RELIGIOUS RADICALISM IN CENTRAL ASIA

Summary 

Islam has assumed a decisive role in Central Asia since the collapse of the Soviet system. However, the religious comeback has produced adverse effects, particularly the rise of religious radicalism. The Hanafi School, the main conventional school of Islamic interpretation in Central Asia, which greatly contributed to the Islamic underpinnings of Central Asian nomadic and settled Islamic civilization, employs a rational approach and cherishes local customs and traditions. However, the narrow, literal perceptions of Islam lack these features and render Islam a static, frozen system of teachings. Those literalist perceptions of Islam constitute the ontological and intellectual foundation of radicalism in the world, in general, and in contemporary Central Asia, in particular. 

Religious literalism flourishes in Muslim communities that lack vibrant intellectual life and dynamic religious education. Despite the decades-long systematic and forceful anti-religious campaign during Soviet rule, Central Asian Muslims consider themselves no less Muslims than others. However, the region has been seriously deprived of a formal Islamic education system and Islamic intellectual life. Consequently, at the time of independence the Central Asian Muslim community was characterized by a ubiquitously low level of Islamic education, ‘broken tradition,’ and concomitant ‘shaken identity’, all of which gave rise to distorted and radical understandings of Islam. The abrupt politicization of post-Soviet Muslims in the early 1990s led to the instrumentalization of Islam in politics, which produced disastrous results in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. 

In recent years, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan embarked on comprehensive anti-terrorist activities and adopted complex measures at the official level in fighting radical (depicted as “non-traditional”) interpretations of Islam, since the very liberal attitude of these countries towards all religious groups, which had been adopted earlier, and the lack of state support to the Muftiyat (the civil society body representing the Hanafi Muslims) led to the active penetration of radical religious groups and ideas into their societies. Despite all its merits, however, tightened control over religious organizations and ‘semi-official’ support of the conventional Hanafi interpretation of Islam – indispensable to preserve peace, stability and the future of civil society in both countries – should be considered a temporary policy. There are no substantial reasons to regard the recent policy shift in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan as a precursor to ‘assertive/combative secularism' in and establishment of a ‘state religion’, not to mention securitization of Islam.