SUMMARY:

In this article the authors discuss the prospects and potential of political Islam in post-Soviet Central Asia. According to the authors, the Soviet regime left an ambiguous legacy in Central Asia. On the one hand, the republics of Central Asia developed their national cultures and acquired institutions of statehood, thus progressing to agrarian-industrial societies. On the other hand, the Soviet regime was detrimental to the region’s development by precluding a market economy and democratic institutions and subjecting its population to Stalinist terror and forced collectivization. One of the results of Soviet rule was the emergence of unstable states. The authors demonstrate that various groups offered solutions to the crises of Central Asian societies. Political Islam was one such solution. As religion became an instrument of influencing a “lost society”, the number of Islamic and Christian missionaries coming to Kyrgyzstan increased dramatically, as did the number of mosques. There emerged Islamic organizations, which became bases for a limited number of Islamic parties. A minority of Islamic groups subscribed to a fundamentalist vision of Islam, demanding a cleansing of the religion from popular traditions and its Sufi legacy and a return to “pure” Islam based on the Koran. The authors also explore the intellectual lineage of Central Asian “fundamentalism”. They argue that fundamentalist Islamic movements were combined with the national-liberation movement after the Russian conquest of the region. Soviet authority unwillingly contributed to Central Asian fundamentalism by fighting against the “superstitions” of popular Islam, thus preparing the ground for the victorious march of “fundamentalist” purist Islam. Drawing on Sergei Abashin’s thesis, the authors explore the role of modernization and increased mobility in the development of new forms of Islamic consciousness in Central Asia. Attempting to forecast possible developments in the region, the authors believe that extremist excesses are unavoidable in a situation of political and economic crisis. At the same time, it is necessary to distinguish between “extremism” and “fundamentalism”: if the latter is the result of centuries-long transformations in Islam, the former is born out of the current post-Soviet crisis in the region. There is no necessary connection between the two, since in the Central Asian republics “extremism” and “fundamentalism” are often used as labels by the old nomenklatura, which preserved power in the post-Soviet era in order to delegitimize political opposition.