Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Note on Transliteration
- MAP: Uzbekistan and its neighbours
- Introduction: Towards an Anthropology of Moral Reasoning
- 1 Islam and Sociality in Pakhtabad and Samarkand
- 2 The New Soviet (Central Asian) Person and the Colonisation of Consciousness
- 3 Good and Bad Islam after the Soviet Union
- 4 The Practical Hegemony of State Discourse
- 5 The Moral Sources of Experience
- 6 Moral Reasoning through the Experience of Illness
- 7 Debating Islam through the Spirits
- 8 Experience, Intelligibility, and Tradition
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
3 - Good and Bad Islam after the Soviet Union
The Instrumentalisation of Tradition
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 March 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Note on Transliteration
- MAP: Uzbekistan and its neighbours
- Introduction: Towards an Anthropology of Moral Reasoning
- 1 Islam and Sociality in Pakhtabad and Samarkand
- 2 The New Soviet (Central Asian) Person and the Colonisation of Consciousness
- 3 Good and Bad Islam after the Soviet Union
- 4 The Practical Hegemony of State Discourse
- 5 The Moral Sources of Experience
- 6 Moral Reasoning through the Experience of Illness
- 7 Debating Islam through the Spirits
- 8 Experience, Intelligibility, and Tradition
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Since independence, the government of President Islam Karimov has instrumentalised Islam as part of its nation-building strategies. Islam has been incorporated within the ideology of National Independence that the government has developed to replace the Marxist Leninism of the Soviet era. Religious expression continues to be closely monitored, and like the governments of many Muslim majority states, the government in Uzbekistan attempts to shape the way Islam is interpreted and expressed by citizens. This chapter extends the previous discussion of the efforts of the Soviet state to shape the consciousness of citizens and explores the nature of the citizen-subject and of Islam that is constructed within post-Soviet state discourse. In this discourse, Islam is not treated as a universal Truth that transcends cultural and national boundaries but is localised within the government's conception of an authentic, indigenous culture. It is constructed as an element of a Central Asian ‘Golden Heritage’ (oltin meros) to which the nation is returning after decades of Soviet rule. ‘Good’ Islam is portrayed as culturally authentic, tolerant of other religious traditions in the region, and nonpolitical. ‘Bad’ Islam is characterised as alien in origin, antithetical to Central Asian spiritual values, intolerant in that it espouses a narrow version of Islam that excludes many Central Asian practices, and politically motivated. Interpretations of Islam not endorsed within state discourse are labelled as extremist and ‘Wahhabi’, with links to international networks of terror.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Islam in Post-Soviet UzbekistanThe Morality of Experience, pp. 96 - 120Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010