Education, youth and Islam: the growing popularity of private religious lessons in Dushanbe, Tajikistan

Abstract

This article attempts to explain the growing popularity of private religious lessons in urban Tajikistan from a cross-generational perspective. By instilling discipline and good ‘morals’, religious lessons serve as a powerful tool to socialize adolescent and morally vulnerable urban youth into the established social order. The increasing demand for religious instruction on the part of Muslim parents not only reflects the growing importance of Islam in Tajikistan, but also highlights the weaknesses of state education and the constraints on family upbringing in neo-local urban households. By attending religious classes, male and female youth have found a space for negotiating religious identities and for realizing their own abilities and ambitions. Given the socio-economic hardships of everyday life in the post-Soviet city, a turn to Islam can promote integration, recognition and social mobility, and offer an alternative route for urban youth to become ‘adults’.

Keywords:

• Islam
• youth
• education
• adolescence
• maturity
• morality
• veiling
• Muslimness
• secular state
• public Islam

Notes

This article is part of my dissertation on moral education, Islam and being Muslim in Tajikistan. I carried out research from 2003 to 2008 as an associate member of the Civil Religion group at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle/Saale, Germany. It deals with the tension that arose between secularization and the religious return in Tajikistan following the demise of the Soviet Union. Field research was conducted primarily in Dushanbe and its surrounding rural regions.

The majority of the Tajik population adheres to the Sunni Hanafi branch of Islam. They dissociate themselves from the large Shiite Ismailite group, which for the most part lives in the mountain region of Badakhshan in east Tajikistan.

Capisani (2000, p. 184) states that in 1997, approx. 42% of the population of Tajikistan was under 14 years of age. In its report, The International Crisis Group (ICG report 2003, p. 1) mentions that the proportion of young people in the Tajiki population in 2003 was over 30% and was likely to double to 3 million by 2025.

Beset by grave economic and social problems, Tajikistan was the poorest and least industrialized Soviet republic when it became independent in 1991. Towards the end of the 1980s, Tajikistan had the lowest standard of living in the Soviet Union. In 1989, for example, 59% of the population lived below the fixed income level (78 Rubles per person and month) (Niyazi 1994, p. 168). According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the gross domestic product (GDP) in Tajikistan in 2007 was US$3.67 billion (US$404 per person) (Ministry of Foreign Affairs).

The ‘four-part book’, a collection of Persian prose and poetry in four parts by different authors, some of whom are unknown, is one of the standard texts that has for centuries stamped the local Islamic tradition of the Muslim population of Tajikistan. The collection contains central elements of the Islamic faith and hands down rules that organize social relations in the family and the local community.

A book of selected passages from the Koran.

Together with Chahor kitob, these works have shaped the cultural memory of Muslims in the Central Asian region for centuries (Medlin et al. 1971, p. 35, Shahrani 1991, Olimova 2005, p. 250). They testify to the historical immutability and continuity of the text canon, and confirm the preservative character with which religious lessons contribute to the fostering of local Islamic traditions.

Unlike the practice of today's religious lessons, learning by heart and the flawless recitation of sacred texts in the historical maktab was usually associated with physical punishment. The psychology behind this measure was not merely to ensure positive learning results, but also to instil a sense of respect in the young for teachers and for the divine word and its written form (Eickelman 1978, p. 494, Shorish 1986, p. 328, Khalid 1998, p. 20).

In Khalid's opinion (1998, p. 25) this ‘habitus’ is an explicit expression for the close tie between the physical body and sacred knowledge: ‘Knowledge was to be embodied by the learner so that his or her body could be marked by sacred knowledge.’

According to the results of a comprehensive household survey conducted by the Tajik Ministry for Labour and Social Security, over half of the 200–250,000 Tajiks, i.e. 7% of the working population of Tajikistan, employed in Russia or elsewhere between 2001 and 2003 were between 15 and 29 years old, 12% of whom were women (Kuddusov 2004, p. 87).

The promotion of the nuclear family as the ideal household model was one aspect of the Soviet modernization project, the aim of which was to remove young families in the cities from the influence of the kinship group and alienate them from local traditions. (Medlin et al. 1971, 63ff.). In addition, the nuclear family was to improve the social status of women (Tokhtakhodzhaeva 2007, p. 112). Neo-locality was primarily achieved by the construction of modern Soviet apartment blocks (mikrorayon). Although for the most part occupied by Russian-speaking urban dwellers, these modern flats (sekziya) were extremely popular with well-educated local urban residents.

Islamic education in Tajikistan officially begins with higher Islamic or madrasa schooling, for which an O-Level certificate is required.

Paragraph 6 of the religious law Qonuni jumhurii Tojikiston dar borai din va tashkilothoi diny from 1998.

A bath for ritual washings (tahoratkhona) was built in the grounds of the mosque during my field research in this neighbourhood. Apart from the men who regularly attended the communal prayer, I saw some of Mullah Inoyat's pupils (shogird) carrying bricks and building walls.

In Dushanbe, the rules of Muslim morality (odobi musulmony) dictate that women over the age of 40, at the latest over 50, cover themselves.

The politicization of religious expression is a potent discourse. In the regions of post-socialist Central Asia it takes place in the public domain, which was and still is primarily defined by the rhetoric of the ruling elites. Several authors have described this vividly, taking the example of the term Wahhabism and its usage (Kehl-Bodrogi 2006, McBrien 2006, Rasanayagam 2006, Louw 2007).