19. Divided Faith: Trapped between State and Islam in Uzbekistan
Eric M. McGlinchey
Though I had been working with Islamic activists in Uzbekistan for severalmonths, I had yet to accompany any of my colleagues to Friday prayer. Itwas not that I was avoiding prayer services out of principle. I study religionand politics and am a frequent visitor to mosques, churches, and temples inthe United States. And although mine is more an intellectual than a spiri-tual pursuit, I have always felt welcome by the American Muslim com-munity. Islam in Central Asia, however, is not Islam in the United States.I feared that, here, moving from outside observer to inside fellow travelermight not be so easy.At the same time, I knew that the only way to begin to understand Islamin Uzbekistan was to become a participant in Uzbek society and not simplya consumer of the state-controlled media. The post-Soviet Uzbek govern-ment attempts to manage Islam much as it attempts to manage many otheraspects of Uzbek life. The Uzbek National Press Agency regularly writesabout Islamic
“
bandits
”
and
“
extremists,
”
and the Uzbek president, IslamKarimov, warns of a
“
huge evil
—
international terrorism, extremism, andfanaticism
—
which has been posing a threat to our peaceful and calm lifeover the past few years.
”
1
The Uzbek state, though, is by no means omni-present and all-powerful. The more I traveled throughout Uzbekistan themore I learned that the state
’
s alarmist rhetoric, along with its policies, laws,and directives, are often ignored at the local level. And thus, it is at this lo-cal level
—
in conversations with friends and colleagues at the mosques, themarkets, in family homes, and during Friday evening gatherings
—
in short,in the experiences of everyday Uzbek life, that I focus my study of Islam inUzbekistan. Much as the historian Stephen Kotkin notes in his analysis ofstate-society relations during 1930s Soviet rule, so too in today
’
s Uzbeki-stan
“
there is no substitute for letting people speak as much as possible intheir own words.
”
2
Listening to Uzbeks
’
own words allows us to explore the strengths and
limits of authoritarian rule. That is, although the state
’
s strategies of con-trol may be apparent, we can understand the effectiveness of these strate-gies only in their application, only by investigating how a
“
society resists being reduced
”
to the will of the state.
3
In this chapter I detail Uzbek soci-ety
’
s attempts
—
some successful, some not
—
at such resistance. In sectionone I use the lens of the neighborhood mosque to illustrate how imamsand congregants often ignore the Karimov regime
’
s attempts at control.In section two I shift my focus from the neighborhood mosque to indi-viduals
’
and families
’
attempts to resist government intimidation. Morespeci
fi
cally, I study social activists
’
successful attempts in resisting falsecharges of Islamic extremism. The Karimov regime has proven adept atmanipulating Islam, at using such charges to intimidate and imprison itsperceived opponents. In section three I conclude with one failed attemptat resisting state repression. I share the story of Rustam Klichev, a popularimam whom the state recently imprisoned on charges of Islamist extrem-ism. Unfortunately, Uzbek society occasionally does succumb to the willof the Karimov regime. And, as my Uzbek colleagues emphasize, thesecases of failed resistance need to be recounted as well.
the neighborhood mosque and the limits ofuzbek state control
A common refrain among Uzbek Muslims is that separation of religionand state, though provided by the constitution, does not exist in prac-tice. The committee for religious affairs, Uzbek President Islam Kari-mov
’
s gatekeeper for all things spiritual, decides which religious groupscan or cannot be registered. Several groups
—
those the government per-ceives as extremist
—
are blacklisted and classi
fi
ed as criminal organiza-tions. Any association with these organizations can lead to lengthy jailstays
—
punishments that, I discovered in my conversations with prac-ticing Uzbek Muslims, can become life sentences.The Uzbek leadership has been the most fervent of all Central Asiangovernments in its prosecution of Islamic activists. Since the Soviet col-lapse in 1991, Uzbek security services have jailed more than seven thou-sand Muslims.
4
Some of those currently in jail indeed are, as the Uzbekgovernment asserts, Islamist extremists. Most notably, the Islamic Move-ment of Uzbekistan
(IMU) has repeatedly taken civilian hostages andmounted armed attacks against government forces in its avowed quest to build an Islamic caliphate in Central Asia. Moreover, militants thought to be connected with the IMU targeted President Karimov in a botched assas-sination attempt in February 1999 and engaged Kyrgyz and Uzbek troopsin the Ferghana Valley in the summers of 1999 and 2000.
5
In 2004 suicide bombers attacked Tashkent
’
s central bazaar, the government prosecutor
’
s
306
/
Eric M. McGlinchey
Divided Faith
/
307
office, and the Israeli and U.S. embassies. That all of these attacks are coor-dinated actions of a militant Islamist opposition—as the Karimov govern-ment claims—is not certain.
6
What is clear, however, is that President Kari-mov faces steady opposition. And this opposition, coupled with sporadicviolence, has created an atmosphere of suspicion and unease from whichfew are immune.An early casualty of government suspicion was Muhammad Rajab, animam in the Ferghana Valley city of Kokand. A local court imprisonedRajab in 1994, charging him with narcotics possession, though the state’sreal grievance, city residents told me, was Rajab’s popularity.
7
One decadelater, Rajab’s mosque remains padlocked. Kokand’s residents, however, havefound a new charismatic leader, and it was his mosque my colleague, Botir,and I were now entering.
8
Inside we join hundreds of worshippers tightly packed in the centralprayer hall. Grateful to be out of the cold rain, Botir and I remove our shoesand, along with other new arrivals, squeeze in for the start of the after-noon service. Young men and boys don
kufi,
knitted prayer hats, while olderUzbeks remove wet plastic coverings from their
doppi
, the traditional four-sided Uzbek skull cap. From where I sit, I count fifty rows of people linedshoulder to shoulder, twenty-five across. Outside in the courtyard hundredsmore gather in partially enclosed alcoves to listen to the imam’s sermon.This, though, is a small crowd. Botir assures me that during better weatherthe congregation spills into the surrounding streets.That this one mosque should be so popular might appear odd to the ca-sual observer. Several other mosques, many of them more centrally and con-veniently located, are spread throughout the city, yet most of these mosquesare sparsely attended during Friday prayer. Rather, it is this out of the waymosque here on the edge of town that attracts the largest crowds. Muslimsin Kokand and the surrounding villages come here, Botir explains, becausethe mosque’s imam—the spiritual leader—is one of the few who does notmix politics with religion.Uzbekistan’s Muslim Spiritual Board, also known as the Muftiate, ex-ercises considerable control over the country’s Islamic leaders. Though theMuftiate is formally independent of the secular government, in reality it iscontrolled by the state administration and used both to populate and to po-lice Uzbekistan’s Islamic clergy.
9
Particularly disliked by practicing Mus-lims, the Muftiate acts as a propaganda arm of President Karimov. It draftsthe text of Friday prayers in the state capital, Tashkent, and distributesthese official state sermons every week to imams throughout the country.Thus, an Uzbek attending Friday prayer in the green foothills of the TienShan Mountains in the far east of the country will hear the same sermonas an Uzbek at Friday prayer one thousand kilometers to the west, in thearid Kyzyl Kum desert. Often, the text of these prayers does not please themosque congregants. In October 2001, for example, the Muftiate instructed
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Everyday Life in Central Asia; Past and Present -- Trapped between State and Islam in Uzbekistan
Edited by Jeff Sahadeo of Carleton University and Russell Zanca of Northeastern Illinois University. Published by Indiana University Press. A copy of this book is available for purchase from IU Press at: http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=41648
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