Final Remarks_Central Asian Intellectuals on Islam

Studien des Zentrum Moderner Orient Herausgegeben von Ulrike Freitag

Sophie Roche (ed.)

Central Asian Intellectuals on Islam Between Scholarship, Politics and Identity

with Dina Wilkowsky and Jeanne Féaux de la Croix

Studien 32

Zentrum Moderner OrientGeisteswissenschaftliche Zentren Berlin e.V.

The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available at http://dnb.de.

Zentrum Moderner OrientGeisteswissenschaftliche Zentren Berlin e.V.Studien, edited by Ulrike Freitag

Kirchweg 3314129 BerlinTel. 030 / 80307 228 www.zmo.de

© Klaus Schwarz Verlag BerlinAll rights reservedFirst edition 2014Layout/Typesetting: ZMOCover design: Jörg Rückmann, BerlinPhoto: Memorial of Central Asian intellectuals as national heroes, Dushanbe 2010 (© Sophie Roche)

Printed in Germany

ISBN 978-3-87997-717-8

This book was printed with financial assistance of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research.

Kudaiga da zhaksy adam kerek

In memory of our dear colleague and friend

Dina WilkoWsky

(2 April 1960 – 19 January 2012)

Content

PrefaceIrina Morozova

9

Acknowledgement 19

Summary in Russian Language 23

IntroductionSophie Roche, Jeanne Féaux de la Croix Connecting Life and Work: Central Asian Intellectuals Debating Islam

27

Chapter 1Sheikh Abdsattar Haji Derbisali BiographyIslamic Civilization and Kazakhstan

535461

Chapter 2Vitaly V. NaumkinBiographyIslam in Central Asia: Religion and Politics

818290

Chapter 3Dina WilkowskyBiographyIslamic Education in Post-Soviet Kazakhstan

109110120

Chapter 4Ashirbek K. MuminovBiographyIslamic Groups in Contemporary Kazakhstan: Current Situations and Tendencies of Development

145146154

Dr. Dina Wilkowsky and the Mufti Sheikh Abdsattar Haji Derbisali (© Galina Nurtasinova)

Chapter 5Zifa-Alua AuezovaBiographyWriting a History of Kazakhs at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century: The Shezhyre (Genealogy) of Shakarim Qudaiberdiyev

197197208

Chapter 6Muhiddin KabiriBiographyThe Role of the Islamic Revival Party in the Politics of Islam in Tajikistan

227228236

Chapter 7Alikhan M. BaimenovBiographyState and Religion: Faith in the Context of Modernization

249250262

Chapter 8Elmira KöchümkulovaBiographyRe-Islamization in Post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan: A Case Study of Kyrgyz Funeral Customs

269269280

Sophie Roche Some Final Remarks

313

Glossary of Selected Terms 371

Bibliography 377

Preface

Irina Morozova

In her book, Sophie Roche endeavours to situate the professio-nal biographies of Russian and Central Asian Orientalists who were educated and bred in the times of socialism, in combina-tion with selected scholarly pieces by them, within the debates on societal contexts of academic interpretations of Islam and Islamic scholarship. In Central Asian studies’ domain, certain groups of academicians, historians and anthropologists have attempted to do this for the last twenty-five years, paralleling the revision of classical historiography and Oriental studies’ traditions in all Western schools, including the Russian / Soviet ones. Projects on Islamic education and scholarship in Central Asian republics and the Caucasus, often with a special focus on personalities active in the field, were accommodated in the fellowship programmes of international research institutions and funding foundations.

The biographies of the selected figures from the Soviet Ori-ental studies (Rus., vostokovedenie), whose lifespan extends through the late socialist, perestroika and independence peri-ods, highlight the long-term transformations of Islamic loyal-ties in Central Asian intellectuals. In the Introduction, written in co-operation with Jeanne Féaux de la Croix, Roche announ-ces her aim to represent the broad field of disputes on Islam in Soviet Central Asia to the English-speaking reader, under-lining the socio-cultural patterns and their present legacies. The author realises the distinction on the discourses on Islam and its history between the Soviet Orientalists (Rus., vosto-kovedy) working on the »foreign Orient« (Rus., zarubezhnyi Vostok), and those perusing research on the Soviet, »home«

serve as the main platforms for social interaction and public entertainment. This is still the case in most rural areas of Kyrgyzstan where, unlike in cities, there are fewer or no op-portunities for villagers to socialize and enjoy modern forms of entertainment, such as public music festivities, theatres, dance, sport competitions etc. Traditional Kyrgyz feasts and customs help to bring people and communities together by reinforcing individual, family and kinship ties and relation-ships. They have been tested and refined over many centu-ries and maintain elements of self- or local governance and civil society.37

Time, socio-economic and political conditions, the government’s religious and cultural policies and sound re-search will help to determine the course and nature of reli-gious and cultural developments in Kyrgyzstan. Today, one segment of modern Kyrgyz society strictly follows Muslim death rites, but the majority of people continue practicing mixed – Kyrgyz, Islamic and Russian / European – cultu-ral elements in their funeral customs. This hybrid nature of Kyrgyz cultural identity created the following sarcasm which the Kyrgyz say about themselves: »We are born as a Kyrgyz, we live as a Russian, but die as a Muslim« (Kïrgïz bolup tuulabïz, oruscha jashaybïz, musulmancha ölöbüz).

37 Kyrgyz Muslim clergy, together with some Kyrgyz parliament mem-bers, have been trying to adopt a special law to limit people’s expenses for life-cycle celebrations, especially for funerals and weddings. So far, this idea has not found support among the majority of people.

Some Final Remarks1

Sophie Roche

From a cultural studies (kul’turologiya) point of view, the revi-val of Islamic values in Kazakhstan is a process of self-identifi-cation, a consequence of the search for spirituality after many years of the domination of atheism. The revival process of Isla-mic traditions and values is one aspect of the revival of the cultu-ral heritage. Many intellectuals see the revival and development of religion as a solution to many social problems in Kazakhstan. According to these intellectuals, the development of a national culture is only possible if it is based on national cultural values. Foreign spiritual concepts cannot replace the traditional religion of Kazakh society. From the psychological point of view, this de-velopment creates the prerequisites for national identification, and thus the attachment to one’s culture. They propose the re-vival of Islamic values through the reconstruction of history and culture; identity and traditions leads to the restoration of the traditional way of life.

(Ashirbek Muminov, chapter 4)

1 This conclusion is the result of numerous discussions with Dina Wil-kowsky about her views on research in the Soviet Union and the West. Biographies are one of the lines of discussion at Zentrum Moderner Orient (especially within the working group »Actors in translocal space,« led by Heike Liebau). An earlier version of this manuscript was presented at the workshop »Ruptures and Linkages: Biography and History in the South,« organized by Zentrum Moderner Orient and the German Historical Institu-te London, 16–18 February 2012.

312 Central Asian Intellectuals on Islam

The hybrid nature of Kyrgyz cultural identity created the fol-lowing saying: »We are born as a Kyrgyz, we live as a Russian, but die as a Muslim« (Kïrgïz bolup tuulabïz, oruscha jashaybïz, musulmancha ölöbüz).

(Elmira Köchümkulova, chapter 8)

Introduction: Text as genre

Today no one questions that Central Asians are primarily Muslims: this identity appears to be unquestioned and do-minant. Yet this has not always been the case. There have been decades in which religious identities were questioned, denied, downplayed and persecuted. Thus, we may wonder whether the emphasis on religious identities today results from (western) researcher’s interests, from people’s lives and practices, from political conditions, or from a combi-nation of these. There is no reason to assume that Central Asian people are Muslims before they are Tajiks, Kazakhs, former Soviet citizens, men, women, Uzbek speakers, far-mers, poets, teachers, religious scholars, etc. Thus, the rea-son why Islam has become central to some and not to others demands a careful investigation. The role of the intellectu-als in re-contextualizing Central Asia internationally since the end of the Soviet Union poses the question of how and why Islam became such an important vector in scientific and political analysis. This book has approached the question through different text genres (scientific, political, autobio-graphies and biographic interviews). Through these genres we receive a nuanced insight into the ways that Islam is cur-rently being discussed among the intellectual elite of Cen-tral Asia (and Russia). This elite received its university edu-cation during the Soviet period and has been active in the transformation of their respective country since the end of the Soviet period. As such, their texts and biographies are important for a historical understanding of Central Asia.

The different text genres link discourses to authoritative biographies and provide primary material about how Islam

is discussed within the contemporary educational elite. Dis-courses are neither independent of the social world nor are they only politically dictated, but are the result of individual efforts to engage with contemporary problems, questions and opportunities. The contributors invite us to think about Islam in Central Asia as an intellectual history, as a scienti-fic subject, as cultural capital, as habitus, and as a political problem, and thus as being multi-dimensional. Hence, while politics remain an important category, this frame of analysis limits our understanding of the relevance of scholarship for shaping contemporary society.

All biographic notes engage with Islam at one point or another. However, the authors’ religious identities or rela-tion to religion are never one-dimensional, but are situated in family history, in professional training, in political con-text, and vis-à-vis the interviewer. At times Islam appears to be one of the most precious resources that one can possess for shaping the new society. However, this resource is not exclusive and instead offers itself to various interpretations and implementations. At other times Islam appears as a for-eign, dangerous power challenging national integrity.

This book contains a variety of text genres, some of which are familiar to a social science audience, others perhaps less so. Why have these contributors, despite a common education and assumingly a common ideological school, chosen such a large variety of genres to convey their res-pective messages? Genre studies suggest that culture and situations influence linguistic choices. Within academic cir-cles, self-censorship is applied to keep what is perceived as a »norm« of academic work. While globalization has pushed English academic writing as norm, this is by no means an »objective« genre. In fact, Russian-speaking scholars si-milarly apply a norm that grew during the Soviet period. Genres are fuzzy categories and it would be inappropriate to pinpoint any of the texts as »typical.« Instead, I invite the reader to engage with the different genres and enjoy the multiple possibilities of transporting ideas and informa-tion, and to reflect upon the narrative means used to con-

314 Central Asian Intellectuals on Islam Final Remarks 315

vey a message. We do, however, need to keep in mind the audience for which the texts were produced – an academic audience, interested laymen, and generally an audience not very informed about Central Asia. It is the latter that mo-tivated researchers in the west to produce countless »in-troductory works« to Central Asia, a demand that has also been met by Central Asian, highly specialized scholars.

Carolyn Miller and Amy J. Devitt have argued that »gen-res operate socially.«2 Thus, it is not only the educational career that predefines textual production, but education (whether in habitus, university education or a political train-ing) may allow for a more creative capacity to adapt genre to situations. Over time people learn situations within which they produce meaning. (Rhetoric) texts are produced in a social world that is neither fully private nor only defined by material circumstances – rather, they are products of our so-cialisation. Devitt suggests three contexts for understand-ing genre: situation, culture, and genre set. »Thus context of situation, context of culture, and context of genres all influence the actions of writers and readers, speakers and listeners, and they do it partly through genre. Each kind of context has both a material and constructed reality, for what makes them »context« is the extent to which people give them significance […] All three contexts interact, and at the nexus of that interaction lies genre.« (p. 29)

Some of the texts in this book have a clear political mes-sage. The text by Baimenov goes even further by claiming academic participation not through education but through

2 Carolyn R. Miller 1984. Genre as social action. Quarterly Journal of Speech 70(2): 151–167; Amy J. Devitt 2004. Writing genres. Illinois: Sou-thern Illinois University. Of course genre studies are a brought field which for reasons of space I cannot elaborate here. I only suggest taking genre as a way to reflect upon academic writing in post-Soviet space and in the Euro-American tradition. A good overview of Genre Studies can be found in: Daniel Chandler 1997 »An Introduction to Genre Theory« http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/intgenre/intgenre.html [last accessed 26 March 2013].

descent and political status.3 The role of Islam in these texts is sometimes a »problem« in a classic orientalist way, but also a resource and promise, both a cultural capital and habitus. This may be one of the specificities of intellectual discourse in post-Soviet Central Asia, namely the plurality that Islam adopts in texts whether these are interviews, aca-demic texts, sermons, or political talks. An interesting op-position seems to exist between biographies and the texts in this book: The biographies seem to have been shaped by external guidance, individual chance and capacity and fami-ly background; they develop smoothly and radical moments are relativized within the life narrative.

The biographic narratives in this book (whether short in-terviews or autobiographies), in contrast to the academic texts, seem less radical. Careers are shaped by possibilities, individual capacities, chances and hazards, political con-texts, and many other factors, yet, as a rule they are linear narrations emphasising success. In this, they fundamentally differ from religious life narratives that bear the moment of conversion. One can observe a tendency to omit discon-tinuities in career narratives in order to construct a linear apposition of information and experiences.4 Generally, the interviews have been conducted to understand the educa-tional strategies of the authors and their relation to Oriental Studies and Islam. While most do provide information of this nature, the majority provide little reflection about these stra-tegies, their education, and the private and political context.

3 Baimenov’s participation in the book may be contested, yet he is an example of how non-specialists managed to enter debates by claiming poli-tical status and popular knowledge. He is not an exception but has at least one famous predecessor: Liutsian Klimovich. See Michael Kemper 2009. The Soviet discourse on the origin and class character of Islam, 1923–1933. Welt des Islam 49: 1–48.4 This does not apply to all academic disciplines and professions, com-pared for instance to economic studies that emphasize radical breaks and risk as biographic virtue.


Things appear differently in the texts that clearly judge the Soviet period – which is seen as having interrupted the flow of history in Central Asia, or Muslim activists – who appear as either liberating or dangerous to the region. Why are the texts more radical than the career narratives? (See for instance, Baimenov’s descriptions of the Soviet period as »cultural genocide« p. 252). Academic and political texts are a product of time, a direct response to either acqui-red knowledge (manuscripts etc.) and / or experiences. The texts, as a production of specific situations, message and times, are more radical in their formulation, either in how they accept certain structures (e.g., classificatory systems) and representations of the region (e.g., legal-illegal or unit-ed civilization of Islam) or in their political message. This calls for a reflection of how we, as readers, expect academic texts to be narrated, and why the contributors have chosen a specific form to convey their message, since genre lies between the textual and the contextual, Miller and Devitt emphasize. With this in mind, we will now turn to the con-tent of texts.

An interesting genre example has been provided by Der-bisali (chapter 1). While his text is highly academic in con-tent, the form of the text has been »sanctified« through various formulations. Obviously this text was not intended for a German academic audience, but rather for a Kazakh or, more generally, a »Muslim« public with a religious con-sciousness. Derbisali’s efforts to use his knowledge gained through historical-archaeological research in Kazakhstan to contextualize Kazakhstan within the »Islamic world« and »Islamic culture« – both terms that he uses – is a new text genre that transgresses the border between secular science and theology. This is a very specific text genre made possible because of the fluidity between his position as academic, politician, and religious authority, as well as an attempt to place Kazakhstan within a new world order in which Islam is considered one of the main providers of »civilization.« »Truth« and »facts« are merged in a challen-ging text that goes far beyond the many pamphlets that one

finds all over Central Asia.5 His text is probably one of the most complex examples in a newly emerged hagiographic tradition in which descendants of local saints inscribe their territory into a religious landscape.6

The following analysis is divided into three larger sec-tions as a result of the book’s structure: First, the biogra-phic narratives, second, the texts and, third, some theoreti-cal reflections. I will start by addressing some of the themes that have been suggested by the authors in the biographic narratives, and move on to a more general discussion about Islam in Central Asia based on the texts and biographies in the second and third sections. The final remarks are meant to invite the reader to engage with the contributions in a comparative manner, yet they are nothing more than sug-gestions and by no means represent the final word on the subject.

5 For information about the little pamphlets sold in front of the mosques, see Adeeb Khalid 2007, p. 136. For a translation of texts see Allen J. Frank 2007. 6 Stéphane Dudoignon presented a study about the appearance of the Khujand-noma, a religious history and guide to the main Islamic sanctuaries of Khujand, where he argues that the book serves to vitalize neighbour-hood memories, sanctify human community on the local level, and re-centre Khujand on the spiritual map, employing genealogies and local religious history. Dudoignon sees the resulting localized understanding of religious identity in the continuity of the Soviet discourse on kraevedenie, which identified local history as an amalgamation of local events, while larger geographical connections are either ignored or re-centred on their locally significant aspects. Such local and regional religious histories, he argues, were common in the 1990s all over Tajikistan, documenting a general inte-rest for local religious literature in the 1990s as part of what he calls local political »autonomization«. From Stéphane A. Dudoignon 2004. Local lore, the transmission of learning, and communal identity in late 20th-century Tajikistan: The Khujand-nāma of ‘Ārifjān Yahyāzād Khujandī. In idem (ed), Devout societies versus impious states? Berlin, pp. 213–242.


I. (Auto)biographic presentations of experts on Islam

The editors of Ab Imperio, in the thematic journal on »Nar-rating the Multiple Self: New Biographies for the Empire« (1 / 2009), suggest using empire as a »context-setting cate-gory« with a special space for biographical reconstruction. This makes it possible to recognize the diversity of imperial space; the editors claim that utilising biographies helps to explore a more diverse picture of the imperial condition. Biographies »are about how imperial heterogeneity and the multifaceted nature of individual experience in empire created conditions for a conscious construction of one’s identity. In this sense, empire becomes a milieu that stimu-lates the formation of a modern subjectivity characterized by self- reflection and social constructivism. No doubt, em-pire equally limits this constructivism.« (p.20)

This approach may be helpful for reflecting on the auto-biographies of those contributors who were educated du-ring the Soviet period and thus experienced both the end of that period and a new epoch. This new epoch should, howe-ver, not be understood as a radical rupture at all levels and to all people. The perception of what the end of the Soviet period meant to individuals, groups or nation-states is far from homogenous and has also changed over the last two decades. To recognize the researchers’ individual paths is also to acknowledge the »multifaceted nature of individual experience« within the Soviet setting. Thus, the claim of Dina Wilkowsky that »Sovietization was not simply a »top-down« process, but that it provided considerable scope for local initiatives,«7 has been shared by other authors, notab-ly V. Naumkin. Individual careers may be shaped by perso-nal family motivation, individual talent, and (unexpected) political events. The personalities that turned to politics and became respected authorities in the newly independent

7 Dina Wilkowsky 2001. Unpublished paper. Presented at ZMO on 19 May 2011.

countries did not begin by replacing their »Soviet« identi-ty with their respective »national« identity. Instead, they engaged in critical (self-)reflection and socio-political dis-cussions long before. To be able to move between different political settings, individual experiences, and knowledge production, I believe that it is useful to consider the Soviet Union as a context-setting category.

It is not very helpful to think of the USSR as a monolithic block and its people as subjects of state doctrines. Instead, if we trace individual biographies we not only identify various political periods, but also how far the state milieu was able to stimulate subjectivity. The role of the family in providing alternative narratives, supporting political ideology or, most often, simply ignoring much political engagement has not been fully explored. In fact, we find various orientalists who received their linguistic foundation from their relatives, and who after independence made use of this genealogical cul-tural capital in their political engagement. In the following I suggest engaging with the biographies of the authors in their plurality as witnesses of history. I am very thankful that these authors have provided younger generations with a glimpse of Central Asia through their individual and per-sonal accounts. In this way they have contributed to a more nuanced and intimate view of life in a different period.

Genealogy as a cultural capital

History is not a process that only takes place outside the self: history is made in families, in politics, in everyday ex-periences. Some of the authors’ biographies exemplify to what degree the state’s milieu shaped family history and how family life influenced and shaped social and political participation. The family, which is one of the central insti-tution in which culture is produced, became a resource for many of the authors from Central Asia. Elmira Köchümku-lova, for instance, speaks of culture as a personal experi-ence in childhood. Her text and autobiography is a fascinat-


ing journey into her family history. The university director chose to send her to study as one of the first students in the United States in 1994 not only because she was a good student, but most importantly because she was considered best among the students to represent Kyrgyz culture abroad (at the time she was already an artist playing the Komuz and singing traditional songs). She had a cultural mission when she left for further study, and thus she told people in Seattle about Kyrgyzstan, a world that had been closed to the west. Köchümkulova’s cultural capital was her authen-tic nomadic childhood paired with a solid modern education through which she was able to translate her experiences into scientific work.8

Similarly, Zifa Auezova describes her career as a mission:

The thing is that in our family I was supposed to be the third person, the third generation, who turned to the Oriental Studies to Russian Oriental Studies actually, well because my father he graduated from Moscow Institute of Oriental Studies. (See the full context of the quote chapter 5, p. 198)

Zifa Auezova was advised to take up Oriental Studies by her family. She certainly profited from being a member of one of the leading intellectual families of Kazakhstan, but also felt the responsibility of her family history. Her bio-graphy and the text she provides engage with a genealo-gy of intellectual history. She uses this method to engage with a controversial past and a search for her own and her country’s past. As a descendant of Mukhtar Auezov, she is often confronted with a central figure of Kazakh intellectu-

8 Education was one of the most prestigious social capital that an indivi-dual could attain. Indeed, the content of education was not thought of as ideological indoctrination, but more or less neutral knowledge acquisition. Hence, religious authorities would support education as a way of accumula-ting knowledge as a matter of prestige and social capital, not because they wanted their children to be dedicated Marxists.

al history and the political judgement of the Soviet Union. What trauma could the life of a relative bequeath to its de-scendants? And how do people deal with such a past today? The biography of Mukhtar Auezov has been published and made available to the public by Muminov, yet, he is only one of many important authorities who formulated alternative narratives to the Soviet doctrine. Zifa-Alua Auezova men-tions Shakarim as another such authority, particularly the contradiction in his life: on the one hand, Russia offered a new sphere of intellectual engagement and sources of edu-cation, on the other hand, they increasingly dominated the people who thought they had found new ground. Eventu-ally any local intellectual history was brought into line with the dominant Soviet narrative, to the degree that students knew more about Hegel, Goethe and Russian history than they did about Kazakh history and philosophers.

Muhiddin Kabiri and Alikhan Baimenov both received their first religious education at home and emphasize that their religious education was a form of cultural capital; their families both had religious books and members who were religious authorities. Baimenov puts great emphasis on his father, who was a local religious authority and hero who perpetuated his cultural and religious values during Soviet repression. Baimenov’s autobiographic description of his father provides us with a glimpse of the many dif-ficulties that people experienced if they wanted to legally open a mosque in the 1970s and 1980s. Although Alikhan Baimenov’s political party (Ak Jol) had no religious agenda, he used his cultural capital to create trust with ordinary people.

In his biographic interview, Muhiddin Kabiri tells how his cultural capital – he learned Arabic and Persian before his fa-ther and elder brother – helped him to enter one of the most challenging faculties at the State University of Dushanbe: Oriental Studies. At the same time, he does not present his biography as exceptional, but rather modestly, as a result of his individual ambitions. »One can say that I gained maturi-ty like any other citizen in my age during the Soviet Union.


However, we did talk about Islam and read Islamic books at home.« (For the full context of this quote consult chapter 6, p. 228). His good command of Arabic and Persian helped him to soon become one of the best students.

Several of the contributors received linguistic training (in Arabic and / or Persian) in their childhood through re-latives and were able to use this cultural capital to enter university and engage in a scientific or political career. Hence, Soviet sciences profited from the knowledge that continued to be cultivated within families and passed inter-generationally. What is known as the politics of koreniza-tsiya (indigenization) is more than only the integration of local people into politics and sciences. The examples show that Soviet science directly profited from education within families, while simultaneously officially rejecting religious education. This was possible because the families would va-lue education over politics. In other words, the family would encourage education even if they disagreed with politics.

With perestroika, cultural capital received political weight and became a political resource. The move of several of the authors (e.g., Derbisali, Kabiri, Baimenov) into politics is described as a continuation of social engagement. A solid education paired with cultural capital makes the authors es-pecially suitable to help shape a new society, it seems.

Some of the authors display a remarkable, detailed knowledge of their family history (e.g., Auezova, Baimenov, Köchümkulova) which they use to situate themselves within the contemporary nation. Many of the authors grew up in educated families and local elite families who were eager to pass family memories onto their children. It is known among anthropologists that religious and elite families tend to cultivate family memories much more than farmers or workers. Scientists are even more able to engage with their own biography to present a rather reflective version of their life.

Some of the family histories are more than individual accounts, however, as they appear representative for the suffering of a people vis-à-vis a system. Hence, it is less in-

dividual rehabilitation that matters than the reconstruction of a collective identity and historical continuity to reconcile with the past. In the accounts by Baimenov and Auezova, the family history is also the history of »the Kazakh« to a certain degree, and Kabiri describes himself as being exemplary of a collective history. Here, the end of the Soviet Union is ex-perienced as a way to negotiate past power structures, and thus redresses an unequal hierarchy (the Russian centre and the Central Asian periphery). The revival of a historical memory helps to recentre history onto the new indepen-dent nations. This is not an abstract imagination or arbi-trary construction (at least in most cases), but a personal experience in which the family, with its dissident members, be comes rehabilitated and assumes its place in the indepen-dent nation state.

Disruption and continuity

The idea that the Soviet period was filled with suffering, restriction, deprivation and lack of societal engagement has shaped the idea that its collapse must have been a break in people’s biography, a marker in families, and brought with it a general experience of liberalization. Twenty years later the picture is much more differentiated. The economic col-lapse led to difficulties in all the newly independent coun-tries and affected large parts of the population. While some groups managed the economic transitions more or less suc-cessfully, many others experienced a re-evaluation of their profession, sometimes with a painful loss of financial re-sources. Researchers and teachers were among the social groups that experienced the hardest cuts to their financial security.

If we speak about possible change and disruption in Cen-tral Asia we have to go back at least to the 1980s. Gor-bachev’s perestroika unleashed an enthusiastic engage-ment with Islam on all levels. While in Central Asian villages this turned into a mushrooming of mosques, in universities,


scholars discovered new material and chose new topics. Young people, especially students, founded movements to discuss national ideas and religious identities, such as for instance the Kazak students in 1986 (chapter 7, p. 258), and the Tajik youth groups in 1990 (chapter 6, p. 229). Political breaks are fast, punctual, and irreversible, yet it takes more than half a generation for these changes to be fully mentally processed, as Aleida Assmann9 reminds us. The end of the Soviet Union, however, was not unexpected and sudden to everybody; many of the authors in this book were among the intellectual elite that participated in its deconstruction, thereby paving the way for new concepts of nation. These authors’ autobiographies reveal little the abrupt end of the Soviet Union and speak more of a process of change. For some this process of change started with political activities in the 1980s, while for others it was the physical experience of travelling outside the Soviet Union to Britain, Germany, or the US that marked a turn in their biography.

Each of the authors in this volume shaped the end of the Soviet period differently. There is no general pattern of how they lived as researchers. Vitaly Naumkin, for example, was a co-chair of the Russian-American Regional Conflicts Task Force of the Dartmouth conference since 1984. In this position he participated in a dialogue with the USA that began in 1960 and that paved the geopolitical path to a peaceful transition. The Dartmouth conference conti-nued to exist after the end of the cold war, but it turned to conflicts that resulted from the collapse of the Soviet Union,

9 Assmann writes: »Politische Akte […] sind schnell, punktuell und irre-versibel vollzogen, während mentale Einstellungen und soziales Verhalten in ihrem Wandel schwerfälliger sind und vielleicht länger anhalten als eine halbe Generation.» (Aleida Assmann 1999. Zeit und Tradition. Kulturel-le Strategien der Dauer. Köln, p.13.) [Political acts […] are fast, ad hoc [focus around specific dates] and irreversible, whereas mental attitudes and social behaviour change only slowly and may last for more than half a generation].

such as the Tajik civil war of the 1990s and more recently the Ngorno-Karabach conflict in the Caucasus.

For Baimenov, changes began with his involvement in student activities, and a growing consciousness of an ethnic identity and national history. The Kazakh student revolt in 1986 marked the beginning of his political career, which drew from his father’s popularity and resistance to Soviet politics. Although Baimenov has not become a religious fi-gure, he profits from his family’s cultural capital. Kabiri has been similarly active. Soon after he began pursuing Orien-tal Studies, he found an underground students’ circle where they read religious literature and discussed political issues. In 1987 he was elected leader of the Young Muslims Group and met Said Abdullo Nuri, who was leading a Youth Group established in the 1970s (which later became the Islamic Rebirth Party Tajikistan).

How did the authors experience the official declaration of the end of the Soviet Union in December 1991? Most authors indicate that the end was not unexpected, but that its official declaration has remained in their memory, whe-ther positive of not. Muhiddin Kabiri, for instance, was in Yemen when the Soviet Union ended. He and a Yemenit friend watch ed the Soviet Union’s official end on television, and while his friend experienced it as an emotional disrupti-on, Kabiri explains »for me it was something normal, it was nothing special.« He rejects the idea that the end of the So-viet Union left a deep mark on his biography. Similarly, Bai-menov describes the end as a necessary step that politically active youth had themselves prepared.

Zifa Auezova’s view is more controversial; she believes that the end of the Soviet Union had an effect on her feelings of belonging.

Of course, it is a huge difference. Just physically being not in the Soviet Union, it was already a big difference because when this happened, when the official declaration or announcement of the collapse of the Soviet Union took place, I was already in Great Britain; […] Maybe more important for me was the possibility to


spend a whole year in Oxford […] Maybe this was the impetus for me. (For the full context see chapter 5, p. 201)

Similarly, Dina Wilkowsky and Elmira Köchümkulova em-phasized their travel beyond the border of the (hereafter »former«) Soviet Union as a central event in their biography.

Dina Wilkowsky’s biography is a case in point. She radi-cally broke with her career in Kazakhstan in the 2000s de-spite her success; she was the chair of Oriental Languages in the newly established Faculty for International Relations, which would train diplomats. Still, she left Kazakhstan to start anew in Germany. Why did she break so radically? From her family members we have learned that to her, the Soviet world had already broken apart in the 1980s. Was she looking for something new, something different that would provide meaning to her scientific research? Many resear-chers in »the west« were rather critical towards scholarly works from the former Soviet Union. The different metho-dological approaches needed a translation, Dietrich Reetz explained, since both sides had difficulty understanding the other’s approaches.10

Both worlds, the east and the west, met in the restructur-ing of Berlin’s universities, a process that was painful to many colleagues from the former GDR. Dina Wilkowksy ex-perienced this negotiation first hand.11 She wondered about

10 Dietrich Reetz is a senior researcher working at ZMO who has docu-mented academic discussions at universities in the former GDR. See for instance, Dietrich Reetz 1991. Die Entwicklung und Stand der Asienwis-senschaften in der DDR. Asien. Deutsche Zeitschrift für Politik, Wirtschaft und Kultur 38: 75–87.11 Perhaps the most important difference was in methodology, not in con-tent. In numerous conversations, Dina Wilkowsky told me that the system in Germany was difficult to understand, people were classified by »quantity« (number of articles and books) and by »fashion« themes – somehow science had lost its reason for being, namely to engage with wider questions, at various levels (politics, scholarly debates, common articles, etc.). Further, Wilkowsky often wondered about the »narrowness« of the research ques-tions in the west that were little suitable to explain society’s development.

the way the end of the Soviet Union was celebrated in the west, while for her it was merely a political change that however did not devalue the past. How should researchers of the generation of change deal with this tension? How could a bridge be built between both scientific worlds?

While the travels described above have marked the res-pective authors’ biographies, it is not mobility as such that was new. Soviet researchers (especially those in Russia) en-joyed great mobility and a vibrant scientific life far beyond the Soviet borders (to Arab countries, for instance). Today it is cheaper to fly to London than within Russia (See for instance, the biography of Dina Wilkowsky, chapter 3), to say nothing of Central Asia, Naumkin explains. As a result, scholars may know subjects and researchers from any U.S. university, but have no idea about the university activities in neighbouring cities. The network that was cultivated during the USSR and that stretched far beyond the Soviet Union has collapsed to a large extent and forced many young re-searchers to turn to where the money comes from.

To conclude, rather than looking for disruptions in the biographies, we suggest looking at processes and self-repre-sentations. The density of descriptions in the authors’ auto-biographies may hint at the processes that have prepared the punctual and irreversible political event and led to its full implementation at all levels during the following years. Shifts in biographies that led a person to reorient may have come through travel across borders, through engaging with new scholarly traditions, or through re-discovering one’s family, national, ethnic, or religious history. These personal experiences contribute to the political dynamics that ap-pear less sudden to the intellectual elite but nevertheless leave irreversible marks on biographies.


II. Islam – classifications, institutions, discourses and authorities

The order of things

Several of the authors in this book have organized religious movements and groups in a meticulous manner. The under-lying order of these texts is shaped by a politically moti-vated view about religion, namely that there are official historically rooted forms that can be controlled by state institutions as opposed to unofficial, imported, foreign, and even dangerous forms of religious activities (whether poli-tical, ritual, or cultural) that can be detected, named and classified.

The historians Herren, Rüesch and Sibille12 have argued that regimes tend to create orders and categories in the ana-lysis of history. Such an »order of things« creates hierarchies of relevant topics that support the development of a natio-nal agenda. Thus, the effort to order the various religious movements, texts and authorities is not only a legacy of the Soviet period, but a general way nations think about history. The categories themselves have their origin in Soviet Ori-ental Studies and Soviet politics of religion. Below I explain these categories more thoroughly.

One of the strongest concepts that has been inherited from the Soviet period’s approach to religion is the notion of official and unofficial Islam, legal and illegal mosques, legal and underground mullahs, etc. These notions sug-gest that Islam during the Soviet period13 had two opposing faces: on the one hand was an official structure, a top-down organisation through which the state and local authorities

12 Madeleine Herren, Martin Rüesch and Christiane Sibille 2012. Trans-cultural history. Theories, methods, sources. Heidelberg et al.: Springer.13 In the introduction we provided some relevant literature about the way Islam came to be situated within the Marxist-Leninist doctrine and the role that Oriental Studies played in this process.

communicated, thereby allowing a selected amount of Mus-lims to study Islam in legally recognized institutions (the SADUM14). On the other hand, religious activities carried out by ordinary people, by religious families, etc. would be classified as illegal, clandestine, unofficial, etc. While these classifications were a useful tool for politics, these notions have been criticized for ignoring the many shades in which »unofficial activities« were tolerated and accepted by the political leadership.15 So-called official mullahs were active in »illegal« activities reproducing a network of religious scholars independent of these classifications.16

Yet although these categories may not reflect the reality, they were established based on a concept of the modern secular state. Such a state would rationally regulate (top-down) religious practices, many identified as »remnants of the past« (perezhitki). A modern state, according to this view, is one that regulates religious practice based on ra-tional considerations. In other words, a modern state also controls legal categories of religious activities even if in practice, these categories are arbitrary.17

Against the background of these assumptions we can un-derstand why the categories of official-unofficial, legal-ille-gal are still applied not only by researchers but first of all

14 Dukhovnoe Upravlenie Musul’man Credney Asii i Kazakhstana (Spi-ritual Administration of Muslims of Central Asia and Kazakhstan) usually referred to as the SADUM.15 Devin DeWeese 2011. Survival strategies. Reflection on the notion of religious »survivals« in Soviet ethnographic studies of Muslim religious life in Central Asia. In F. Mühlfried and S. Sokolovskiy (eds.), Exploring the edge of empire. Zürich, Berlin: Lit, pp. 35–58; Paolo Sartori 2010. Towards a history of the Muslims’ Soviet Union. A view from Central Asia. Die Welt des Islams 50: 315–334. 16 Stéphane A. Dudoignon. 2011. From revival to mutation: the religious personnel of Islam in Tajikistan, from de-Stalinization to independence (1955–91). Central Asian Survey 30(1): 53–80.17 For an example of this perspective, see the interview of Serguie Gle-bov with Clifford Geertz »Interview with Clifford Geertz: Islam, modernity, nationalism« Ab Imperio 2004 / 3.


by the current regimes in place. This not only gives security staff an arbitrary tool to arrest people (as the border be-tween these categories are never clearly defined),18 but also allows the state to constantly redefine content and cooperate with religious authorities.19 Hence, these categories provide a language for official communication on Islam and Muslims in the region. We may call these »translation terms« that operate between the researcher’s intimate experience, the researcher community, and the politician’s interest.20 Thus, many of the authors continue to use these categories.

18 The number of people who were arrested either because they held a leaflet about an »illegal« group or because a detention had to be legally justified was large, and often discussed in independent media such as Ra-dio Free Europe’s local branches, the BBC, Eurasianet, Ferghana.ru, and many local media outlets. 19 For instance, the Tajik regime cooperated with the Salafi in 2008, only to classify them as an »illegal« movement shortly thereafter. 20 If researchers use this category they may do so for analytical purposes but this does not mean that they are unaware of the many links. An example here is the book by Dina Wilkowsky 2009. The book is the only work that provides real insight into the complex economic and social relations bet-ween Arab organisations in Kazakhstan. While the main text follows classic ways of representing knowledge in Soviet categories of analysis, the foot-notes provide rich material and detailed descriptions that make the book a unique text. See also P. Sartori’s observation: »Muslimness might also be concealed behind strategies of accommodation, mimicry and resilience: it is sometimes possible to learn more about the cultural background of a scholar at the Soviet Academy of Sciences and the profound knowledge of Islam they received from their family) from the notes they left in the mar-gins of the manuscripts they read than in direct conversation.« See also the footnote to the previous quote: »The people I have in mind are the Muslim intellectuals who survived Stalinist-era arrests and deportation to Siberia, were rehabilitated in the 1960s and found jobs at the Institute of Oriental Studies.« (Paolo Sartori 2010, p. 323).

The SADUM in and after perestroika

Let us now take a look at what the authors understand to be »official Islam«. First of all this refers to legal institutions such as the SADUM (Spiritual Board of Muslims of Central Asia and Kazakhstan).21 While some considered this body to be a close partner of Soviet government, other voices emphasized the internal discussion among religious autho-rities in Central Asia. Interestingly, though the SADUM is the official institution of Muslims in Central Asia, it is also the source of the narrative about »radical Islam« in Cen-tral Asia.22 This master narrative of a »radical Islam« starts with Sa‘id ibn Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahid ibn ‘Ali al-‘Asali al-Tarablusi al-Shami al-Dimashqi, also known as Shami- domulla, who initiated the Ahl al-Hadith, a group propaga-ting a return to the original sources of Islam, the Qur’an and the hadiths in the 1920s.23 Members of this group, Ishan

21 The SADUM was installed in 1943, and its role was to train a small num-ber of religious authorities and respond to political demands (for instance, to find legal proof in sharia law for political rules, or adapt religious feasts to Soviet labour demands, Paolo Sartori 2010). These »official« clergy were opposed to the »unofficial« clergy that acted outside this state structure. From the 1970s onwards some young mullahs (who were referred to as Wahhabis) were blamed for politicizing Islam and challenging the non-po-litical official clergy (see for instance, Vitaly V. Naumkin 2005. This way the opposition between a non-political state Islam (structured through state controlled authorities) against an oppositional political Islam (various reli-gious movements subsumed under Wahhabis) became a discourse that have shaped much of the political and scientific discourse since independence. However, the SADUM is not a new invention – a similar institution, the Oren-burg Muslim Spiritual Assembly, was initiated by Catherine II in 1788.22 Sebastien Peyrouse 2007. The rise of political Islam in Soviet Central Asia. In H. Fradkin, H. Haqqani and E. Brown (eds.), Current trends in Islamists ideology. Washington, D.C.: Hudson Institute, pp. 40–45; Ludmila Polonskaya and Alexei Malashenko 1994; Alexei Malashenko 2006. Islam, the way we see it. Russia in Global Affairs 4, 12 October 2006. http://eng.globalaffairs.ru/print/number/n_7325 [last accessed November 2012].23 Chapters 2 and 4 provide some insights about this narrative and Shami-domulla, who is not a native but came via China, »importing« his Salafi or


Babakhan and his son Ziyauddin Babakhan came to lead the SADUM until perestroika.24

During the Soviet time the SADUM was located in Tash-kent, Uzbekistan, and maintained two officially recognized institutions for learning Islam: In Bukhara (Madrasa Mir-Arab) and the Tashkent Islamic Institute »Imam Bukhari«. Many people went through this educational system but it produced no coherent political group. Instead, dur-ing perestroika Muslim authorities were among the first to call for national politics, while the Soviet apparatchiki were skeptical about this Muslim-national combination. As Muhiddin Kabiri mentioned in the biographic interview, the Islamic Rebirth Party Tajikistan, along with the political party Rastokhez were leading the discourse of nationalizing Tajikistan. Only later did the government appropriate the ethno-national narrative as its own.25 Consequently, with in-dependence the relation between religious authorities and the ruling elite had to be re-negotiated. The leaders, Irina Morozova has argued, needed to strengthen their position

Wahhabi views. Usually the Ahl Al-Hadith group is opposed to Hanafi ma-dhab for being more tolerant towards traditions. Although this distinction has been criticized, the master narrative that situates radical Islam as an import to Central Asia has been well established. Bakhtiyar M. Babadja-nov 2001. O fetvakh SADUM protiv »neislamskikh obychayev« [About the fatwas of the SADUM against non-Islamic customs]. In A.Malashenko and M.B. Olcott (eds.), Islam na postsovetskom prostranstve: vzglyad iznutri [Islam in post-Soviet space: A view from within]. Moscow, pp. 170–184; Ashirbek K. Muminov 2005. Chami-damulla et son rôle dans la constitution d’un »Islam soviétiques«. In M. Laruelle and S. Peyrouse (eds.), Islam et po-litique en ex-URSS (Russie d’Europe et Asie centrale). Paris: l’Harmattan, pp. 241–261.24 See V. Naumkin, chapter 2: »On the basis of his fatwas, some analysts consider Mufti Ziyauddin Babakhanov ›the first fundamentalist‹ in Central Asia.«. For more examples see p. 86.25 Over the last two decades we have seen different efforts by the au-thorities to make culture a political tool. In this way the new regimes have tried to shape the »new citizen« as a cultural subordinate (for Tajikistan see Sophie Roche and Sophie Hohmann 2011. Wedding rituals and the struggle over national identities. Central Asian Survey 30(1): 113–128.

within their respective republics and establish legitimacy by re-defining their relation to religious groups.26

With perestroika, publicly performed religious activities developed very dynamically. In June 1990 the Party of Isla-mic Rebirth of the Soviet Union was founded in Astrakhan. This party claimed to be a religious as well as a political organization uniting Muslims who were willing to actively disseminate Islam.27 The party was denied registration in most Central Asian republics and eventually registered in a Moscow district. They did not last as a Soviet Union-wide organization, and instead broke into national sections. Sus-pecting that the all-Union organization followed pan-Turkic ambitions, the Tajik section soon split and became an im-portant political force and cultural motor within Tajikistan in the years to come. The IRP Tajikistan was calling for a return to the ethnic identity to which Islam was inherent. By doing so, they opposed the state’s claim of subordinating Islam to state administration, thus denying religion an active role in shaping the country’s political future. It is in fact frightening how persistent the classifications of religious movements have been throughout the last 20 years. Despite the IRP’s efforts to integrate into a democratic government, they have never ceased to be confronted with suspicion and continue to be accused of a hidden »radical Islamizing agenda.«

Things were different in the other republics: In Kazakh-stan the struggle over the official integration of Islam was solved by the first party secretary Nursultan Nazarbayev, who established a Muftiat, which is an institution similar to the SADUM, the DUMK or SAMK.28 This institution was

26 Irina Morozova 2011. Islam and politics of late socialism in Central Asia. Leidschrift 26(2): 77–94. 27 Bakhtiyor Babadjanov 2004. Islam et activisme politique. Le cas Ouz-bek. Annales. Histoire, Science Sociales 5–6, EHESS; Polanskaya and Ma-lashenko 1994. Islam in Central Asia.28 See Glossary of selected terms for explanations.


to oversee religious education, the building of institutions (mosques and madrasas) and maintain good relations with the ruling party, most significantly with the then-president Nazarbayev. A view from one of the most recent leading Mufti, Sheikh Abdsattar Haji Derbisali, is provided in chapter 1.

Uzbekistan inherited the Central Asian SADUM, whose po-wer had considerably declined by the end of the 1990s. Fol-lowing Martha Brill Olcott’s report from 2007,29 Muhammad-Sodiq Muhammad-Yusuf, who was Mufti (1989– 1993) when Uzbekistan gained its independence, worked as a translator for the Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev and used his influence to promote his particular idea of Islam. This idea of a united Islam was later reinforced during his exile in Arab countries for seven years.30 Muhammad-Sodiq follows the goal of many contemporary movements, name-ly that of a unification and cultural adaptation of Muslims world wide (Olcott p. 26). In Uzbekistan in 2000, he placed supporters in the government and – perhaps significant for this book – »The groups of believers who support neo-Islamists in Uzbekistan include the young generation of graduates of Higher Islamic Institution in Tashkent and the Tashkent State Institute of Oriental Studies« (p. 27).31 While on the one hand, he condemns local groups whether these are Hizb al-Tahrir al-Islomi or Akramiya, he also continues to maintain his independence from state authority and ac-tively promotes his view.

The Spiritual Administration of Uzbekistan did not ac-commodate all rival groups (Sufi groups and other groups)

29 Martha B. Olcott 2007. A face of Islam. Muhammad-Sodiq Muhammad-Yusuf. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Available at http://carne-gieendowment.org/files/cp_82_olcott2_final.pdf [accessed November 2012].30 He headed the SADUM from 1989 to 1993.31 While one may criticize the terminology Olcott uses, e.g., »neo-Isla-mists«, her account feeds well into a wider logic of Arabists (Orientalists) being specialists in Islam and transgressing the three sectors of politics, academy and religious authority.

that emerged during perestroika and independence. 32 Yet the religious discourse and rivalries within Uzbekistan hap-pened without much public expression, and hence elude the author’s capacity to comment on them.33

In Kyrgyzstan the SAMK was established in 1993 and had similar responsibilities as the Kazakh pendant, namely to oversee religious activities and institutions whether they were mosques, madrasas or Islamic organizations. The Muf-ti heading the SAMK was elected by a circle of 30 ulamas. At the same time, the State Agency for Religious Affairs (SARA) that operates within governmental structures sets the line for a general politics of religion.34 This double institution also exists in Tajikistan and can be considered a tool that keeps close control over the ulamas whether they act as Muftiat (Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan) or as Shuroi Olii Ul-amoi Tojikiston (The High Council of Ulama),35 subordinat-ed to the State Committee for Religious Affairs.

32 Abdujabar Abduvakhitov 1995. Independent Uzbekistan. A Muslim community in development. In M. Bourdeaux (ed.), The politics of religion in Russia and the new states of Eurasia. Amonk, New York: Sharpe, pp. 293–303.33 Yet authors such as Bakhtiyor Babadjanov (see bibliography at the end of the book) and Adeeb Khalid have published on various dimensions. For instance, Adeeb Khalid has emphasized that Islam in public discourse is in-tegrated into the concept of national cultural heritage (Adeeb Khalid 2007. Islam after communism. Religion and politics in Central Asia. Berkeley: Uni-versity of California, especially chapter 4). But also for post-Soviet Uzbekis-tan, the importance of integrating Islam into an Uzbek cultural identity as »Musulmonchilik« has been emphasized by the anthropologist Irene Hil-gers 2009. Why do Uzbeks have to be Muslims? Exploring religiosity in the Ferghana Valley. Berlin: Lit. For a similar development in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus see Dittmar Schorkowitz, 2010. Geschichte, Identität und Gewalt im Kontext postsozialistischer Nationsbildung. Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 135: 99–160.34 Ravshan Eratov heads the da’wa department within the SAMK; he has been actively supporting Tablighi Jama’at followers, whom he sees as Ha-nafi practitioners. I thank Mukaram Toktogulova for sharing her knowledge on the Tablighi Jama’at with me.35 This Shuroi Ulamo (Ulamo council) still exists and works within the Ku-


This admittedly superficial survey of the various develop-ments since perestroika requires further systematic and com-parative research. For now it shall suffice to say that peres-troika forced political leaders to redefine their relation with Islam to create legitimacy among their population. Most of the republics opted for a controlled integration of Islamic in stitutions based on the model of the Soviet SADUM, and at the same time, the establishment of a committee or state agency meant to supervise these institutions’ activities. The position of Islam within national culture – a debate that be-came publicly discussed during perestroika – has not been solved, leaving Muslims to constantly readapt to sudden po-litical changes. Whereas in Tajikistan this has been done in regular Dialogue Meetings that included the political and educational elite (see below), in Kazakhstan debates take place in discussion circles.36 Uzbekistan has tightened its control over religious activities with little room for debate. And Kyrgyzstan is developing into a centre in Central Asia where (political) religious movements and parties find the necessary political framework to develop concepts and ideas that bring religion, culture and politics together within and beyond a national context.37

mitai Umuri Dini Tojikiston (State Committee for Religious Affairs, short: Kumitai Dini) which is directly subordinated to the Hukumat (government). This group’s members are mostly (unknown) religious figures from the south, Kulob and around Dushanbe (there is no Gharmi in the Shuroi Ulamo). No popular figure is represented in the Shuroi Ulamo.36 These discussion circles have been researched by Dina Wilkowsky, who observed a vivid discussion among various intellectuals from politics, academics or religious corners. (Personal conversation with Wilkowsky at ZMO in 2011).37 Julie McBrien claims that »Kyrgyzstan … remains one of the most reli-giously tolerant Central Asian countries, if not the most tolerant.« (p. 48). Julie McBrien 2006. Extreme Conversations: Secularism, religious plura-lism, and the rhetoric of Islamic extremism in Southern Kyrgyzstan. In C. Hann (ed.), The postsocialist religious question. Faith and power in Central Asia and East-Central Europe. Münster: Lit, pp.47–72. For a recent initia-tive, see V Kirgisii obsudili islamskoe probuzhdenie Zentraln’noy Asii [In

The different debates on Islam in contemporary Central Asia

The text by Prof. V. Naumkin (chapter 2) begins with a his-torical outline that frames the categories of analysis (reli-gious development in Central Asia). Drawing from his deep knowledge of Islamic history, Central Asia is contextualized within this larger frame. Contemporary questions, however, are situated in political discussions that are regional. Naum-kin develops his argument along historical continuities. The problem of Islam in Central Asia peaks in events such as the civil war in Tajikistan (1990s) and in Andijan (2005). He sees the problem of Islam in Central Asia as a question of secularism and political development, and makes use of his extensive experience with political actors all over the for-mer Soviet Union and beyond during the turbulent years of independence. Naumkin has mediated between politicians and conflict actors in the Tajik civil war and more recently in the Caucasus, and thus sees research not as an isolated »academic bubble«, but as an applied science that needs to sustain conversation with the present without however losing its historical perspective. His position as Director of the Oriental Institute of the Academy of Science in Moscow makes him an actor between research and politics, and an authority that shapes the religious-political debates in the region.

Much of the discourse on Islam in Russia today is shaped by the ongoing Caucasian conflicts. Central Asians in Russia are first of all an economic factor, as several millions of mi-

Kyrgyzstan they discuss the Islamic revival in Central Asia]. 13 June 2012, http://www. Islamnews.ru/news-131311.html [last accessed June 2012]. The meeting brought together a network of political, scientific and religious personnel who wish to accord Islam its place within the social and political sphere. As far as I know, they do not represent any special movement (Hizb al-Tahrir al-Islomi, Tablighi, Wahhab etc.), but see themselves as the voice of youth who wants freedom in religious practices and politics that tolerate religious plurality; generally, the acknowledgement that Islam belongs to the culture and intellectual history of the region.


grants from the region come to Russia every year in search of work. Indeed, migration is currently the most urgent top-ic for the majority of Central Asians, yet this problem is nowhere discussed in the texts of this volume.

Another set of texts in the book refers to Kazakhstan, one of the five Central Asian republics where economic develop-ments long appeared to be more important than religious revival – at least to the west. However, as Dina Wilkows-ky has shown in her recent book,38 Kazakhstan’s integra-tion into world economics went hand-in-hand with Islamic move ments that established various networks and groups, often along economic relations. Wilkowsky provides a short overview of these groups and their activities. The enormous variation of groups and individuals that she describes docu-ments the path to a vivid religious public sphere that deve-loped along with the economic boom in Kazakhstan. While she uses classifications of »legal« and »illegal«, and thus reproduces Soviet political categories, she develops a wider approach that she terms »cultural dialogue.« Wilkowsky’s more recent research focused on discussion clubs and the role they have played in shaping communication culture in Kazakhstan. This cultural dialogue necessarily involves po-liticians, many of whom are from the intellectual elite:

Political stability in Kazakhstan, more than anything else, means stability of relations within the political elite. Intra-elite conflict in Kazakhstan has become more visible and open. It is caused by the clash between different power groups representing the dif-ferent generations: on the one side, representatives of the first generation of the post-Soviet elite who constituted the highest echelons of the Soviet nomenclatura, including the president. On the other, there is the new elite which consists of a hybrid generation which has incorporated both Soviet and democratic values. Its representatives have been actively involved in busi-ness and have gained work experience in the civil service sector.

38 Dina Wilkowsky 2009.

The founders of the discussion clubs belong to this elite group and their life histories could serve as an illustration of »hybridity of soviet and post-Soviet layers of identity,« that might demons-trate the complexities of reordering a society, experiencing new influences on individual and collective understanding of politi-cal processes.39

Within this »post-Soviet reordering of society« the catego-ries of legal and illegal dissolve into a dialogue and competi-tion among the intellectual elites who wish to actively shape the future society. Thus, Wilkowsky writes »The central con-cept, circulating within these groups, is determined basically by the intention to support the people to overcome the post-Soviet chaos and crisis, by adopting a »new« social order, promoting freedom of self-expression, and religious and po-litical plurality that open up new arenas for activities.«

Since its independence, Kazakhstan has provided the necessary framework for experimental engagement with re-ligious groups. Thus, this form of dialogue (whether success-ful or not) represents the Kazakh situation and reflects the inner debates to which the politician A. Baimenov (chapter 7) also contributes. His claim that the Soviet period was a »cultural genocide« more directly addresses past categories and cultural politics. This political slogan captures much of the popular demand for an »authentic Kazakh identity« and to some degree also reflects the intellectual elite’s effort to look into archives, family histories and poetry for cultural capital that was ignored during the Soviet period.40 Espe-cially Kazakhs feel that they have lost their cultural herit-age during the Soviet period. The traumatic experience of many Kazakhs in the 1920s and 1930s finds political expres-

39 Dina Wilkowsky 2011. Unpublished paper, ZMO.40 In her unpublished paper Dina Wilkowsky speaks of an »increasing ethnic intolerance in the society« which reflects the tension among intel-lectuals about the identities and the role of an authentic ethnic identity (language, education, ethnicity, etc.).


sion through young politicians like Baimenov. Against the background of his biography and text we can understand that current debates on Islam in Kazakhstan draw from a »post-colonial relationship« that needs to re-evaluate the Soviet power divide.

In his text on culture and Islam, Sheikh Abdsattar Haji Derbisali orients the debate towards historical discussion. Based on his profound research in the religious and his-tory of the region, Derbisali presents a precise historical account of religious material culture. He uses this mate-rial to claim peace and tolerance for Kazakh culture, and especially for Islam. Unlike other religious authorities who emphasize theology, Haji Derbisali transcends his historical knowledge into a religious call. Nominating Haji Derbisali as Director of the Faculty of Oriental Studies and later to the position of Mufti and Chairman of the Spiritual Board of the Muslims of Kazakhstan acknowledges the importance that the new state accords to researchers and intellectu-als, not only in Kazakhstan. Thus, while on the one hand researchers observe the increasing interest of ordinary peo-ple to redefine their lives in religious terms and turn to all kinds of religious movements, on the other hand, politicians in Kazakhstan consider their scholars as the suitable actors who would help redefine the state’s religious identity.41

Ashirbek Muminov (chapter 4) takes us through a com-plex account of various movements, networks and group-ings in the region that he organizes according to their teleo logical development. Muminov’s text is less nationally oriented in its content, which to some degree reflects his scholarly career (he grew up in Uzbekistan, studied in Le-ningrad and works today in Kazakhstan). His text is not only

41 Not only politicians considered researchers from Oriental Studies as being religious authorities. Ordinary people during the Soviet period thought similarly: »When I studied Arabic, all for some reason thought that I knew the Qur’an« the Arabist Janet Seitmetova from the University of Almaty explains (chapter 3).

a good overview of multiple religious activities and claims, but also proof of the rich academic research conducted since perestroika.42 As he explains, (partially) open access to archives initiated a »scientific revolution« which not only provides new answers but generates even more questions. One of the central questions most radically articulated by Baimenov is »Who are we?« This search for authenticity, for a past, a history, and a future is an internal debate with many possible answers.

Another approach to this question is provided by Zifa Auezova (chapter 5), who follows another trend of con-temporary academic work in Oriental Studies and history. In her texts, she analyzes Shakarmi’s writings as an entry point to history. With a study on the early twentieth century she provides a more nuanced view of the Russian-Kazakh relationship than that of »cultural genocide.« Shakarim’s works and poetry were prohibited during the Soviet period because the heroes of the Kazakhs were the enemies of the Russians. Auezova’s writings are thus not only a scholarly contribution, but beyond this a discovery of Kazakh culture and national identity. After completing her education in Ori-ental Studies in the Arabic department, Auezova turned into a specialist of historiography, with a focus on Kazakhstan. In this function she has taught courses and developed curri-cula at various universities in Central Asia, Russia and bey-ond. The autobiography of Auezova further provides us with a sensitive discussion of history within the family: she gives us insight into various periods and how political constraint influenced internal debates. Her re-evaluation of the past not only contributes to research generally, but also specifi-cally to the debate about Kazakh identity.

42 See for instance, the collection of Cahiers d’Asie central and the online journal Manuscripta Orientali. International Journal for Oriental Manuscript Research. http://manuscripta-orientalia.kunstkamera.ru/archive/2009_01_15/ [last accessed June 2012].


With the contribution by Muhiddin Kabiri (chapter 6) we move to the very periphery of the former Soviet Union, Tajikistan. In Tajikistan the debate about a national identity has been accompanied by strong demands for »the truth.« The question of truth is not only politically but also cultur-ally motivated (What is true Islamic culture?). Thus it comes as no surprise that journalism today is one of the most pop-ular and most prestigious choices for university-level edu-cation.43 The call for truth shaped the political tension of the early 1990s that eventually turned into civil war. Two de-bates have developed since independence: on the one hand, creating of historical continuity of »Tajikness« and on the other hand, the search for true religious life (as an alterna-tive to the still-dominant Soviet secular narrative).

The search for Tajikness is led by the most prominent political party and has progressed through centuries of cul-tural history of the region.44 The year 2003 »was declared the year of Zarathustra and Zoroastrian culture«45, in 2006 Tajikistan celebrated the »year of Aryan civilization«, and the year 2009 was dedicated to Emomi Azam (founder of the Hanafi madhhab), which included a conference to honour him; in 2010 Tajikistan hosted the Organization of the Is-lamic Conference. This journey through history in search of an »authentic« Tajik identity clashes with the demand by the Islamic Rebirth Party Tajikistan for a democratic and hence pluralistic society.

43 Political activists have opened their own journal and are invited to lecture. Again the boundaries between different professions are blurred in a more general process of nation building.44 In other republics such as Kyrgzstan and Kazakhstan some movements turn to Tengrianism or Zoroastrian culture as an alternative source of na-tional or ethnic identity.45 The year 2003 was declared the 3000th anniversary of Zoroastrian culture by UNESCO, based on the initiative of Tajikistan. Tim Epkenhans 2012. Zwischen Mythos und Minenfeld. Historiographie in Tadschikistan. Osteuropa 62: 137–150.

Nowhere in the other Central Asian republics did a religious party succeed in integrating into the new nation state; this only happened to the IRP in Tajikistan. Thus, while other countries engage in a »cultural dialogue« with various intel-lectuals, in Tajikistan this dialogue is dominated by political oppositions. This gives the debate a sharp character, which is addressed in Kabiri’s text. The call for truth is less about a definition of what Tajik identity is, and more about how to live morally and authentically, independent of what one believes in. Such a call for moral behaviour is of course not only true for Tajikistan but more generally for religious ac-tors all over Central Asia.

In the beginning of 2000, Muhiddin Kabiri initiated a Dialogue Centre which would allow anyone to partake in intellectual exchange. For several years the Dialogue Cen-tre had brought together intellectuals from the Academy of Science, the University, religious authorities (e.g., Tura-jonzoda) and official institutions, as well as members of the Shuroi Ulamo and the IRP. The questions that were dis-cussed (bahs kardan) were fundamental, for example, who was an intellectual in the Tajik context, or what was a per-son in Tajikistan first: A Tajik, a Muslim, or both together? These discussions were highly political and deeply cultur-al. One of the ongoing debates is whether Islam is part of Tajikness and Tajik culture, or needs to be considered an external element.46 Whereas Kabiri himself questioned the usefulness of this identity division, he considered it impor-tant to provide space to allow for such unsanctioned dis-

46 Zifa-Alua Auezova mentions the way she and Dina Wilkowsky had to redefine their work as orientalists when they worked at Kazakh Universi-ties. People saw their motivation to learn Arabic as a religious one, while she suggests »Having studied Arabic language and culture in Russia, we had perhaps a more distant attitude to the subject of our study, more dis-tant from our Kazakh culture, because Arabic which we studied was con-textualized primarily by the Middle-Eastern region, while its importance for Central Asian region was usually referred to in historical perspective only.« (chapter 3)


cussions. While religiously-oriented participants identified Islam as an integral part of Tajikness, another group argued that Islam was an external element that exists independent of Tajik culture. This oppositional approach is represented in the political landscape and thus differs from Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, where ethnic identities (e.g., Uzbekchilik, Hilgers 2009) are considered inherently Muslim.47 Unfor-tunately, the Dialogue Centre ceased operations before it could satisfy the need for intellectual exchange.

The last chapter was written by Elmira Köchümkulova. With her we move to Kyrgyzstan and a more recent ap-proach to religious studies. Köchümkulova is a trained eth-nographer. Being the youngest among the contributors, she is also the only one with a higher education degree from the United States. Religious history was not in the realm of Soviet ethnographia, and there was no reason to assume that Islam would be the primary identification for all people alike. Thus it came as a surprise to her that in the United States the primary interest of her colleagues was her reli-gious identity:

One of the frequent questions that Americans asked me was about my religion. Like many other Kyrgyz, until the post-Soviet Islamic revival, my religious identity was never questioned. I do not come from a religious family background, but our Muslim faith was an accepted fact of life. (For the full context see chap-ter 8, p. 277.)

Her text reflects this tension between the external pres-sure to identify religious elements in cultural practices and an internal wish to keep the Kyrgyz culture as an authentic way of life.

47 For a good discussion on how people negotiate Uzbekness in religious terms see Johan Rasanayagam 2010.

In Kyrgyzstan the cultural debates were very much led within families. To a certain degree, Kyrgyzstan itself al-lowed for experimentation in religious life, which has led various groups and movements to extend their activities, for example the Tablighi Jama’at or Hizb al-Tahrir al-Islomi.48 The detailed descriptions provided by Köchümkulova give insight into these debates that take place in ritual practices as well as in everyday life. Her clear position confirms that researchers feel responsible within the new society, that their works represent an active participation in the intellec-tual debates about Kyrgyz culture, and that this is a moral question as much as a material one. Many Kyrgyz intellectu-als reject Islam in its »purified« form (such as what the Tab-lighi or the Salafi or other groups call for) and seek alter-native spiritual paths such as Tegrianism.49 Whereas Islam has become a strong identity for many young Kyrgyz, the majority remains sceptical towards a general translation of traditions into a religious language. The text, as much as her autobiographic text, suggests continuity through cul-tural practices (which are grounded in religious values), not through theological debates and religious biographies. With this she provides a specific debate for Kyrgyz intellectuals, who wish to find a cultural path that naturally includes Is-lam as a cultural practice rather than a political force.

With the sentence »We are born as a Kyrgyz, we live as a Russian, but die as a Muslim,« she not only imagines a Kyrgyz way of life, but raises the question of generations, a matter that Dina Wilkowsky also worked on in her research. Different generations discuss Islam in different ways, hence for the time being the cultural dialogue continues to be shaped by generational views that put the elderly in opposi-tion to young reformers. While this is not a black and white

48 Till Mostowlansky 2011. In M. Kemper and S. Conermann, pp. 291–305.49 This movement also exists in Kazakhstan and similarly mainly appeals to a small elite who can afford (time, sources, financial means) to engage in alternative philosophical directions.


picture anywhere, the biographies in this book demonstrate that the authors, as the generation of change, are aware of the large field in which debates take place. To some degree, several of the authors hold a special position (in their role as the generation of change) because they lived through perestroika as reformers while also profiting from a Soviet education.

Contemporary discourses on Islam, as we learn from texts and biographies, are linked to family and ethnic experien-ces, to collective memories, and to nation building proces-ses. Hence, much of the discussions go far beyond purely political concerns and narrow religious claims. In the past two decades, numerous works have been written by some of the authors in this book; they not only contributed to a bet-ter understanding of the past, but also to the construction of the present. In Kazakhstan just as much as in Tajikistan, Uzbekistan or Kyrgyzstan, the intellectual elite is actively integrated in cultural debates. While the content naturally differs, many elements are similar, for example to what de-gree religion is inherent in ethnic culture or the question about legal and illegal religious practices and institutions. Whereas some of the authors place their religious identities at the forefront, others show that this is by no means the only or the dominant identity. In fact, the call for norma-lizing religious identities is a strong claim in the political texts of Baimenov and Kabiri, just as much as in the texts of Köchümkulova, Naumkin and Wilkowsky.

Much of the debate on Islam in Central Asia revolves around truth and the authority to represent history. The debate over whether ethnic cultures are inherently Islamic or whether Islam is a separate element is led most radically in Tajikis-tan, but exists in all the concerned republics. The blueprint for Islam as a social practice was formed during the time of the Prophet for the Salafi-oriented people, and in pre-Soviet Central Asia for many others. Eventually some religious scholars turn to Arab countries in search of an »authen-

tic Islamic culture.«50 Discussion about authentic cultural sources varies in each republic, and yet the same religious movements have invested in all the republics, to various degrees.

In the introduction we asked what the specificities of Is-lam in Central Asia may be. Paolo Sartori (2010) has sugge-sted that »Muslim culture in the Soviet Union is therefore understood as a complex web of social interactions, cultu-ral capital and private emotional investment.« (2010 p.334) This is one suggestion, while in this book many other sug-gestions have been proposed. What we can say more ge-nerally is that culture (with and without Islam) shapes the current debates about national identity within the indepen-dent republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.51 While we do not know the outcome of these debates, we can observe regional differences and the many nuances and levels that mark these debates.

50 For an account of such an »authentic Islamic culture,« see Sophie Roche (forthcoming). Domesticating youth. The dynamics of youth bulge in Tajiki-stan. New York, Oxford: Berghahn Books. 51 Nationality politics have been the focus of extensive research, not least due to the concept’s success in the independent states. For a good theoretical discussion see Juan R. I. Cole and Deniz Kandiyoti 2002. Natio-nalism and the colonial legacy in the Middle East and Central Asia. Intro-duction. Journal of Middle East Studies 34: 189–203; Olivier Roy 2000. The new Central Asia. The creation of nations. London: I.B. Tauris; and many others. Ethno-national identities had been actively developed from the very beginning of Bolshevik politics and they were also the basis of territorial division in Central Asia in the 1920s. For a discussion on the subject see for instance, Paul Bergne 2007. The birth of Tajikistan. National identity and the origins of the republic. London: Tauris; Sergej Abashin 2007. Die Sartenproblematik in der russischen Geschichtsschreibung des 19. und des ersten Viertels des 20. Jahrhunderts. ANOR 18, Berlin: Klaus Schwarz.


III. Representing Central Asia

Who speaks for Islam today?

Concerning the place of religion in the newly independent states, most post-Soviet Central Asian countries have main-tained a secular model rather similar to the USSR.52 The emphasis on ethnic identity as the core of a nation has suc-cessfully dominated the new political discourse. Internal po-litical debates on national identity and the role of Islam are therefore led by historians just as much as by orientalists, politicians, journalists and anthropologists (if such exist).53 The activation of a national history as an ethnic, political and religious development is reflected in many of the texts in this book. Researchers feel indebted to and responsible for their independent nation and its people, for whom they write; thus, their participation often blurs the lines between (political) activism and research.54

Researchers’ participation in the nation building process is not restricted to textual productions. Instead, numerous examples exist where orientalists were recruited into the ministries or other political positions. Zifa Auezova remem-bers that »many people became involved in the Ministry of International Affairs. My colleagues, many fellow students who studied in St. Petersburg at the Oriental Department, I would say that a huge part of them is now working in the Mi-nistry of Foreign Affairs.« (For the full context see p. 205.)

52 An example is Sheikh Derbisali who, in his role as Mufti of Kazakhstan, sees the secular and the religious as »absolutely organically combined in my life« (2012, p. 311) Sheikh Abdsattar Haji Derbisali 2012. Islam, Religi-on of peace and creation. A work of theological and historical-philological research, articles and reflections, reports and interviews. London: Stacey International.53 Historical research, Adeeb Khalid (p. 96) has mentioned, was an exclu-sive domain of the national republics. Adeeb Khalid 2007. 54 Compare with Sarah Amsler 2007. The politics of knowledge in Central Asia. Science between Marx and the market. London, New York: Routledge.

Thus, the position of scholars appears fluid and the border between a politician and a scholar or a religious authority is not always clearly defined. The biography of the Supreme Mufti and Chairman of the Spiritual Board of the Muslims of Kazakhstan (Haji Derbisali) and former Director of the Fa-culty of Oriental Studies is a case in point and certainly not an exception in the post-Soviet world.55 Similarly, Muhiddin Kabiri is seen as occupying the right position because of his solid education in Oriental Studies and diplomacy, and because he received religious training from the religious authorities of his time.

Many of the authors in this volume received their edu-cation during the 1980s. This period, particularly following Gorbachev’s politics of perestroika, went along with a vivid revival of Islam at all levels. Similarly, in scientific circles the question of state control was renegotiated. Thus, the 1980s and 1990s were a dynamic period in which intellec-tuals envisioned a new society. The account by V. Naum-kin gives us an idea about these internal debates: »During perestroika,of course ideological influence was the main is-

55 Similarly, for Uzbekistan Michel Bourdeaux writes »The principle of policy formation with the help of advisors from the ranks of religious people and professional Orientalists is widely implemented on all levels of power.« (p. 303) For instance, Shamsuddinkhan Babakhanov, the son and grandson of the Babakhanov dynasty heading the SADUM throughout the Soviet period, was the Uzbek ambassador to Egypt and Saudi Arabia. He received his education in the SADUM institutions in Bukhara and Samar-kand and graduated from the University of al-Azhar in Cairo in 1966. He then worked at the Muslim Organization of the USSR Council for Foreign Relations from 1966 to 1974, and led the Tashkent Islamic Institute be-tween 1974 and 1982; he was the leading chairman of the SADUM until 1990. Such a practice seems to continue until today. According to Abdullo Mirzoev, who pursued Oriental Studies in Dushanbe in early 2000, most of his peers from the southern region of Kulob entered the Foreign Ministry after completing their studies. Also for Azerbaijan similar developments have been documented by Altay Goyushov, Naomi Caffee and Robert Denis 2011. The transformation of Azerbaijani Orientalists into Islamic thinkers after 1991. In M.Kemper and S.Conermann, pp. 306–319.


sue, whether and to what degree it had affected the studies. When I joined the institute, I found here a total rejection of the old atheistic theories.« (For the full context see p. 84.) What Naumkin suggests is a serious engagement with the past in internal debates and thus liberation from previous doctrines. These debates took place already in the 1980s long before the end of the Soviet Union. As a young scho-lar, Naumkin was among those who with an excellent edu-cation engaged in research without feeling restraint by an ideology:

As I am telling you, it was not that bad in the (late) Soviet days iBut, as I am telling you, it was not that bad in the Soviet days eit-her in the field of Oriental Studies, they were less »ideologized«. Of course there was some influence on the institute from the Soviet time before I came here, for instance we had a concentra-tion in the study of socalled national liberation movements, like the trade unions, working class movements, and revolutions of course, all types of revolutionary movements, communist par-ties. (For the full context see p. 84–85.)

The perestroika years were experienced as dynamic years of change, as a period of heated debates within academic circles, liberation from Russian / Soviet dominance, and an awakening of national and religious consciousness without necessarily a total rejection of the state as a provider of social security and jobs. The biographies and the texts re-present this period as an enthusiastic and even emotional period, a period in which researchers redefined their task as builders of society.

While there is no contribution that mentions gender issu-es and discussion about gender is absent from the texts, the-re is an underlying gendered narrative about Islam in Central Asia that has been continued throughout the Soviet period. Nadje S. AL-Ali (2001) observes that men’s biographies of-ten come to stand for »the culture« of a social group. Simi-larly, almost without exception the biographies, genealogies and authorities in the texts of this book are all about men.

Even in the biographies we learn that mainly male de-scendants have shaped individual thoughts and action. This is most explicitly the case for Baimenov, who, lacking any religious or academic education in this orientalist subjects, uses orally transmitted knowledge about his father to estab-lish himself as a religious-political authority. The trend to think about Central Asia through its tribes or genealogies has produced interesting historical accounts, yet the questi-on of gender has quite continuously been ignored.56 Female religious authorities have been »discovered« by western scholars only two decades ago who gained access to post-Soviet Central Asia and generated a large body of litera-ture.57 In fact, they have identified women as the carriers of culture and religious rituals throughout the Soviet period (cf. Tett58), while men (as public actors) were more restric-ted from exerting religious duties.

56 During the interesting conference on »History making in Central and Inner Asia« which had a strong focus on the role of genealogies, the ques-tion of history and gender was not mentioned in any of the papers. Con-ference at Zentrum für Interdisziplinäre Regionalstudien, Martin-Luther University, Halle-Wittenberg, from February 22–23, 2013. 57 Feride Acar and Ayşe Günes-Ayata (eds.) 2001. Gender and identity construction. Women in Central Asia, the Caucasus and Turkey. Leiden: Brill; Habiba Fati 2004. Femmes d’autorité dans l’Asie centrale contempo-raine. Quête des ancêtres et recompositions identitaires dans l’islam post-soviétique. Paris: Maisonneuve & Larose; Colette Harris 2004. Control and subversion. Gender relations in Tajikistan. London: Pluto; Sigrid Kleinmi-chel 2001. Halpa in Chorezm and Atin Ayi in Ferghana. Zur Geschichte des Lesens in Usbekistan. ANOR Berlin: Das Arabische Buch; Anette Krämer 2002. Geistliche Autorität und islamische Gesellschaft im Wandel. Studien über Frauenälteste (otin und xalfa) im unabhängigen Usbekistan. Berlin: Klaus Schwarz; Gregory J. Massell 1974. The surrogate proletariat. Mos-lem women and revolutionary strategies in Soviet Central Asia: 1919–1929. Princeton: Princeton University; and many others.58 Guilian Tett 1995. Guardians of the faith? Gender and religion in an (ex) Soviet Tajik village. In Camillia F. El-Solh and Judy Mabro (eds.), Mus-lim Women’s Choices. Religious belief and social reality. Providence: Berg, pp.128–51.


This book has three female contributors. Having been trained in the same institutions as the male contributors, they receive the same military grades.59 Yet while academically they hold the same diplomas as their male colleagues, these female scholars represented in the book were not equally able to transform their status in their respective country with independence. Whether this is linked to dynamics of gender during periods of political insecurity, with concepts of Islam put forward by certain groups, or to the continu-ation of Soviet tradition remains unanswered for the time being. Obviously this is not the place to analyze of gender politics during and after the Soviet period, yet more inves-tigation about the role of female intellectuals in shaping views about Islam are urgently be needed.

The question of who speaks for Islam in Central Asia to-day is anything but obvious. Some academics have turned into activists for Islam and / or for the nation, using their scholarly knowledge and cultural capital as a profitable re-source. Hence, religious authorities today come from aca-demia, from politics and from theology. At the same time, ordinary people and especially the youth has engaged in religious (self)education of all sorts and gained consider-able self-consciousness outside religious institutions such as mosques, madrassas and Islamic universities. Many of them no longer accept any tutelage from religious autho-rities, but wish Islam to be an integral part of everybody’s life and thinking. This book has not engaged with this broad spectrum of religious debate within society, which has been covered by other studies.60

59 Military education was part of Oriental Studies. Among others things, the students learned military vocabulary in Arabic and received a military title at the end of their studies. This tradition continues in Tajikistan, where students are required to attend military courses and thus are freed from compulsory military service. 60 See for instance, Irene Hilgers 2009; Maria E. Louw 2007; Julie Mc-Brien 2006. Extreme conversations: Secularism, religious pluralism, and the rhetoric of Islamic extremism in Southern Kyrgyzstan. In C. Hann (ed.), The

When adopting a geopolitical view of Central Asia, Islam is most often viewed as a security issue, which overshadows the more nuanced and pluralistic discussions (also within politics) that link Islam to cultural debates, global studies, gender issues and history. Both views are not exclusive, but are interlinked and constantly negotiated. Whether in the early twentieth century or during perestroika, Islam deve-loped within a specific socio-political context that was car-ried, discussed and positioned by individual actors. As such it was compatible with communism, whose superiority as a system was by and large unquestioned until perestroika.61

Arabists as specialists of Islam

The authors contained in this book share a network that centres around Dina Wilkowsky. As such, they represent a selection of scholars and politicians who again shaped one of the contributor’s career. These various levels of interconnec-tedness of the people through biographic inter-linkages are the underlying narrative of the book. This is why Kazakhstan is overrepresented in this volume; still, Wilkowsky’s net-work stretches all over Central Asia and Russia, and is a nice example of Soviet scholarly activity.

All but two of the contributors began their career with Arab studies and a focus on Arabic countries outside the So-viet Union. The cities of Tashkent, Dushanbe, Almaty, Lenin-grad / St. Petersburg and Moscow shaped their careers, mo-bility and their studies. These researchers turned to Central Asia during perestroika and especially since independence. Oriental Studies had a mystical aura, Zifa Auezova describes – it was a secret knowledge available only to a small elite.

postsocialist religious question. Faith and power in Central Asia and East-Central Europe. Münster, Berlin: Lit, pp. 47–72.61 Being Muslim was not opposed to being Soviet, Adeeb Khalid has shown. Adeeb Khalid 2007, p. 98.


Many Central Asians were interested in Oriental Studies as a solid intellectual education. It was a way to understand the Qur’an or the Bible in its original language, meaning and context – not only »a few Suras learned by heart« or »translations of the Bible« (For the full quote see chapter 5, p. 205–206).

Orientalists who studied on Islam dealt with North Afri-ca and the Arab peninsula and, most importantly, written manuscripts in the Arabic language. According to the in-terviews, Islam was not debated in Leningrad or Moscow, yet religiously relevant texts were part of the curriculum. Besides »Moscow Arabic« (as Janet Seitmetova characteri-zes the available sources; see chapter 3, p. 115) texts about the life of the Prophet Muhammad were read. At the same time, the scholars were politically integrated.62 Alexander Morrison has called this, in the context of Tsarist Russia, »applied orientalism« in the Russian context – that is, the points at which the study of Oriental languages, religions, and societies and the exercise of imperial power intersec-ted.« (p. 623)63 However, the Orient that these Arabists stu-died was quite distant and had nothing to do with Central Asia.

While Arabists were thus engaged in studying Islam in its »original« language and were integrated into a political contextualization, ethnographers were the ones to trace these different »cultural traditions« and remnants of the past in Central Asia. Indeed, ethnographers dealt with the cultural dimension of Central Asia, separating the differ-ent cultural elements and reordering them along an axis of human development (pyatichlenka64). The Arabists in this

62 For instance, when the war erupted in Afghanistan, Persian language students were recruited as translators and for secret missions. 63 Alexander Morrison 2009. »Applied Orientalism« in British India and Tsarist Turkestan. Comparative Studies in Society and History 51(3): 619–647. 64 A good example of how the pyatichlenka theory was applied concretely see Tyntchykbek Tchoroev 2002. Historiography of Post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan.

book seem less concerned with this classification of cul-ture and more engaged in interpretations of (revolutionary and fundamentalist) movements. This subject remained a strong point of Vostokovedinie, Naumkin explains in the in-terview. Thus it comes as no surprise that several of the au-thors chose to structure their text along religious groups.

While Arabists hence became specialists of Arabic texts (and were potentially able to read religious texts in the ori-ginal), Islam in Central Asia was not a main topic for his-torians or anthropologists. The leading journal Sovjetskoe Vostokovedinie shows that in no way did religious themes dominate the discussion. On the contrary, interpretations of economic systems, languages, political and social orga-nizations, etc. appear far more often than discussion about religion. An exception is Afghanistan, which seems to be analyzed through its religious identity, which confirms the assumption that Islam was not considered »natural« to Turkic Central Asia (Kazakhs and Kyrgyz) but rather to its outer border countries of Afghanistan, Turkey and Iran.65 Thus, Central Asia does not appear as the Muslim orient, which is rather projected onto the Middle East and the Af-ghan south.

Following the historical narrative developed in the nine-teenth century by Russian Orientalists, the Turkic people of the Central Asian steps were presented as being Islamized rather late and superficially (text by Naumkin, see also com-ments in Muminov’s biography), whereas shamanism was their »real« spiritual heritage.66 Tribal systems were the

Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 34: 351–374. 65 This continues to be the case in academic writings. The borders of the USSR have become the border of SNG, argues the following publication: B. B. Y. Velokrenitskiy and A. Z. Egorin 2001. Musul’manskie strany u granits SNG (Afganistan, Pakistan, Iran i Turtsiya – sovremennoe sostoyanie, isto-riya i perspektivy). Russiyskaya Akademiya Nauk Institut Bostokovedeniya. Moskow: Ivran-Kraft+. 66 This narrative seems to have resulted from Soviet historiography and has also been reproduced in the book by Martha B.Olcott 1987. The Kazakhs.


main approach to Kazakh society before an ethnic narrative replaced it.67 Both Auezova and Derbisali explicitly enga-ged with these representations in their texts. Derbisali’s text »redresses« the central role of Islam in Kazakh cul-ture.68 It is not enough to measure Kazakh religious practi-ces by judging their level of Muslimness. Instead, Derbisa-li reveals a vivid intellectual life of scholars travelling to the Arab peninsula, Mecca and Medina, and emphasizes the building of mosques to prove Kazakhs’ integration into the Muslim world.69 Derbisali picks up essentializing argu-ments and transforms them into an academic-theological text wherein Islam is not only the provider of civilization

Stanford: Hoover Institution. It is interesting that this tribal argument is used by Naumkin to differentiate Islam in Central Asia from Islam in the Middle East (interview in chapter 2). Bruce Privratisky even provides the origin of this narrative »The evaluation of the Kazakhs as marginal and syncretizing Muslims derives from Chokan Valikhanov.» (p. 11). Valikhanov was the first Kazakh to make Kazakh known world wide especially through his students who studied Kazakh religion and were preoccupied with sha-manism to describe the Kazakh spiritual world. Bruce G. Privratsky 2001. Muslim Turkistan. Kazakh religion and collective memory. Richmond, Sur-rey: Curzon. 67 The reason was that the Central Asian Turkic population had to be integrated into the pyatichlenka model of Marx’ historical materialism (pri-mitive society (tribal confederations), slavery, feudalism, capitalism and socialism). This meant that the Turkic population did not have to pass the capitalist development but moved right from a tribal society to an ethnic and socialist society. A nice summary of how this master narrative was exported via guests to the west can be read in Georg Benz 1967. Bei Ka-sachen und Usbeken. In H. Mochalski and E. Kogar (eds.), Sowjet-Sibirien und Zentralasien heute. Frankfurt a. M.: Stimme Verlag, pp. 80–96. 68 For a review of how Central Asian religious authorities were mis-represented by Soviet academics see the article by Devin DeWeese on Khoja Ahmad Yasavi, one of the Central Asian religious figures rehabilitated in the book by Derbisali. Devin DeWeese 2011. Ahmad Yasavi and the Divan-i hikmat in Soviet scholarship. In M. Kemper and S. Conermann, pp. 262–290.69 Alexandre Papas, Thomas Welsford and Thierry Zarcone (eds.) 2012. Central Asian pilgrims. Hajj routes and pious visits between Central Asia and the Hijaz. Berlin: Klaus Schwarz.

(which he links to urban sedentary life and the building of mosques and material cultures), but also the motor for sci-entific and cultural development.

Almost paradoxically Naumkin mentions that a crucial difference between Yemen and Central Asia is the absence of tribes in the latter societies, and thus unexpectedly chal-lenges the classic narrative that predefines Central Asia:

Of course it is totally different. Yemen is a very tribal country with more radical groups. We have some groups like this abroad in Af-ghanistan, those who moved from Uzbekistan – but we do have an Islamic opposition. In general there is a process of Islamisation, especially in the three countries, the three states: Uzbekistan, Ta-jikistan and Kyrgyzstan. (For the full context see p. 86.)

The alienation of Islam from Central Asia by some of the scholars suggests that Islam was in competition with Rus-sia and later the Soviet Union. Both are seen as competing over the citizens of the region. Where Islam is dealt with, it is done through notions of opposition, whether through individual actors such as Shami-Domulla in the 1920s, the Basmachi, or the Jadid movement. Islam seems to have a similar awakening power as communism and competes for setting societal order. This view of Islam as an awakening power, developed by Irina Morozova, becames even more prevalent with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.70 This is also a central point for the authors to turn to their own home country and history with the skills they acquired as Arabists. Derbisali’s text about mosques in Central Asia is a case in point; he develops a counter-narrative to the nomadic past as a lower form of human development (pyatichlenka) by showing that mosques are proofs of early sedentary life (as far back as 893 in Taraz). He thus continues to employ the tools (archaeology, manuscripts) of interpretation and classifications used in Soviet Oriental Studies but reposi-

70 Irina Morozova 2011.


tions Kazakhstan and Central Asia within this narrative. His primary aim is to link Kazakhstan back to the Muslim world, and he has good reason to do so, considering the travel of former religious authorities to the Middle East and the Arab lands.

In her study about women in Uzbekistan, Marianne Kamp71 has mentioned that full veiling was not a common or widespread practice in pre-Soviet Central Asia, but rather an urban response to Russian imperial expansion into the region in the nineteenth century. Martha Brill Olcott even speaks of conversion that was encouraged by Catharine the Great, who »became convinced that the nomads of the step-pe could best be civilized by Muslim rather than Christian missionaries.« (1987, p.102) The early twentieth century experienced a boom in religious institutions. Similarly, both Naumkin and Derbisali observe a boom of mosque building with the establishment of the Russian Tsarist administra-tion in Kazakhstan. »In the 1860s, there were around twen-ty mosques and two madrasas for 5000 inhabitants (accor-ding to the 1867 census). The population grew and in 1908, 41 mosques were already working here. Before the revoluti-on there were about 200 mosques in the Aktyubinsk region, nearly 80 mosques in Bukei Khanate, 269 in Semirechye, 49 in the Jambyl region and in Auliye-Ata itself (today’s Taraz),« (Derbisali, for the context see p. 67, cf. also chapter 2).

While this may not be a useful argument for discrediting Muslims in the pre-Tsarist period as »bad« or »not real« Mus-lims, it tells a lot about the cultural contact between Rus-sia and the Muslim south. Thus, the violent confrontations in which Central Asian Muslims (and I include Kazakhs) were involved in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries gene-rated cultural responses, and Islam came to be a resource to various actors. Such an approach goes beyond any need

71 Marianne Kamp 2006. The New Woman in Uzbekistan. Islam, Mo-dernity, and Unveiling under Communism. Seattle, London: University of Washington.

to form a hierarchy for Islam or extract it from more or less tribal, shaman, etc. culture nor does it demand to be monopolized by an oppositional discourse as found in So-vietology. To conclude, Arabists were able to re-discover Central Asia through its Arabic written manuscripts and Islamic history, and in this function they have considerably shaped the prevailing cultural and political dynamics since independence.

Unpredictable Central Asia

Earlier we discussed classifications used to order scientific material. The classifications applied in some of the texts suggest that these categories serve a political need to con-trol unpredictable religious dynamics.72 Here, the state is presented as the main institution able to provide the neces-sary order and scientists seem to engage in this narrative – again the argument by Herren, Rüesch and Sibille helps to clarify that this is not specific to Central Asia but is a general marker of historiography.

While the authors in this book would rather not re- establish Soviet control, several of them suggest that state law and legal control of religious education and activities may be the only solution to avoid the »ideological ferment« (compare to Muminov›s description p. 175) that causes harm in Islamic movements. In these texts Central Asia be-came the unpredictable orient that must be regulated with the help of external power. »Central Asia« seems unable to deal with its religious plurality itself, and it needs professio-nal classification and political control. This again feeds into a global narrative about the Muslim world that produces a sense of insecurity and unpredictability.

72 For a critical discussion about such approaches and alternatives see Michael Kemper 2008. How to take the Muslim peripheries seriously. In the writing of imperial history? Ab Imperio 4: 472–482.


Another example is the civil war in Tajikistan that was stopped with the help of international engagement, among others by the Dartmouth Conference. Naumkin mentioned that Russia did not believe that Tajikistan would ever be able to bring order itself and sit at one table with Muslim activists. Many of the texts in this volume reproduce this picture of an unpredictable Central Asia rather unreflected in one way or another. On the other hand, some authors identify Islam as an alternative to Russia and Western im-perial politics, and consider it capable of installing order and uniting society.

While Islam is considered as a possible »ideology« to fill the »vacuum« that the collapse of the Soviet Union has caused, the view that local mullahs lack a proper education is almost unanimous; this view is shared by the population itself. This again supports the idea of a backward Central Asia that needs to catch up with the rest of the Muslim world – like a region that never reached an autonomous identity or maturity, whether a Soviet identity or a Muslim identity.

During perestroika we find the paradox that the atheist communist state closely worked with local religious institu-tions and authorities. This interest-based alliance has been reformulated since independence. Without exception, Islam is seen by all authors as the uniting factor in the region – an argument picked up by western researchers as well – yet the question about authority has nowhere been fully solved. Even the very term »tradition« causes confusion between local traditional practices (i.e. Sufi traditions, rituals) and the Islamic tradition of the four madhabs. This confusion of terms and categories has contributed to the malleability of the sector by political actors, religious authorities and scholars.

Unfortunately we lack research about one more vector, namely how Arab countries contextualize Central Asia. On the one hand, Central Asia is the frontier for reconquering occupied Muslim territory (i.e., jihad in Central Asia and Caucasus), on the other hand, Central Asians enjoy a my-

stical reputation as »Bukharians«, that is, descendants of Imom al-Bukhari.73 It is still unclear whether cultural con-tact to the north, the south, the east and the west, estab-lished through economic, diplomatic and educational rela-tions, will allow Central Asia to find its own position and a way out of the »unpredictable narrative«.

Instead of a conclusion: Central Asia’s integration into western scholarship

This book has opened a window onto the plurality of dis-courses about Islam in Central Asia. I have insisted on lea-ving most texts in the genre that they have been presented. I believe that such an approach is justified, as western aca-demic formats seem restrictive to me for properly exploi-ting the theme. Science74 (Wissenschaft) stops being science (Wissenschaft) if its self-imposed categories (including stan-dards, forms) become too restrictive to explore a theme. In this sense, the book transgresses many academic formats and categories, as well as text genres, regarding the choice of people and the themes debated. Some may criticize such an approach as not conforming to academic standards. But I hope that others will enjoy the plurality of this book and take the opportunity to rethink their ideas about Central Asia and Islam as being a purely academic, political or social prob-lem, and try to understand the meaning that the past and present have to these authors and how we, the readership, understand these messages.

Instead of a conclusion I shall finish these final remarks with a short description of how Central Asia has been inte-

73 I thank my colleague Chanfi Ahmed for sharing his experience. Most Arabs, he explains, know little about the different nations in Central Asia and consider citizens from the region as »Bukharians«; Bukhara has a mystical connotation to a glorious past.74 In German »science« (Wissenschaft) includes the natural sciences and humanities, and thus is broader in meaning than the English term.


grated into contemporary western scholarship. As this book studies Central Asia through Islam, such a critical remark appears necessary to me; however, this should by no means devalues the work done so far.

Since perestroika, Central Asia has reconnected to the rest of the world. This also applies to the integration of the region into Oriental Studies, Islamic Studies, Social An-thropology, Political Studies and many other sciences. As many of the texts in this book show, the west’s main inte-rest in the region remains political and religious. This spe-cific approach to Central Asia is not only motivated by real political events – at least not until 9 / 11 and the military invasion of Afghanistan by the U.S. It is my contention that the interest in the region coincided with a scientific curio-sity about the orient, which had been inaccessible for many decades and that is surrounded by imaginations about »the Silk Road«. Even today we find general overviews and pub-lications that start by claiming that Central Asia is an un-known area despite the literature that has been produced and become accessible in various languages. It is difficult not to see the mystical imaginaries that consciously or un-consciously guide such views. So how can we understand the western construction of Central Asia today? And how does this book contribute to this field?

To start with, let me go back to the Orientalism de bate that has produced many valuable books with a specific fo-cus on orientalist representations since Edward Said’s Ori-entalism critic.75 While I cannot provide a full account of the debate here, a few points must be mentioned to un-

75 The debate among Central Asia scholars has remained focussed on the question to what degree Russia’s orientalists share similar features with European ones. Hence the question has been less about how the European and American scholars represents Central Asia, but rather how Russian scholars represents or integrate in their orient. For a concise summary of the different debates contrasted to the British orientalists, see Morrison 2009, »Applied orientalism«.

derstand how Central Asia is portrayed in contemporary western writings.

Dietrich Jung76 has argued that essentialist images of Islam are the result of modernism and the emerging of a global public sphere. Between the second half of the nine-teenth century and World War II, Islam emerged, along with a critical engagement with Christianity, within Europe. Hence, the first scholars of Islam were students who had undergone theological studies (and as a result broke with their church) and specialists of Semitic languages. In his book »Orientalists, Islamists and the Global Public Sphere« Jung traces the emergence of Islamic Studies as a universi-ty subject. Here he emphasizes the role that scholars play in creating an essential image of Islam. For instance, the paradigm of Islam as a political religion with a violent po-tential is a product of the late nineteenth century, notably put forward by scholars like Julius Wellhausen and others.77

Jung links textual productions about Islam to the bio-graphies of individual scholars, and thus develops the ge-nealogy of the image of Islam. Similarly, this present book presents scholarly texts with the biographies of leading in-tellectuals, most of them Arabists. Yet obviously it is not only a historical picture that emerges from these texts and biographies, but a contemporary debate that is sometimes

76 Dietrich Jung 2011. Orientalists, Islamists and the global public sphere. A genealogy of the modern essentialist image of Islam. Sheffield, Oakville: Equinox.77 Julius Wellhausen who, like his contemporaries was a specialist of Se-mitic languages, wrote for the Encyclopaedia Britannica about the life of the Prophet as a political leader. His argument was, that the Prophet Mu-hammad turned into a political leader with the move from Mecca to Medi-na. Since this time he came to utilize Islam as a way to create a common-wealth which turned profitable for the Arab tribes. (Jung, p. 135 ff, Chapter 5). For another perspective on Wellhausen consider Edouard Conte 2011. Julius Wellhausen und die »Kinder Adams«. Die Aktualität der Orientalis-ten. In B. Schnepel, G. Brands and H. Schönig (eds.), Orient – Orienta-listik – Orientalismus. Geschiche und Aktualität einer Debatte. Bielefeld: Transcript, pp. 43–70.


contradictory but based on a shared experience – life in the Soviet Union.

In Jung’s book Central Asia is completely absent and the image of Islam is built upon the German, (French) and Bri-tish experience in the Middle East (especially the Otto man Empire, Syria and Egypt) and India. This is not a coinci-dence but rather the result of the politics of this time and the sources available to scholars. Central Asia does not exist in these debates on Islam, yet travel books and bota-nic expeditions have produced exotic knowledge about the »Central Asian tribes« since the nineteenth century.78 This Central Asia is mostly the territory of today’s Afghanistan, while the image of the Emirate of Bukhara remains mysti-fied.79 With the establishment of the Soviet Union the area is even more left to the imagination. These imaginaries are grounded in the oriental image that Jung describes in his book. Hence, Islam – political by nature – offers itself to political resistance against Russia’s / Soviet’s dominance. Most obviously, Benningsen80 and Wimbush have put for-

78 This Central Asia is first of all Afghanistan and the British interest zone. Much of the early material on the region has been supplied by for-mer high ranking military official of the British Army. See for instance, Mayor H. G. Raverty 1881. Notes on Afghanistan and part of Beluchistan. London: George Edward Eyre and William Spottiswoodo; Henry W. Bellew 1891. An inquiry into the ethnography of Afghanistan. London: The Orien-tal University Institute; John Biddulph 1971. Tribes of the Hindoo Koosh. Graz: Akademischer Druck und Verlagsanstalt. He claims to be one of the first to visit Chitral in the Pamir describing »Mohamedanism« and »tribal life«.79 »The Silk road« notion has maintained a mystical notion since Marco Polo’s (~1254–1324) description of his travel.80 Alexandre Benningsen and Chantal Lemercier-Quelquejay 1967. Is-lam in the Soviet Union. (Translated from French by E. Geoffrey and H. Evans) London et al.: Pall Mall; Alexandre Benningsen and S. Enders Wim-bush 1979. Alexandre Benningsen and S. Enders Wimbush 1985. Mystics and commissars, Sufism in the Soviet Union. London: Hurst; ibidem 1986. Muslims of the Soviet empire. Bloomington: Indiana University; Alexandre Benningsen and Maria Broxup 1983. The Islamic threat to the Soviet state. London: Taylor & Francis. For an earlier version of this narrative of Muslim

ward this view of a Sufi Islam that resists efforts of Sovietiza-tion in Central Asia. Similarly, Michael Rywkin81 wrote »The struggle between the Basmachi and the Russian troops was not between Communists and anti-Communists, as in Rus-sia, but between Russians and Moslems.« (1963 p. 57)

A continuation of this view has recently been provided by Pinar Akcali,82 who sees the co-operations of Central Asian movements since perestroika as the wish to unite in Islam. Hence, he argues that for the Islamic Rebirth Party in Tajikistan and the Afghan mujahiddin »the common bond of Islam was the most important and decisive identity that transcended other identities existing in the region, such as nationalism and ethnicity« (p. 267). While this may have been true for some actors, the Islamic Rebirth Party in Ta-jikistan very consciously abstained from becoming a pan-Islamic actor in the region, opting for national engagement – they were the first calling to replace the official language Russian with Tajik. Thus, analyzes that identify Islam as an underlying strategy rather than a mode of communication and moral code help fix the region into an »orient« prede-fined by Islam.

At the same time, imagining an Islamic civilization, an Islamic culture or unity under Islam serves as a resource to some contributors to reconnect their society to the Arab world and positively evaluate their past struggles under his-torical materialism and the pyatichlenka. Thus, reintegra-ting Central Asia into »the orient« through Islam is a pro-cess that seems to be developing mutually between some intellectuals from Central Asia and western academics.

resistance to Russia and the Soviets see L.T. General Sir George Macmunn 1929. Afghanistan from Darius to Amanullah. London: G. Bell & Sons LTD.81 Michael Rywkin 1963. Russia in Central Asia. New York: Collier books.82 Pinar Akcali 1998. Islam as a »common bond« in Central Asia: Islamic Renaissance Party and the Afghan mujahidin. Central Asian Survey 17(2): 267–284.


This western genealogy of studying Central Asia through its religious potential culminated in the Afghan war in the 1980s, where the west supported radical political Muslim groups – the Taliban – ready to face the Soviet army. Diet-rich Reetz, who worked at the embassy of the German De-mocratic Republic in Pakistan during this period, remem-bers his western counterparts being very confident that the Islamic identity was strong enough to break the Soviet Union.83 Obviously this confidence proved right, and the Taliban were the beginning of the end of Soviet superiority in the southern tier.

The primary focus on Central Asia through Islam has continued and it is in this domain that most studies have been produced. Whether as a dangerous or cultural iden-tity, Islam remains one of the main subjects through which Central Asia is discussed in Europe and the U.S. This is not only true for academics but even more for politicians. For instance, political and academic institutions, as well as international bodies have organized numerous »dialogues« in or on behalf of Germany during the last two decades.84

83 In a private conversation (5.6.2012), Dietrich Reetz (ZMO) recalled a meeting during his time at the embassy of the German Democratic Repub-lic in Pakistan. His British counterpart had said self-confidentially that the west would not need to do much but to leave the mujaheddin fight against the Soviet troops. Reetz has documented the development of Asian studies in the German Democratic Republic. His publication contextualizes Asian studies in the DDR within a debate about how to integrate DDR acade-mics into the West German academy after reunification. See Dietrich Reetz 1991. Die Entwicklung und Stand der Asienwissenschaften in der DDR. Asien. Deutsche Zeitschrift für Politik, Wirtschaft und Kultur 38: 75–87. 84 Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (political foundation following the Social Democratic Party’s (SPD) principles) is actively engaged in dialogue bet-ween the state and Islam for instance »Dialog zwischen Staat und Religi-on: die Samarkander-Konferenz« September 2006. For a critical view of the OSCE and the dialogues they have conducted with the Central Asian states, see Tim Epkenhans 2006. Das Dilemma der OSZE in Zentralasien. OSZE-Jahrbuch 2006, pp. 233–245. I myself organized such a Secular-Religious Dialogue for International Alert, Tajikistan in October 2011. Another Dialogue by the German Ministry for International Affairs and

The goal of these dialogues is to explain the German mo-del of secularism as a way to engage with Islam. While not always explicitly mentioned, all participants discuss Islam as »the problem« that needs to be solved. Hence, these dialogues are meant to find a solution to Islam, and the European models are seen as suitable for being imitated. So far, these meetings have had minimal impact. In fact, while we were »dialoguing« in October 2011 in Berlin with a delegation from Tajikistan, the Tajik regime closed an-other important mosque in Tajikistan and arrested further religious authorities!

Today, scholars as well as international organizations and political institutions attempt to »improve« the condi-tions in Central Asia and suggest solutions for dealing with »radical Islam.« Thus, the west holds the remedies to gain control over this »danger«, the main manifestation of which was the event of 9 / 11. While such views have been criti-cized repeatedly,85 it appears difficult to escape the under-lying structures that shape contemporary research topics, funding networks, and politics. Many recent studies have reinforced the image of Central Asia as first, a tribal / clan area with more or less »real« Muslims, and second, a pro-blem because of its unsolved religious question. Hence, we can speak of an »orientalization« of the region by western scholars.

Keeping this criticism in mind, we can understand the centrality of Islam for the intellectual elite in Central Asia conversing with western hegemonies. Competition over the region is articulated in religious terminology, whereas the models manifest in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, as well as Hizb al-Tahrir al-Islomi and other movements compete with secular suggestions from Germany, Turkey, the US, Britain, etc. It goes without saying that the intellectual eli-

CORE took place in April 2013. Both included visits at ZMO and political foundations.85 See for instance, Mariya Y. Omelicheva 2011.


te in Central Asia today are directly involved and confron-ted with western models of Islam and the nation state, and hence their ideas and views have to be seen in relation to the above mentioned western approaches. The scholars arti-culate these competiting visions in different ways, sugges-ting alternative models and discussions. The text genres are only one way to convey the large plurality of engagements with Islam in Central Asia.

This book has suggested engaging closely with scholars and their works on Islam in Central Asia. Capturing diffe-rences and commonalities of discourses and life courses, the book invites scholars to rethink research through diffe-rent text genres. It is still common to treat Central Asia as a homogenous block, especially in political analyzes with-out respecting local debates. However, we urgently need to recognized a wide variety of developments and to pay attention to local scholarship and scholars and their con-tribution to science, not only as producers of information but as participants in (global) theoretical debates and local nation making.

Scholarship is more than the sequential accumulation of texts, it is a personal investment into intellectual history and into national and cultural debates. Studying these scholars’ texts and professional biographies provides a unique op-portunity to rethink the present by integrating the past as an existing reference point (not an imagined and abolished idea).

I shall finish these final remarks by expressing my deep gratitude to the contributors, who have allowed us to create this book and thus preserve a view of history from which young future researchers can learn. All of the contributors are respected researchers and / or political figures whose life stories are in themselves worth telling. Hence, we hope that engaging with the chapters will contribute to what Dina Wilkowsky had worked for: a dialogue of (scientific) cultures in a climate of mutual respect.

glossary of Selected Terms

The following glossary provides a selection of terms that have been used in the contributions. Due to the language plurality and the different versions of one term found in the various Central Asian languages we have decided to give only those versions that were used in the texts.

Arab. Arabiccom. compareKaz. Kazaksyn. synonymPers. PersianRuss. RussianTaj. TajikTurk. Turkic (dialects of Central Asia)Uz. Uzbek

aksakal (Turk.): elderly man, in some places also community leader

aspirantura (Russ.): further grade of qualification in the Russian academic system. After successful exams one holds the status of Candidate of Science (kandidat nauk)

bahs (Arab): Talk around a specific thing or theme, discussions

basmachi (Russ.): robbers, opposition movement in the early twentieth century

bid’a (Arab): impermissible innovations

370 Central Asian Intellectuals on Islam

da’wa (Arab): to call to Islam, spread the religious messagedar al-Islam (Arab): lands of Islam – as opposed to land of

war dar al-harbdawra (Arab), Syn.: doira (Taj.): room, chamber, in Central

Asia usually to refer to a circle of scholars. Com. hujra (Arab)

dhikr (Arab): prayer performance among SufisDUMK (Russ.): Dukhovnoe Upravlenie Musul’man Kazakh-

stana Spiritual Directorate of Kazakhstan’s Mus-lims ← SAMK: Spiritual Administration of Muslims of Kyrgyzstan / Kazakhstan

fatwa (Arab): legal reasoning, legal advice fiqh (Arab): Islamic jurisprudence firqa (Arab): secthajj (Arab): pilgrimage ← haji: person who went on hajjhido (Arab): comments on Muslim lawhijab (Arab): in Central Asia exclusively used for the scarf

that demonstrates a religious identity, against the scarf that many women wear out of »tradition« (Taj. rumol, lengi).

hijra (Arab): (religious motivated) emigration ← emigration of the Prophet Muhammad from Mekka to Medina and beginning for the Muslim calendar

hujra (Arab): room, chamber, cell (private study circles). Com. dawra

imam-khatib (Taj., Turk.): prayer leaderishan (Pers.): titles of family descent. Similarly: shaykh,

sayyidjam’at (Arab, Turk.): associations, meetings, group ← (Taj.):

regional districtjanoza (Arab): funeral, in Central Asia usually referring to a

religious funeraljum’a (Arab): Friday ← jum‘a prayer, jum’a mosquekalym or qalym (Kaz., Uz., Taj.), aghirlik (Turk.): dowry khatna (Arab): circumcisionkholkhoz (Rus.): an abbreviation of kollektivnoe khozyaystvo

(collective farming)koracha (Turk.): mob, black bone

korenizatsiya (Russ.): roo ting power in »indigenous nationalities«

koshok (Kyrg.): lament song, probably oldest genre in Cen-tral Asian oral literature

madhhab (Arab): schools of fiqh, legal schoolmadrasa (Arab): seminar, Islamic collegemahalla (Arab): place, neighbourhood, usually referring to

a local community within a village or town. Com. guzar, kūcha: street, road, neighbourhood. The term also is used to designate regionalism, mahalgaroi

mahr (Arab): bride pricemajlis (Arab): meeting, groupingmaktab (Arab): school; previously, local village school for

boysmazar (Arab): graveyard, tombs of saints mudarris (Arab): lecturer, teacher, tutormufti (Arab): expert in Islamic law qualified to give authori-

tative legal opinions (fatwa); also highest religious autho-rity in the Central Asian republics

mujaddidiyya (Arab): renovationism, renewernamaz or namoz (Pers.): Muslim prayerok-suyak (Kaz.): blue blood, white bone, nobeltypir (Pers.): Sufi leader, leader of a tariqa (brotherhood

group) qadiz (Arab): see qaziqazi (Arab): judge; qazi kalon: chief judgera’y (Arab): subjective opinion SADUM (Rus.): Sredneaziatskoe dukhovnoe upravlenie

musul’man Spiritual Administration of Muslims of Central Asia and Kazakhstan

salt (Kyrg.): believes and customssayyil, sayyil-bayram (Turk.): festival of spring in late Aprilshaykh (Arab): Sufi leader, title of respect. Similar titles:

ishan, hoja, sharifshezhyre (Kaz.): genealogyshirk (Arab): polytheism or practicing idolatrytawhid (Arab): principle of monotheism, doctrine of oneness

Glossary 373372 Central Asian Intellectuals on Islam

uezd (Rus.): province. Further terms: okrug (Russ.): re-gions, volost’ (Russ.): districts, and aul (Kaz.), qishlak (Taj. Uzb.): villages

ulama (Arab): religious leaderszikr (Arab): veneration, rememberziyarat (Arab): pilgrimage, to go and visit somebody (a res-

pected person)

Selected Religious groups active in Central Asia

The following list includes some of the most well known religious groups and movements of Central Asia that were mentioned in the texts.

Adolat (Justice), (Uzbekistan, Ferghana Valley)Birlik, Political Party in UzbekistanErk, political party in UzbekistanFethullah Gülen, movement with Turkic origin, founded by

Said Nursi at the beginning of the twentieth century in Turkey, schools in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan mainly

Hanafi madhab, school of Sunni Islam, main madhhab in Central Asia

Hizb al-Tahrir al-Islomi (HT), religious political movement (all over Central Asia)

Islamic Movement Uzbekistan (IMU), militant movement in Central Asia

Islamic Revival Party (IRP), in all Central Asian republics in 1991 and later mainly IRP Tajikistan which is today the most important opposition party in Tajikistan

Islam Lashkarlari (Warriors of Islam), religious-political group (Ferghana Valley)

Isma’iliyya, Ismaili who are a Shiite groupSalafi, different movements and groupings among Sunni

Muslims that consider the earliest Muslims (the ances-tors – Salaf) as examples of Islamic practice all over Cen-tral Asia

Sufi groupings, most important in Central Asia are the the Naqshbandiyya-Mujaddidiya-Husayniya, Chechen Sufi groups of Qadiriyya, and the Jahriyya

Tablighi Jama‘at, since 1998 all over Central Asiaal-Takfir wa’l-Hijra (short version: al-Takfir), Kazakhstan

since mid-1990sTawba (Repentance), Islamic political group (Uzbekistan

until 1995)Tengrianism, a pre-Islamic faith with elements of nature

worship and shamanism. See also tengrianstvo (Russian) and tengrianizm (Kyrgyz)

Wahhabiyya, theological movement that developed out of Hanbali madhab, few groups in Central Asia

Glossary 375374 Central Asian Intellectuals on Islam

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19 Gerhard Höpp / Peter Wien / René Wildangel (Hg.): Blind für die Geschichte? Arabische Begegnungen mit dem Nationalsozialismus (2004)

20 Georg Berkemer / Margret Frenz (eds.): Sharing Sovereignty. The Little Kingdom in South Asia (2004)

21 Nora Lafi (ed.) : Municipalités méditerranéennes. Les réformes urbaines ottomanes au miroir d’une histoire comparée (Moyen Orient, Maghreb, Europe méridionale) (2005)

22 Sonja Hegasy, Elke Kaschl (eds.): Changing Values Among Youth. Examples from the Arab World and Germany (2007)

23 Patrick, Krajewski: Kautschuk, Quarantäne, Krieg. Dhauhandel in Ostafrika, 1880-1914 (2006)

24 René Wildangel: Zwischen Achse und Mandatsmacht. Palästina und der Nationalsozialismus (2007)

25 Katja Hermann: Palästina in Israel. Selbstorganisation und politische Partizipation der palästinensischen Minderheit in Israel (2008)

26 AtaTaheri / Burkhard Ganzer: Deutsche Agenten bei iranischen Stämmen 1942-1944. Ein Augenzeugenbericht (2008)

27 Bettina Gräf: Medien-Fatwas@Yusuf al-Qaradawi. Die Popularisierung des islamischen Rechts (2010)

28 Katrin Bromber: Imperiale Propaganda. Die ostafrikanische Militärpresse im Zweiten Weltkrieg (2009)

29 Israel Gershoni / Götz Nordbruch: Sympathie und Schrecken. Begegnungen mit Faschismus und Nationalsozialismus in Ägypten, 1922-1937 (2011)

30 Rana von Mende-Altaylı: Die Polygamiedebatte in der Spätphase des Osmanischen Reichs. Kontroversen und Reformen (2013)

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STUDIEN

1 Joachim Heidrich (Hg.): Changing Identities. The Transformation of Asian and African Societies under Colonialism (1994)

2 Achim von Oppen / Richard Rottenburg (Hg.): Organisationswandel in Afrika. Kollektive Praxis und kulturelle Aneignung (1995)

3 Jan-Georg Deutsch: Educating the Middlemen. A Political and Economic History of Statutory Cocoa Marketing in Nigeria, 1936-47 (1995)

4 Gerhard Höpp (Hg.): Fremde Erfahrungen. Asiaten und Afrikaner in Deutschland, Österreich und in der Schweiz bis 1945 (1996)

5 Helmut Bley: Afrika: Geschichte und Politik. Ausgewählte Beiträge 1967-1992 (1997)

6 Gerhard Höpp: Muslime in der Mark. Als Kriegsgefangene und Internierte in Wünsdorf und Zossen, 1914-1924 (1997), vergriffen (online http://www.zmo.de/publikationen/zmo_studien.html)

7 Jan Georg Deutsch / Albert Wirtz (Hg.): Geschichte in Afrika. Einführung in Probleme und Debatten (1997) vergriffen (online http://www.zmo.de/publikationen/zmo_studien.html)

8 Henner Fürtig: Islamische Weltauffassung und außenpolitische Konzeptionen der iranischen Staatsführung seit dem Tod Ajatollah Khomeinis (1998)

9 Brigitte Bühler-Probst: Mündliche Überlieferungen. Geschichte und Geschichten der Wiya im Grasland von Kamerun (1999)

10 Katja Füllberg-Stollberg / Petra Heidrich / Ellinor Schöne (Hg.): Dissociation and Appropriation – Responses to Globalization in Asia and Africa (1999)

11 Jonker, Gerdien (Hg.): Kern und Rand. Religiöse Minderheiten aus der Türkei in Deutschland (1999), vergriffen

(online http://www.zmo.de/publikationen/zmo_studien.html)12 Reinhard Kößler / Dieter Neubert / Achim von Oppen: Gemeinschaften in

einer entgrenzten Welt (1999)13 Gerhard Höpp / Brigitte Reinwald: Fremdeinsätze. Afrikaner und Asiaten

in europäischen Kriegen (2000), vergriffen (online: http://www.zmo.de/publikationen/studien13.pdf)14 Petra Heidrich / Heike Liebau (Hg.): Akteure des Wandels? Lebensläufe

und Gruppenbilder an Schnittstellen von Kulturen (2001)15 Dietrich Reetz (Hg.): Sendungsbewußtsein oder Eigennutz. Zu

Motivation und Selbstverständnis islamischer Mobilisierung (2001)16 Gerhard Höpp: Mufti-Papiere. Briefe, Memoranden, Reden und Aufrufe

Amin al-Husainis aus dem Exil 1940-1945 (2. Aufl. 2004)17 Katja Füllberg-Stolberg: Amerika in Afrika – Die Rolle der Afroamerikaner

in den Beziehungen zwischen den USA und Afrika 1880–1910 (2003)

18 Brigitte Reinwald: Reisen durch den Krieg. Erfahrungen und Lebensstrategien westafrikanischer Weltkriegsveteranen der französischen Kolonialarmee (2005)