Protest as two mosques demolished in Tajikistan

DUSHANBE, Aug 9 (Reuters) At least two mosques have been demolished in Tajikistan and dozens of others closed down, an opposition politician said today, calling on the Central Asian state's president to stop the closures.

Officials said the mosques were in private buildings that were in danger of collapse and that other mosque closures had affected places of worship that were not registered with the authorities.

''Just in the last month and only in the capital two mosques have been pulled down and the activity of more than a hundred others has been stopped,'' Mukhiddin Kabiri, leader of the Islamic Revival Party, said.

Kabiri wrote to President Imomali Rakhmon calling for the closures and demolitions to cease.

But Shamsiddin Nuriddinov, head of the religious affairs department of the capital Dushbanbe's city hall, defended the measures.

''The demolished mosques were not only unregistered but they were also in buildings in a state that represented a threat to public safety,'' he said.

The impoverished former Soviet state fought a civil war from 1992-97 that pitted Rakhmon's Moscow-backed secular forces against an alliance of Islamists and others that ended in a power-sharing agreement.

Dushanbe, a city of about one million people in the mostly Muslim country has 57 registered mosques, Nuriddinov said. The other mosques that were closed down had failed to produce documents showing they were registered as places of worship, he said.

REUTERS GL BST2003