Building Pluralism in Central Asia: Outlining an Experiential Approach in Kyrgyzstan

Abstract

Pluralism recognizes diversity and aims to facilitate peaceful coexistence across a variety of interests and convictions. Across Central Asia, states have become increasingly authoritarian and in turn less favorable to implementing political and legal structures commonly seen as necessary for pluralism. The question about the potential for pluralism in Central Asia, however, is different from one on how to build pluralism. In this article, I argue that despite the less-than-sanguine prospects for pluralism to emerge across the region, pluralism can be built through programming that engages difference and creates new solidarities around shared experience, without the insistence on shared meaning.

Keywords:

• pluralism
• covenantal pluralism
• difference
• Central Asia
• religion
• Kyrgyzstan
• experience

Acknowledgments

This article is part of this journal’s Covenantal Pluralism Series, a project generously supported via a grant to the Institute for Global Engagement from the Templeton Religion Trust.

Notes

1 This is somewhat of a crude over-simplification of the Jewish position, which has never accepted Christian claims to Jesus as the fulfilment of the prophecy. Some Jewish scholars such as Maimonides are more sympathetic to the historical figure of Jesus, but traditional views are mostly negative, given the idea of duality or the trinity of God is considered heretical.

2 In The Right to Difference: French Universalism and the Jews, Maurice Samuels argues Clermont-Tonnerre is making something of a pluralist move, for he does not deny Jews as a religious and cultural group but rather as a legal group; what mattered was that Jews abided by French laws (2016, 34–37). The distinction is important, but the outcome is a reshaping of religious practice and communal understanding relative to the new nation-state.

3 For the first decade of programming, between 2003–2012, CEDAR operated as the International Summer School on Religion and Public Life. The name changed to Communities Engaging with Difference and Religion in 2012, to reflect both a shift toward developing affiliate programs as well as the awareness that “difference” was central to the pedagogy. See Seligman, Wasserfall, and Montgomery 2015.

4 The outline below is based on the Central Asian Program on Pedagogies of Solidarity that was originally scheduled to take place in summer 2020 but postponed in 2020 and 2021 due to SARS-CoV-2. The program is planned to take place as soon as health and safety conditions allow.

5 Living with Difference: How to Build Community in a Divided World (Seligman, Wasserfall, and Montgomery 2015) details the CEDAR pedagogy and offers a guide to those interested in implementing such programs.

6 Within the context of Asia, as relevant to the “possibilities for pluralism in Asia”, CEDAR and CEDAR-affiliates have run programs in China, Indonesia, and Japan, with one under development in Kyrgyzstan. Other programs have taken place in Africa, Europe, and North America. See https://www.cedarnetwork.org/programs/

Additional information

Notes on contributors

David W. Montgomery

David W. Montgomery is a research professor in the Department of Government and Politics and the Center for International Development and Conflict Management at the University of Maryland, College Park, and director of program development for CEDAR—Communities Engaging with Difference and Religion. His books include Practicing Islam: Knowledge, Experience, and Social Navigation in Kyrgyzstan, Living with Difference: How to Build Community in a Divided World, Everyday Life in the Balkans, and Central Asia: Contexts for Understanding.