The politics of culture and the space for Islam: Soviet and post-Soviet imaginaries in Uzbekistan

Abstract

This article examines how possibilities for Muslim expression were and are shaped by the political imaginaries in Soviet-era and independent Uzbekistan. It develops the concept of social ‘imaginary’ in Charles Taylor's critique of Western secular modernity. Political imaginaries are the assumptions about the nature of being, the essential categories through which the world is understood and acted upon, that are produced within dominant state discourses and that shape the space for the political. The article compares the Soviet vision of socialist modernity and the logic of the current state ideology in independent Uzbekistan, and discusses how these have framed the possibilities for being Muslim. It argues that the category of culture is produced in distinct and contrasting ways in these imaginaries, and plays a central role in delineating the public space for Islam.

Keywords:

• Uzbekistan
• Islam
• politics
• culture
• state

Acknowledgements

Versions of this article have been presented at Humboldt University and the University of Exeter, and benefited greatly from feedback received on those occasions. I would particularly like to thank Maria Louw and Alex King for their comments on earlier drafts, and also the very useful suggestions of the editor and anonymous reviewers of Central Asian Survey.

Notes

1. For ethnographically grounded accounts of how politics, including ideology, is performed in Central Asia, see Reeves, Rasanayagam, and Beyer (2014).

2. The ethnographic research on which this article is based was carried out between July 2003 and August 2004 in the city of Samarkand and in a village near the city of Andijan.

3. Uzbekistan retains the Soviet administrative practice of registering citizens in terms of both ethno-national belonging (natsional'nost’ in Russian, millat in Uzbek) and state citizenship (grazhdanstvo or fuqarolik).

4. The mahalla is a residential sub-district which also acts as a social institution. While in the pre-Soviet and Soviet eras various forms of community institutions existed in rural settlements and in the old quarters of cities, the post-independence government has formalized these as mahalla with a locally elected leadership committee. It has extended the network of mahalla to cover all residential districts, even those made up of high-rise apartments, although in areas in which it has been imposed relatively recently, the mahalla has little social relevance (Rasanayagam 2011, 49–58).

5. Shirin Akiner (1996) also argues that Islam was reduced to what she calls an ‘ethnocultural’ rather than a religious allegiance; and Yaacov Ro'i (1995) writes of the ‘secularisation’ of Islam in the USSR.

6. Mathijs Pelkmans (2007) has described how this dynamic works out in missionary activity in neighbouring Kyrgyzstan.

7. See for example Poliakov (1992). Deniz Kandiyoti and Nadira Azimova (2004) have critiqued the use of the frame of tradition and modernity in Soviet ethnographic accounts of Islam in Central Asia.

8. Ishans are those who claim descent from the Prophet Muhammad or prominent figures in Islamic history and were attributed the power to channel blessing from their illustrious ancestors.

9. See March (2003) for an analysis of the discourse of the ‘spiritual vacuum’ in Uzbekistan's post-independence ideology.

10. Nick Megoran (2008) has written about President Karimov's use of the trope of an authentic Uzbekness in his response to the events in Andijan in May 2005, when hundreds of protesters were gunned down by security forces.

11. Respublicada mavjud an'anaviy udumlar, to'ylar, dafn ma'rakalari va boshka milliy marosimlar va ularni zamon talablariga javob beradigan tarzda, ihcham hamda tejamkorlik bilan u'tkazishga qaratilgan tavsiyalar.

12. Marhumlar dafnidan keyin odat tucsiga aylangan 7, 20, 40, yil, hayit kunlaridagi fotihaxonlik kabi marosimlarning shar'iy emasligi, balki bid'at ishlardan ekanligi tushuntirib borilsin.