Turkmenistan's ‘insecure’ mosques

During Ramadan, the forces of order are deployed in force around Islamic places of worship, where the ‘official’ imams do not tolerate any form of dissent towards President Berdymukhamedov. But the increasingly widespread ‘danger’ is the theft of shoes, which forces many worshippers to return home barefoot.

Ashgabat (AsiaNews) - With the start of the month of Ramadan, the mosques of Turkmenistan are filling up with the faithful, giving the imams the opportunity to deliver solemn sermons in support of the state leaders and their policies. At the same time, however, there are increasing reports of theft of the shoes that are left at the entrance before services.

As an anonymous resident of Ašgabat who had just left the communal prayer told the correspondents of Radio Azattlyk, ‘the imams of the capital's mosques constantly repeat that they unanimously support President Serdar Berdymukhamedov and his policies’, explaining that any intervention contrary to government policy ’ is equivalent to inciting sedition, to an attempt to destroy the peace that reigns in the country’.

Even just questioning official policies “means opposing the rulers chosen for us by Allah”, as another Muslim believer says, “they tell us that it is the same as contradicting the principles of the Islamic religion”. It is not possible to receive official comments from the official Mufti of Turkmenistan, one of the countries most closed to communication and information. In reality, the country's constitution is formally secular, and states that ‘religious organisations are separate from the state, their interference in the public affairs of the state or their use for state functions is not permitted’. In reality, representatives of the Muslim clergy, starting with the imams of Ašgabat, have for many years acted as explicit propagandists of state policy, continually praising the country's leaders during their homilies, effectively making the Islamic religion a state structure.

This year, moreover, there has been an increasingly widespread phenomenon of theft of shoes, forcing many worshippers to return home barefoot, as confirmed by law enforcement sources in the capital, who are installing more and more surveillance cameras in the entrance areas of mosques to prevent criminal ‘desecration’. In reality, even in this case, the rumours come from anonymous sources, as the Ministry of the Interior refuses to comment on the situation, and in general does not publish any statistics on criminal activity in the country.

Even outside the capital, as in the mosques of the Balkan velayat and especially in the provincial capital Turkmenbashi, unprecedented security measures are being adopted, with massive deployments of law enforcement agencies. Worshippers are only allowed into the place of worship upon presentation of special cards, with checks by metal detectors and surveillance cameras. The cards indicate the place of residence and confirmation that there are no relatives with a criminal record for at least three generations. In addition to the police, members of the security services must also be permanently present in every mosque.

Some citizens complain to the journalists of Azattlyk, considering all these measures as violations of their rights, and limitations on the freedom of religious profession. Some service collaborators talk about ‘preventing the risk of terrorist attacks’ or other ‘unforeseen extreme situations’, even if the only real risk is the theft of shoes, due to the widespread poverty in the country and certainly not due to manifestations of religious extremism.

With all the wars going on, the military explains, there may be a need to ‘evacuate the population’, keeping them ready for the possible use of chemical weapons and radioactive hazards, and the concentrations of the faithful in the mosques generate more intense attention. New air-raid sirens are even being installed near places of worship and large factories, and the technical tests for these have spread panic among the population.