Islam, Politics and Identity in Uzbekistan: Political and Cultural Landscapes in Central Asia's Lynchpin State

Abstract

The collapse of Soviet authority in Central Asia has left these states with an inchoate national identity. In Uzbekistan, an identity is emerging that is closely linked to the reemergence of Islam as a social and cultural substate, in spite of a decades-long effort to excise Islam from the region's cultural geography.Since independence, the administration of Islam Karimov has undertaken to incorporate elements of Islam into national identity, albeit only under conditions determined and controlled by the state. At the same time, the religious landscape has been transformed, with thousands of new mosques and medressehs appearing in the years after the dispersal of Marxist-Leninist ideology. The recovery of the Islamic heritage and its connection to national identity is reinforced by recent field research. Surveys of university students taken in several geographically-dispersed cities indicate solid support among youth in Uzbekistan for the precepts of the faith, a clear sign that the region's long divorce f...