This is not going to work: the Islamic State recently directed its operatives in non-Muslim countries to shave their beards and not appear to be ostentatiously Islamic, so as to evade detection. A man may be forced to shave his beard or a woman forced to take off her hijab, but that doesn’t change what they’re thnking. Tajik authorities are simultaneously being repressive and inept. They are not challenging the ideology that leads to jihad violence; no one in the world seems to have the vision or courage to do that.
“To check radical Islamism, Tajikistan cops shave 13,000 men’s beards,” Times of India, January 21, 2016:
NEW DELHI: Tajikistan police is reported to have shaved nearly 13,000 men’s beards and closed more than 160 shops selling traditional Muslim clothing to check “foreign” influences.
A report by Al Jazeera on Thursday said police in the central Asian Muslim-majority country also convinced more than 1,700 women to stop wearing headscarves in measures seen as the secular leadership’s efforts to prevent influences from neighbouring Afghanistan.
Last week, Tajikistan’s parliament banned Arab-sounding names, and marriages between first cousins, otherwise allowed in Islam.
Last year, Tajikistan’s Supreme Court banned the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan – its only registered Islamic political party – following months of violence which the government blamed on radical Islam.
President Imomali Rakhmon, who has been ruling since 1994, is likely to ratify the new laws which seek to promote secularism and discourage foreign influences. Rahmon’s current term ends in 2020….
The main opposition force, the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan, failed to win any seats in parliament in the election last March and has since been outlawed by Rakhmon’s government, with its leaders accused of plotting a coup.