Beginning on September 1, 2009, schoolchildren in Tajikistan will for the first time be required to take a mandatory class on Islam called Knowledge of Islam (Ma’rifati Islom). In an interview with Radio Liberty’s Tajik Service on August 18, the senior Tajik education official Mahmud Shoev said the Ministry of Education will present a textbook on the subject and train some 400 literature and history teachers to teach the class. The course will first be taken by students in the eighth grade in Tajik-language schools and will be expanded to Uzbek- and Russian-language schools in September 2010.

The new class has been added to the school curriculum following repeated orders from President Emomali Rahmon to develop a course in Islamic history which should aim at improving the knowledge of ‘mainstream’ Islam among the country’s population. Tajik authorities are seriously concerned about the growing influence of extremist and radical Islamic ideas among young people in the country, and they attribute the trend to a low level of religious education in the society. The introduction of a course on Islam in Tajik schools is, therefore, part of an effort to curb the growing influence of extremist Islam among young people in Tajikistan.

Although the introduction of the course has met broad support in the country, many political analysts and clerics criticized the Tajik Ministry of Education for not involving Islamic scholars in the development of curricula and textbooks for the course. The head of the Ministry’s secondary education department, Bibikhavo Sharofova, said on August 12 that the new course will teach schoolchildren the history of Islam and the Koran, the life of the Prophet Muhammad, and the teachings of Imam Abu Hanifa, founder of the Hanafi brand of Islam practiced by the majority of the country’s population. Meanwhile, Islamic Revival Party representative Said Umar Husayni stated that Tajikistan’s Islamic scholars were not invited to participate in the development of the textbook on the subject.

This in itself is not abnormal for a secular state where religion is separated from education. However, Tajik education authorities have repeatedly been accused of deliberately ‘misinterpreting’ Islam in schoolbooks and curricula. In a number of public appearances in December 2008, the prominent Tajik cleric and parliamentarian Hoji Akbar Turajonzoda suggested that many textbooks used in Tajik schools distort the underlying values of Islam by portraying the Prophet Muhammad as a political figure, and the religion of Islam as a product of his imagination and political opportunism. This, according to the cleric, undermines the influence of the mainstream Hanafi brand of Islam in society and leaves room for radical ideologies. The new textbook for the Knowledge of Islam course will most likely draw similar criticism.

Some analysts also criticize Tajik education authorities for not enlisting Islamic specialists to teach the class on Islam. Education officials explain their decision to rely solely on history and literature teachers as an effort to prevent religious agitation and preaching from infiltrating the country’s schools. However, the Tajik political analyst Parviz Mullojonov suggests that qualified specialists rather than retrained pedagogues should be teaching classes on Islam. According to the analyst, the Ministry of Education should recruit teachers for the new course from among graduates of Tajikistan’s Islamic University who possess advanced knowledge of the Hanafi brand of Islam. According to Mullojonov, there will be no harm if they teach the class on Islam in strict accordance with the curriculum approved by Tajik education authorities. The rector of the country’s Islamic University, Abdujalol Alizoda, said he also hopes that graduates from his university will be entrusted with teaching the Knowledge of Islam class in schools.

The recruitment of young specialists in Islam to teach the new course will also help the Ministry of Education tackle the problem of understaffing in Tajik schools. According to official figures, Tajikistan is short of over six thousand teachers in various subjects. Moreover, around 40 percent of the teachers in the country do not have higher education. The 400 teachers which the Ministry of Education promised to train by the beginning of school year is a low figure in comparison with the over 3,600 schools requiring at least one teacher in Knowledge of Islam. Thus, the Ministry of Education will have little choice but to engage graduates of the Islamic University in teaching the new class in schools. Otherwise, the new class will have little to offer students whose parents will continue sending their children to underground Islamic schools.