Turkey’s help provides Kyrgyz imams vocational training

Turkey’s Humanitarian Relief Foundation says the training program provides imams with fundamental religious knowledge in Quran, Fiqh, hadith, tafsir and imamate.

Turkey’s IHH Humanitarian Relief Foundation said it co-organized a religious training program for Kyrgyz imams in cooperation with grand mufti office of Kyrgyzstan and the Central Asia Youth Foundation.

“Twenty-eight imams completed training and received their certificates in a ceremony”, IHH said in a statement on its website.

The IHH says the training program provides imams with fundamental religious knowledge in Quran, Fiqh, hadith, tafsir and imamate in a boarding center in groups of 30 people during the 45-day long training.

The 13th group of imams completed their training as part of the program that started two years ago. Certificates of the 28 imams were handed to them by Murat Ali Cumanov, grand mufti of Kyrgyzstan. Şemsettin Ünal, an official from Turkey’s religious affairs department, Kyrgyz religion council officials, Hidayet Aydar, dean of the theology faculty, and academics attended the ceremony.

The foundation distributed cloths to 100 poor students, 62 of them orphans, in the city of Arashan. Another 100 children were circumcised in Issikgol province. The children who were circumcised and their families were brought together at a meal gathering. They were lectured about the significance of circumcision in Islam.

In Kyrgyzstan, where observance of Islamic rituals was suppressed during the time of the Soviet Union, certain initiatives are underway to help teach the appropriate way of practicing Islam.

Over 3,000 imams are working in 2,500 mosques across Kyrgyzstan. None of these imams have received any kind of formal training. Imams who posses adequate religious knowledge are appointed to the post by city councils.

Kyrgyzstan gained its independence on August 31, 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed. In Kyrgyzsatn, which has a population of about five million people, Kyrgyz make 65 %, Uzbeks 14 %, Russians 12 %, Dungan 1.1 %, Uighur 1 %, Kazakh, Turks, Tajiks, Tatar, German, Korean and Ukrainians make the rest of the population.

Source:  www.worldbulletin.net, 08 May 2009