Crossroads Asia

Tajikistan’s Islamic Disunity on Display at Islamic Unity Conference

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Crossroads Asia

Tajikistan’s Islamic Disunity on Display at Islamic Unity Conference

Bet the between-session chatter was awkward.

Tajikistan’s Islamic Disunity on Display at Islamic Unity Conference
Credit: Eagle and Tajikistan flag via Nikita Maykov / Shutterstock.com

This week Iran hosted the 29th Islamic Unity Conference, ostensibly focusing on what the conference categorized as a crisis in the Muslim world and what to do about it. According to the Mehr news agency, the conference was attended by 600 Islamic scholars from Iran and around the world. But one attendee in particular prompted Tajikistan to summon Iran’s ambassador in Dushanbe for a talking-to.

RFE/RL’s Tajik Service reported that Hojjatollah Faghani, Iran’s ambassador to Tajikistan, was summoned so the Tajik government could express its “regret” regarding Tehran’s decision to invite the leader of the Islamic Renaissance Party (IRPT), Muhiddin Kabiri, to the Islamic Unity Conference. Kabiri has been in self-imposed exile for most of the year. His party lost its only two parliamentary seats in the March elections (which were judged unfair by Western observers) and by September the IRPT had been banned and labeled an extremist organization by the government.

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