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Abstract
In this article I describe and analyse non-institutionalized religious education among local women in Uzbekistan. I argue that while exhibiting vestiges of ‘traditional’ objectives, methods of teaching, and models of knowledge transmission, and incorporating elements of educational reforms advocated by the Central Asian reformers in the early 1900s, and of Soviet pedagogy, the dynamics of such education foster students' critical thinking. By enabling students to think critically about their lives and social environment, the non-institutionalized religious education does not have one predetermined outcome, but ensures social change that starts on an individual level, whereby a student can, but does not have to, engage politically with the state, which systematically intervenes in shaping its citizens' religious lives.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to the Kennan Institute of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (Washington, DC) for a research scholarship (2009–2010) that provided me with the time and space to write a draft of this article. I thank two anonymous reviewers and Deniz Kandiyoti for their most helpful comments and critiques.
Notes
1. I use pseudonyms for individuals and the places they reside at. Hovliguzar's population is about two hundred thousand. I use the Anglicized otins, a plural form of otin, instead of the local terms such as otinlar or otinchalar (a plural form of otincha).
2. Four of the students had graduated from local technical schools; one was a professor at a local university; others were traders and retired or unemployed individuals.
3. Tursun-oy's life history is based on interviews I conducted during my repeated visits to Hovliguzar in 2001, 2002, 2003, and 2011.
4. Local individuals feel different ways about being Muslim, and embody this feeling in different ways, contesting others' assessments of their Muslimness (Mosolmonchilik) and understandings of ‘correct’ Islam.
5. Hanafi mashab, one of the four Sunni schools of jurisprudence, is named after the founder, Imam Abu Hanifa (699–767 CE). Mahmood (Citation2005) refers to these schools as ‘interpretive positions’.
6. The religious instruction offered by Tursun-oy challenged this stereotype. If assessed by her community's respect and the success of her students as local otins, she offered high-quality education. In 2008, her student Jahon was examined by a panel of religious officials from the capital, Tashkent, who found her Islamic knowledge to satisfy the requirements for a local religious leader among women. As a result, she became a hokymiat [City Hall] otin, a new administrative position created to incorporate informal religious female practitioners into the state-run administrative institutions.
7. The analysis of critical thinking among Tursun-oy's students presented in this article is based on ethnographic materials collected during 2002–2003, unless otherwise noted.
8. In the late 1980s, local women indulged in religious practice and education, often after their 40th birthday (Tolmacheva Citation1993; Barrett Citation2008). This could reflect a shift in women's ability to enjoy time away from household chores taken on by their daughters-in-law. Tursun-oy, as well as four other otins I worked closely with during 2002–2003, did occasionally teach younger individuals, including children, but preferred not to discuss it.
9. Stephan (Citation2010) observed an increased demand for religious instruction on the part of Muslim parents in Tajikistan. This too might be a factor affecting changes at Tursun-oy's home school.
10. For a discussion of masala, see Peshkova (Citationforthcoming).
11. Although contested in the Middle East (considered to be bida [innovation] by some scholars), zikr is prominent in Central Asia, as a result of well-established Sufi influences.
12. At the time, an otin could receive anywhere from 5,000 to 25,000 som (USD 5–25) for officiating at a ceremony.
13. This quote comes from an interview with Tursun-oy in 2011, although she said it on multiple occasions.
14. On rare and fragmentary references to regional medieval female scholars, see Azad (Citation2013).
15. Turkistan extended to the east of the Caspian Sea, into western China, and into northern Afghanistan. Carrère d'Encausse (Citation1963) reports that at the end of nineteenth century, there were 108 madrassas in Ferghana Province.
16. A smaller number of students went on to memorize chilhadith (40 popular sayings of the Prophet Muhammad).
17. A relatively small number of women were involved in jadids' activities. Some of them acted in the jadids' plays; others wrote poetry and critiques of women's social status.
18. Eventually some of these teachers took on other jobs.
19. According to Soviet researchers, during the last decade of the Soviet Union, ‘70–85% of Soviet believers were women, the rate was expected to be considerably higher for Islamic areas’ (Tolmacheva Citation1993, 188). Tolmacheva notes that the Soviet researchers might have underestimated Muslim men's religious observance by focusing on women only, but does not dispute ‘high estimates of female religiosity’ in the Soviet Central Asia.
20. Until the 1970s, the official religious establishment was opposed to women's religious education, while such underground groups as Ahl-i Qur'an argued against women's secular education after seventh grade (Tolmacheva Citation1993).
21. Despite the high estimates of Central Asian Muslim women's religiosity, no existing scholarly works discuss their participation in such debates in Soviet Central Asia.
22. Some Uzbek academics in post-independence Uzbekistan, and medieval Sufi masters, used the same ‘didactic question-answer construction’ (Papas Citation2005, 39).
23. In the context of perestroika (social restructuring), the 1984 school reforms in the Soviet Union aimed to democratize education by emancipating students from ‘the teacher's influence’ (Yakimanskaya 1984, quoted in Tudge, Citation1991, 130). The consequences of this reform are difficult to ascertain.
24. Article 14 of the Law of Freedom of Conscience and Religious Organizations (1998) prohibits private (non-institutionalized) religious instruction.
25. ‘In Uzbekistan severe restrictions have pushed religious teaching underground. … The result of repression has been that the state in fact has no control over or knowledge of what is being taught’ (International Crisis Group Citation10 July 2003). Uzbekistan's government's position on religious freedom can be found in the ninth paragraph at http://www.uzbekistan.org/social_issues/religious_freedom/ (accessed 12 February 2007).
26. The ability to recite the Qur'an can be a form of ‘cultural capital’ enhancing one's social status (broadly understood) (Boum Citation2008, 207, 220; cf. Lambek Citation1990).
27. Abdulaziz Mansur is a current mufti of the Muslim Board of Uzbekistan.
28. The lack of religious literature in the Soviet Union could also have stifled otins' interest in understanding the recited verses. Also, the local community could value their ability to use appropriate verses in social and ceremonial contexts more than the ability to explain the meaning of the recited verses (see Eickelman Citation1978; Lambek Citation1990).
29. Participant-observation, January, 2003.
30. This is one way to understand the verse (see The Koran Citation1995, 60).
31. At the time, a monthly salary could be as low as USD 11.
32. There was no further elaboration on the reasons behind the mullas' decisions.