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
Handbook of Religion and Health "Freethought Today", a magazine published by the Freedom From Religion Foundation, wrote that the "Handbook" "reports that there are at least 1200 studies on religion and health - with the vast majority showing positive associations" and asked Are there really this many studies? What are these studies like? Well, here's one of them that qualifies by Koenig's standards... The authors reported differences between Jewish and non-Jewish Cleveland attorneys in the incidence of some index of cardiovascular disease. That's it... So that's how numbers like 1200 arise, because studies like this get included. (pp. 10-11) In the "Journal for the Scientific