Twenty imam-khatibs have been jailed in the northern Sughd province this year for membership in the Muslim Brotherhood.

Recall, the case of six mosque imams from the northern province of Sughd, who are accused of membership in the Muslim Brotherhood, moved to a court in late May.  A court in the Bobojonghafourov district considered the case.

Besides, fifteen Muslim clerics were arrested on extremism charges in Konibodom and other districts of the northern Sughd province between January and April.

“To-date, twenty imam-khatibs from Sughd province have been jailed for membership in the Muslim Brotherhood,” a source at the Sughd law enforcement authorities told Asia-Plus Monday afternoon. 

According to him, six of them were graduates of the Islamic University of Madinah, in Saudi Arabia and they joined the Muslim Brotherhood in the late 1990s. 

Sughd now has 942 registered mosques for daily prayers, 91 Friday prayer mosques (larger facilities built for weekly Friday prayers) and 13 central cathedral mosques.  Besides, 20 non-Islamic religious associations now function in Sughd. 

The Society of the Muslim Brothers, shortened to the Muslim Brotherhood, is a transnational Sunni Islamist organization founded in Egypt by Islamic scholar and schoolteacher Hassan al-Banna in 1928.  The organization gained supporters throughout the Arab world.   The Brotherhood’s stated goal is to instill the Qur’an and Sunnah as the "sole reference point for ... ordering the life of the Muslim family, individual, community ... and state.”