Religion in Tajikistan Religion in Tajikistan Islam, the predominant religion throughout Central Asia, was brought to the region by the Arabs in the 7th century. Since that time, Islam has become an integral part of Tajik culture. Tajikistan is a secular country, but the post-Soviet era has seen a marked increase in religious practice in the country. The majority of Tajikistan's Muslims adhere to the Sunni branch of Islam, and a smaller group belongs to the Shia branch of Islam. The Russian Orthodox faith is the most widely practiced of other religions, although the Russian community shrank significantly in the early 1990s. Some
Indonesian occupation of East Timor people or perhaps 80,000". The Indonesian government presented its annexation of East Timor as a matter of anticolonial unity. A 1977 booklet from the Indonesian Department of Foreign Affairs, entitled "Decolonization in East Timor", paid tribute to the "sacred right of self-determination" and recognised APODETI as the true representatives of the East Timorese majority. It claimed that Fretilin's popularity was the result of a "policy of threats, blackmail and terror". Later, Indonesian Foreign Minister Ali Alatas reiterated this position in his 2006 memoir "The Pebble in the Shoe: The Diplomatic Struggle for East Timor". The island's original division into east