In this volume, historian Adeeb Khalid presents an overview of Islam's changing relationship to the state in Central Asia, from the time of Russian colonization (nineteenth century) through the post-Soviet period. The question that animates this book is whether Central Asian Islam presents a political danger to states or to wider interests. The author's answer is no. Khalid rejects essentialisms that posit Islam as a font of terrorism, but more specifically, he argues that due to Soviet repression of Islam's formal institutions in Central Asia, Islam became a locus of cultural identity, unconnected to intellectual trends elsewhere that established Islamism as a political effort to create Islamic states.
Khalid introduces the reader to the major intellectual currents among Muslims in Central Asia before 1917, noting the important divide between modernizers (Jadids) and traditionalists. In discussing the Soviet period, Khalid focuses the Soviet destruction of Muslim religious institutions. In spite of Communist antireligious efforts, the private practice of Islam continued because Islam is not fully dependent on formal institutions. Khalid writes, “Central Asian Islam, cut off from its own past and from Muslims outside the Soviet Union, became a local form of being rather than part of a global phenomenon” (p. 83). During the Cold War, Western scholars, inspired by denunciations of Muslim religious activity published in Soviet newspapers, drew overblown conclusions about Islam's vitality as an underground religion and even hoped that subversive Islam would destroy the Soviet Union. The Communist Party's relaxation of its antireligious policies during the perestroika/glasnost period of the late 1980s allowed ordinary Central Asians to renew their interest in Islamic practice, but Islam did not turn out to be a subversive force.
After the demise of the Soviet Union and state support of atheism, the newly independent states of Central Asia—Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan—drew on Islam as a source of identity but also sought to control expressions of Islam. Khalid's depiction of post-Soviet Islam is strongly focused on the interaction between religion and the state in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
In Tajikistan, the Islamic Renaissance Party (IRP) became one of the groups vying for political influence against the former Communists, leading to civil war in 1992. Tajikistan's civil war, and renewed civil war in Afghanistan in 1992, created a fear of instability in neighboring republics. In Uzbekistan, the government responded to the nascent opposition by gradually reestablishing a state control over Islam that seems even more thorough than it was under communism. The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) was formed by Uzbeks who called for Islamization, who gained war experience by fighting on behalf of the IRP in Tajikistan, and who, after the resolution of the civil war in 1997, went to Afghanistan and joined up with violent Islamist groups. Khalid divides political movements such as the IRP and IMU from other new movements for Islamization of society in Central Asia, such as Hizb ut-Tahrir and Jamiyat-i Tabligh, which seek the transformation of the state through personal preaching but not through direct political action.
There were bombings in Uzbekistan in 1999, 2001, and 2004; Khalid regards the government response to terrorism as extreme. Uzbekistan's extremism in repressing political Islam was seen most clearly in the Andijon massacre (May 2005). The government of Uzbekistan prosecutes, jails, and tortures thousands of men accused of belonging to Islamist groups. Strict laws prevent religious gatherings by unregistered groups, local authorities engage in surveillance of religious activity in their communities and report “excesses,” and communities are encouraged to denounce dissenters. Islam can be practiced and taught, but only within government approved limits. Khalid argues that dissenting expressions of Islam become politicized in direct correspondence to Uzbekistan's repressive conditions and are not strongly linked with outside forces or wider jihadist trends.
Students and nonexperts will find this book a clearly written introduction. One of the volume's shortcomings is that there is scant attention to Islam in post-Soviet Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, where the state has been far less repressive. Religious studies scholars may note that the author's interest in ordinary practice or doctrinal change is limited. Attention to gendered practices is also brief, marring the book's conclusion. Khalid asserts that Uzbekistan suppresses all nonofficial expressions of Islam, even private gatherings. This ignores substantial scholarly publishing about women's religious circles in Uzbekistan and thus misses the insight that the gendered perceptions of state actors define whose Islam is political and subject to repression.
These caveats notwithstanding, this work fulfills its goals: demonstrating that there are multiple voices within Islam in Central Asia and that state efforts to control, manipulate, and channel those voices have repeatedly led to very negative outcomes.
