As the muezzin's call to prayer sounded, Uzbek men rushed to the Khastimom mosque, rolled out prayer rugs and doffed their shoes to face Mecca and prostrate themselves before Allah.
They also faced the offices just across the street of the governmental body that sanctions Islam in the country, the Muslim Board of Uzbekistan. But for other Muslims who try to pray freely under imams operating without board approval, the penalties are severe - including lengthy jail terms, torture and even killings in custody.
Fearful of the extreme Islam that rules in their southern neighbor Afghanistan, the Uzbek government has instituted its own brand of extreme secularism. The results are sometimes just as harsh: A local human rights group estimates about 8,000 people are in jail for religious reasons in this country of 24 million.
And with the growing international opposition to the Taliban for sheltering international terrorist Osama bin Laden, fears are rising that the crackdown on religion here by Uzbek President Islam Karimov will get even harsher.
"The danger exists that Karimov will use this campaign to intensify his campaign against religious and human rights groups," said Mikhail Ardzinov, chairman of the Independent Human Rights Organization of Uzbekistan.
Piles of documents fill the tables and chairs in Ardzinov's cramped apartment that serves as his office, containing the written verdicts against those persecuted for their religious beliefs.
Ardzinov rattles off lists of those sentenced, many in groups to speed their cases through the system: 12 people in June in Tashkent accused of having received dollars among other offenses, 11 people in May alleged to be affiliated with an unregistered Islamic group, or five people in July – with the evidence against one including possession of a copy machine.
The statutes cited in the sentences are left over from Soviet times, banning opposition to the government or president. Sentences range up to 20 years against those who have never been connected of violent acts.
New York-based Human Rights Watch has called on the U.S. government to label Uzbekistan as a "country of particular concern" under the International Religious Freedom Act, meaning that closer ties would be conditional on improving the situation.
Rachel Denber, deputy director of the Europe and Central Asia division of Human Rights Watch, says the religious discrimination goes beyond those imprisoned, and that even relatives are targeted in "hate rallies" or harassed and arrested.
"This policy serves to marginalize and alienate thousands of people," she said.
There was a brief period of relaxed religious freedom just after Uzbekistan's 1991 independence from the Soviet Union, when independent imams opened mosques separate from the Muslim Board.
But by the mid-1990s, the government started viewing unaffiliated mosques as a potential source of opposition to the secular establishment and begun shutting them down. The government was nervous about religious extremism spilling over from neighboring Afghanistan and Tajikistan, which suffered a five-year civil war between the secular government and mostly Islamic opposition. One key independent Islamic group, Hizb ut-Tahrir, has called for establishing an Islamic state through peaceful means.
After unsolved murders of several policeman and government officials in December 1997, the crackdown intensified, with arrests of men even for merely wearing beards as a sign of their faith.
Decades of secular living under the Soviets have yet to wear off. In the main cities, women wear miniskirts and makeup - not veils. Vodka is the national drink, and the calls to prayer five times a day in Muslim countries are rare in Uzbek cities.
A series of bombings in 1999 in the capital, Tashkent, added further momentum to the campaign, along with fighting by the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan - a terror group connected to bin Laden. The group was blamed for the bombings.
The Sept. 11 attacks in the United States have been viewed by Karimov as a justification for his crackdown - and a chance for closer contacts with Washington by possibly playing host to American troops for retaliatory strikes on Afghanistan.
Pro-government Muslim groups have also taken the same line.
"Terrorists in Chechnya, in Uzbekistan, in the United States and in any other part of our planet are first of all criminals and the earth should burn under their feet," Mufti Abdurashid Bakhromov, head of the Muslim Spiritual Administration, said last week.
At the Khastimom mosque, those leaving prayers insist that freedom of religion exists here - if only with some limits.
"If you only pray and are not involved in any dangerous parties, it's free," said Abdugabbor, a 25-year-old pharmaceutical company worker who gave only his first name.
Those who visit human rights activist Ardzinov at his apartment receive a souvenir, a pamphlet titled "Human Rights and Democracy in Uzbekistan." The 10 pages are all blank, except for the last page that offers a pessimistic message: "To be continued."