Tajikistan to publish new dress ‘guidelines’ for women

Tajikistan said Wednesday it would publish a new book updating the country’s dress “guidelines” for women, tightening the secular state’s policing of women’s clothing.

Authorities in the Muslim-majority Central Asian nation maintain strict control over society, including issues affecting women and girls.

The ex-Soviet country has in recent years championed “traditional” Tajik attire, banning “clothing alien to national culture” last year, while trying to stamp out what they see as “radical Islamic cultural influences.”

Traditional dress for women usually consists of сolourful embroidered long-sleeved tunic dresses worn over loose-fitting trousers.

An official in Tajikistan’s culture ministry told AFP it had developed new “recommendations on national dress for girls and women” which would be set out in a book published in July.

“Clothing is one of the key elements of national culture, which has been left to us from our ancestors and has retained its elegance and beauty throughout the centuries,” said Khurshed Nizomi, head of the ministry’s cultural institutions and folk craft department.

The book will be free at first, and will set out what women should wear “according to age”, as well as in various settings such as at home, at the theatre or at ceremonial events, Nizomi said.

Tajikistan has published similar books outlining women’s dress codes before, but this one “is superior to previous publications in terms of the quality of printing, the choice of photographs and texts, and historical sources,” Nizomi said.

The authorities in the officially secular country that shares a long border with Afghanistan have also sought to outlaw Islamic clothing in public life.

President Emomali Rahmon, in power since 1992, has called the wearing of the Islamic hijab a “problem for society”, with authorities calling on women to “dress in the Tajik way”.

The landlocked country, which shares language and cultural ties with Afghanistan, has de-facto banned the wearing of long beards to combat “religious extremism”.

Tajikistan has intensified its crackdown on Islamist extremism since last year, when four Tajik citizens were accused of carrying out a massacre at a concert hall near Moscow.

Many Tajiks joined the Islamic State at the height of the militant group’s reach in 2015.