On July 29, Tajikistan’s Committee on Religion, Regulation of Traditions, Celebrations, and Ceremonies told Asia-Plus, the country’s only remaining major independent media outlet, that the country has adopted no law banning beards or the hijab, and that foreign assessments of Tajik religious freedom rest on unreliable sources. The denial followed a week of Russian-language reports announcing that Dushanbe had outlawed hijabs, beards, and Arab-style dress.
The reports seem to run back to a single post. On July 27, the Uzbek site Nuz.uz reported that Tajik authorities were tightening restrictions on clothing treated as alien to Tajik culture, singling out black hijabs. The report cited unnamed local sources. Lenta.ru, Trud, RBC, Fontanka, and outlets in Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan republished the report within a day, promoting what appears to be an enforcement campaign into a new law.
Nezavisimaya Gazeta traced the wording back further, to identical posts from Instagram accounts presenting themselves as legal advisers that appeared a day before Nuz.uz, and found no Tajik-language coverage of the subject dated from 2026. Asia-Plus added that several outlets had credited the claim to Asia-Plus, which had published nothing of the kind.
