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 Journal of Muslim Affairs, Vol. 24, No. 1, April 2004
‘Explaining’ Islam in Central Asia:An Anthropological Approach for Uzbekistan
RUSSELL ZANCA
Abstract
The debate about religion in Central Asia, and specifically Uzbekistan, revolves either around the need to combat extremism as terrorism or the necessity for the state to stop oppressing ordinary believers in fear of a religious takeover of the society. This paper shall demonstratethat neither of these hypothetical axes is necessarily bad or wrong, but they leave out crucial  factors explaining the rise in religious behavior and practice in Uzbekistan today. Using ethnography, my discussion will show how religious movements in Uzbekistan can be seen as part youth rebellion and part opposition to the current monolithic Uzbek political system. The paper will demonstrate that religion in Central Asia operates as a force reaching beyond its politicization to the social fabric of daily life. It will highlight the legacy of Central Asian Islam,especially the Islam of the various schools of thought that characterize Uzbekistan’s cities aswell as the population-dense Ferghana Valley. In concluding, I will argue that people, whether religious or not, are not simply prey to extremists and that ignoring contemporary culture and history as a Muslim Uzbek people makes broad comparisons to countries such as Pakistan and  Afghanistan ill-informed.
Introduction
Unless we contemporary scholars are theologians or historians of religion, it is very rarethese days to discuss Islam in any terms other than those bespeaking totalizing,crisis-driven, introductory, or a damage-control-type discourse.
1
Actually, this haspretty much characterized mainstream Western social science about Islam since theearly 1990s and continues so
a fortiori 
since 2001.
2
As an anthropologist with more thana decade’s worth of Central Asian field research experience, mainly in Uzbekistan, itrecently struck me that those of us who work closely with and share our lives withordinary people do not usually have much to say about any of this. Of course, we readthe official reports from governments and NGOs, and we pay attention to the press andits coverage of Central Asia.
3
We try to keep up with all manner of scholarly andsemi-scholarly advice that colleagues peddle to governments and interested partiesabout how likely Uzbekistan is to fall prey to Muslim zealots,
4
and how vital explana-tions are, if we are to avoid the rise of another totalitarian, theocratic state or someincreasingly powerful movement that seems hell-bent on destroying the kind of CentralAsian society that we wish to see at least partly erected or created in our own image.Today I address the limitations of an approach that forever tries to ‘explain’ Islam inUzbekistan by dichotomizing the bad, violence-prone zealots—the IMUers and Hizb-ut-Tahrirites—and the good people of traditional Central Asian Islam, long established
ISSN1360-2004print/ISSN1469-9591online/04/010099-09
2004InstituteofMuslimMinorityAffairsDOI: 10.1080/1360200042000212142
 
100
Russell Zanca
adherents of the liberal Hanafi
madhab
and Sufistic orders—the ‘least official andorthodox wing’ of the faith
5
 —even if we admit that obviously there are such things asgood and bad Muslims as well as good and bad Christians, policemen, hairdressers, doggroomers, etc. Instead, I claim that we are going to have a hard time accounting for thegrowth or decline of religious tendencies and movements in Central Asia if we keeplooking only at (1) structures, such as secretive cells and militaries, (2) agents, such aspolitical leaders and key oppositionist or terrorist personalities, (3) policies, such asstate persecution of religion, or (4) the economics of prosperity and poverty. Rather, wealso need to include culture (I dare say) in the sense of the transmission of religiousvalues and the kinds of habitual practices and beliefs that inform and guide theeveryday lives of millions of Uzbeks. It is the sustained effect of such cultural norms andvalues that I think will play the greatest role in maintaining a heterogeneous outlooktoward religious beliefs and practices in Uzbekistan, and that will militate againstradical schools of Islamic thought and action. Culture itself, more than good or badpolicies, key individuals, or economic growth or decline, will serve as the greatestimpediment to extremist success.
Where is Islam in the Explanations?
While the analysis of a social scientist is possible (about Islam—RZ) and valid,it should be undertaken only if based on reliable knowledge and an under-standing of the phenomenon or movement, especially in a sphere related toreligion.
6
First of all, one of the most popular misconceptions of non-specialists (includingneighbors and university colleagues) as a result of the ‘War on Terror’ is the idea thattraveling and working in a country such as Uzbekistan puts an American in seriousdanger. This way of thinking is guided not by any interest in why there’s a growinginterest and turn toward religion. Rather, it’s now simply about the dangers of anIslamic resurgence in the consciousness of tens of thousands of Central Asians and thesupposed fact that at the very least each one of these people is a potential terrorist.Is there a danger of radical and violent Islamism in Central Asia? Of course there is,but is it fair to see every devout Muslim as (1) a more or less criminally insaneindividual who uses his/her understanding of God’s Word to smite each non-Muslimwho crosses his/her path, (2) a hostile person of the too righteously offended camp, or(3) as a Palestinian-type
shaheed ( 
martyr)/suicide bomber? Most likely not.If before we had to question how it came to be that Westernization and free marketactivity were simply matters or processes to be described whereas the return to Islamictraditions and practices had to be explained because one was simply normal and rightand the other backward and extremist, now we have to probe how a return to a religioustradition can only be the source for hatred and violence. Talal Asad pointed to thisegregious double standard in the analysis of Muslim societies more than ten years ago.
7
He meant that the underlying assumption was that a return to Islamic values andtraditions had to be analyzed as something aberrant because the Western model was soself-evidently better, or at least self-evidently more progressive. Of course, not allWestern and secular scholars are guilty of this, but some have been.
8
How likely wouldit be to find anyone applauding a return to values that focus on hard work, clean living,family togetherness, empathy toward others, material sharing with the poor, reconcili-ation with abused or mistreated spouses, and a life dedicated to ending addictions to
 
‘Explaining’ Islam in Central Asia
101alcohol and drugs? Not very many, if these values are those promoted by ordinaryMuslims of modern Central Asia.One of the great shortcomings that so many of us have who wish to engage Islamicmovements and activities on the part of individuals, myself included, is our lack of depth of Islam itself. Students of Islamic rebirth in Central Asia continue to talk aroundreligion itself, preferring mainly to focus on political aspects of religious organizations,or on their allegedly violent activities and recruitment strategies. This point wasrecently brought home by Bruce Grant, when he said that the time has come for all of us wishing to make meaningful contributions about religion and society or religion andculture in Central Asia and the Caucasus to engage religion itself—meaning the specifictextual understandings and behavioral activities that guide people’s lives and give themmeaning.
9
It is really up to us to begin to conduct the kind of fieldwork that engagespeople about their beliefs and understandings of the places they live in as well as toexamine the texts that guide their lives and that impart inspiration and action to CentralAsians.In fact, a better kind of explanation really has to be our goal in looking at religiousthought, practice, and activity in Central Asia today. This strikes me as especiallyimportant in anthropology, a field where practitioners work very closely with people inordinary life conditions seeking to make someone else’s common sense sensible to thosewith rather different senses of common sense. Not long ago Eric Wolf urged anthropol-ogists to desist shying away from knowing anything because of all the complexities andmysteries associated with the ways by which others reckon and speak reality.
10
It strikesme as scholarly irresponsible not to try to explain the worlds of others with themindfulness that you will make mistakes and write inaccuracies here and there,according to any number of indigenous and non-indigenous people.
Valid but Partial Explanations
Often, the two prominent reasons for a return to Islam and the taking up of extremistbanners relate to the ideological void left in the wake of Soviet power and the grindingpoverty that affects nearly all areas of Central Asia, and to some extent these may bepartly just and functional reasons.
11
But I would like to add a third, and that isindependence itself in the form of competing nationalist ideologies and newly indepen-dent state histories. In the past dozen years, Central Asia has become a much moredivisive inter-ethnic area than was true throughout the Soviet period. Governmentsdemonize one another and ordinary citizens are made to fear outsiders to such anextent that neighboring Central Asians face discrimination in extraterritorial circum-stances—business travel, weddings, scholarship, etc.—hitherto unimaginable for mostwho grew up under the Soviet system
12
. What better way out than Islam is proposed?A politicized Islam that opposes current Central Asian state ideologies naturallyeschews ethnic difference and calls upon all faithful people to come together as acommunity of believers who share so much through Islamic dogma and teachings.The substance of this type of argument is hardly original, but we should notunderestimate the loss of pride and prestige associated with the former Soviet Union.
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Coming together through religion is not simply a matter of filling an ideological orspiritual void; to many—youth included—it has become a practical strategy for assert-ing an almost dormant identity that contains the power of history, the power of greatness.
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If, as we have long argued, the Soviet system unofficially discriminatedagainst and disparaged the cultures of Central Asians, then why should people,
of 00

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uflinks

Can you please scan and upload the article, "Islam and Muslims in Fiji," in this same issue, pages 141 - 154? I'm really need of it.

reply11 / 04 / 2009
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