Tashkent, Uzbekistan - The growing number of officially registered religious organizations in Uzbekistan is evidence of the absence of restrictions for their operation, Bekhzod Kadyrov, the Uzbek government's expert on religion, told Interfax on Tuesday.
"The number of religious organizations is growing in Uzbekistan which shows that nothing restricts their registration, contrary to what Western experts may say," he said.
Nearly are 2,186 religious organizations representing nearly all of the world's religions and confessions have been officially registered in Uzbekistan, with Islamic and Christian religious organization constituting a significant majority of this number, he said.
"Jehovah's Witnesses, banned in many countries, to say nothing of Muslim states, operate officially in Uzbekistan, which demonstrates the level of religious freedom in the country," he said.