This is a great article posted a while ago on this country and breaks down the region in a really easy to digest way:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40741068

I'm clearly very ignorant of the situation. What is the non-Muslim religion and culture that the government is trying to promote?

I think of Tajikistan as a Muslim nation, and the article itself says that the population is 98% Muslim.

I wonder if it's a hangover from its time in the Soviet bloc. This article seems to suggest so:

> As in the other former Soviet republics of Central Asia, the government of Tajikistan is fiercely secular while the people are mostly Muslim. The influence of Soviet communism on religion in the region should not be discounted, and fundamentally influences the relationship between people, their religion, and politics. In a paper published by Chatham House last November, John Heathershaw, and David W. Montgomery identify the claim that political Islam opposes the secular state as one of the six myths of post-Soviet Muslim radicalization in Central Asia. Myth or not, the worry that political Islam could challenge the establishment, persists.

https://thediplomat.com/2015/04/tajikistan-no-hajj-no-hijab-...