countering extremism and terrorism is more about asserting authoritarian control than countering a genuine threat. The label of ‘terrorist’ or ‘extremist’ is used to discredit opposition parties, journalists, religious groups, activists, and NGOs,” Lemon explained. “It also legitimizes a series of measures to remove these threats that often violate human rights and religious freedom and generate grievances that could lead to more violent extremism.”

“The Tajik government is trying to limit the influence of religious leaders who might challenge their authority — something they’ve been doing for decades — by closing down mosques, putting religious leaders in jail, shuttering Islamic schools, and even banning women who wear the hijab from entering government buildings,” added Nigora Karimova, a Tajik gender expert based abroad who asked not to use her real name for fear of reprisals. 

‘Now they’re very strict’

Tajikistan’s new-found independence and civil war divisions created an urgent need to define what it meant to be Tajik in the post-Soviet world. With traditional Islamic clothing in the crosshairs of a Tajik government intent on squashing Islamic political identity, women were expected to embody and protect the new Tajik national identity.

“The image of a Soviet woman — educated, strong, secular — was a key component of the Soviet identity project in Central Asia. Clothing, in particular, has been a powerful symbol used to craft and communicate societal changes,” explained Svetlana Dzardanova, a Kyrgyzstan-based researcher at Freedom for Eurasia. “The Soviet hujum campaign aimed at liberating and emancipating women, for example, often manifested through forced removal or even burning of traditional Muslim head covers and veils. After gaining independence, Central Asian governments sought to reinterpret and reshape the image of a Central Asian woman within their nation-building processes.”

The restrictions on the hijab in Tajikistan began in 2007 when the Education Ministry banned both Islamic clothing and Western-style miniskirts for schoolchildren and university students. The ban was later extended to the staff and visitors of all public institutions. Local governments set up special task forces to enforce the ban, while police raided markets to hassle people for buying or selling hijabs. However, the authorities have consistently denied reports about the police harassing women on the streets and handing out fines for wearing the hijab.

“In the past, the police officers frowned upon the sale of Muslim clothing, but I could reason with them or bribe them off. Now they’re very strict about the ban, and I had to take all of my [Islamic clothing] stock home and hide it there,” said Suhrob, a clothes seller from Dushanbe who asked not to use his full name. 

“There is an abiding worldview among the Tajik elites, with roots in Soviet thinking, about the importance of enforcing strict secular policies as a bulwark against terrorism,” said Lemon. “The government has long maintained that there’s a genuine, ‘local’ Islam that’s peaceful and tolerant and that there is a ‘foreign’ Islam that’s violent and extremist. As a result of such logic, the wearing of religious clothing like the hijab, praying in certain ways, or retreating from society for religious reasons like Salafis are viewed as a threat to security.”

In recent years, the COVID-19 pandemic and the fallout from Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine diverted the government’s attention, and the scrutiny of Islamic clothing died down somewhat. Then, in March 2024, a group of gunmen with alleged ties to the Islamic State carried out a deadly terrorist attack on a concert hall in Moscow. The arrest of four Tajik nationals as the suspected attackers refocused the world’s attention on terrorism stemming from Central Asia. Russia cracked down on its millions of Central Asian labor migrants, Turkey canceled its visa-free regime with Tajikistan, and there was a global wave of arrests of Tajik nationals accused of plotting to commit terrorist acts. 

“There has been a significant crackdown on religion [in Tajikistan] since March,” Lemon said. “My sources report additional security at mosques, increasing scrutiny of those who wear beards and hijabs. This is partly a response to the Crocus [City Hall terrorist attack in Moscow]. But these tendencies existed before, of course.”

“Police visited our trade center three times this week, making sure no one sells Muslim clothing anymore,” Suhrob told The Beet. “Before the ban, Muslim clothing was one of the few things we could count on to sell regularly and make some money. I don’t know how any of us will make a living now.” 

‘It was my own choice’

The June 2024 ban on “alien clothing” stipulates the creation of a national dress code with the participation of the Culture Ministry, the Committee on Women and Family Affairs, and a group of local designers. The government reportedly plans to involve popular social media bloggers to promote the project and dissuade people from wearing “alien” clothing.

This isn’t the first time the government has campaigned to promote Tajik national dress. In September 2017, millions of cell phone users across Tajikistan received text messages from the government urging women to wear traditional Tajik clothing, with slogans such as “Wearing national dress is a must,” “Respect national dress,” and “Let’s make it a good tradition to wear national clothes.” The next year, the government released a 376-page manual, The Guidebook of Recommended Outfits in Tajikistan, outlining what Tajik women should wear for different occasions. 

“A national dress code could exacerbate [state control over religion], potentially alienating and marginalizing religious communities. Women and girls risk losing their networks in schools, universities, and workplaces. Families observing strict dress codes might resort to homeschooling or withdrawing girls from education entirely, leaving them with fewer opportunities,” said Dzardanova. 

“The hijab ban for students and teachers in Kazakhstan enacted last year has already resulted in school dropouts, educational migration to neighboring Kyrgyzstan, and distance learning through Russian online schools,” she added.

Kazakhstan outright banned the hijab for students and teachers in October 2023 in an alleged bid to preserve secular values. “Freedom of religion is guaranteed by law in our country. I think it’s right for children to decide for themselves when they grow up and develop their own worldview,” President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said at the time. Before the ban, Kazakhstan’s Education Ministry did not allow “wearing religious symbols” in schools.

Until President Islam Karimov’s death in 2015, women in Uzbekistan struggled to wear the hijab at public institutions, too. “No one will ever object to wearing a headscarf in Uzbekistan,” Karimov’s successor Shavkat Mirziyoyev promised in 2019. However, the Education Ministry officially allowed girls to wear headscarves in schools only as of 2021. 

“It has been only four years since I started wearing the hijab. It was my own choice,” said Fotima Rakhmatullayeva, a 32-year-old from Tashkent who lives in the United States. “Until age 25, I lived in Karimov’s Uzbekistan, a period marked by open resistance against the hijab. There were unwritten rules about checking the bags of every woman wearing a hijab on the subway. Most public schools back then discriminated against girls who wore the hijab.”

Despite more relaxed rules under Mirziyoyev’s government, the headscarf remains a contentious issue for many who want to study or work at public institutions in Uzbekistan. In June, a faculty dean at Bukhara State Pedagogical Institute took disciplinary action against 77 students for wearing the hijab and reportedly threatened to expel them. (Another faculty member told local media that the university administration had “no intention of expelling students” but wanted to “call them to order.”)

Uzbekistan’s grand mufti, Nuriddin Kholiqnazarov, has also urged people to follow Islam moderately, arguing that the Hanafi school, which the majority of Muslims in Uzbekistan follow, does not require women to cover their faces or hands or to wear all-black outfits.

Unlike in the case of Uzbekistan, few expect Tajikistan’s government to ease the scrutiny of Islamic practices. “The government fears religious extremism and radicalization, believing that strict regulation of religious practices can prevent the spread of radical ideologies,” concluded Karimova, the gender expert. “However, access to Islamic education and freedom to practice one’s religion would better equip people to recognize and reject extremist narratives, whereas the suppression of religious practices can lead to feelings of marginalization and resentment.”

“I am a genuine believer and practitioner of Islam,” said Anisa, who has spent most of her time at home in Dushanbe since the announcement of the hijab ban. “Wearing a hijab isn’t a lifestyle choice for me; it’s a pillar of my life and beliefs. [The ban] has taken away my ability to be myself.”     

Hello, I’m Eilish Hart, the editor of The Beet. Thanks for taking the time to read our work! Our newsletter delivers underreported stories like this one to subscribers every Thursday. Like all of Meduza’s reporting, it’s free to read, but relies on support from readers like you. Please consider donating to our crowdfunding campaign.