 Bruno De Cordier's analysis aims to shatter the common misconceptions
held by the majority of Western experts as to the violent nature of
Islam in Central Asia.
Over four months have passed since demonstrations and riots in the Kyrgyz towns of Jalalabad and Osh led to regime change in the country. These are indeed the same Jalalabad and Osh that were long portrayed as hotbeds of Islamic extremism in the former Soviet Union. Maybe it's again one of these ironies, but today one can not help but wonder where the long-expected Islamic revolution in Jalalabad is. Or why the black Hizb ut Tahrir banner isn't flying over Takht-i-Suleiman in Osh.
Then came the bloodbath in Andijan. Only the ignorant, the naïve and supporters of the Tashkent regime still believe that what happened there was a destabilisation attempt by foreign Islamic extremists more than social upheaval by a weary population. Either case, Kyrgyzstan and Andijan offer a good opportunity to evaluate the nature and size of the threat posed by Islamic extremism - or, as it is often dubbed, Wahhabism - in Central Asia and the Northern Caucasus. It could also be the right time to take a new look at the social position and role of Islam in Central Asia and other historical Muslim parts of the former Soviet Union.
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As a non-Muslim who has been following the situation in the region for more than eight years now and lived and worked in the region for more than five, I developed an active interest in the region's rich cultural heritage, much of it linked to Sufism, the mystical branch of Islam. It was also interesting to witness how the position and the perception of Islam in the region has evolved over the years.
There was some sort of Islamic revival in the early independence years, followed by the outbreak of the Tajik civil war and the war in Chechnia. Then, in the second half of the nineties, came the anti-Islamic repression campaigns in Uzbekistan and the appearance of the IMU and the Hizb ut Tahrir. After 2001, Central Asia and the Northern Caucasus became focal points in the so-called war on terror with allegations that they were hotbeds of Islamic extremism. A factor that the region's regimes and certain military and media circles in Russia are all to keen to play up to gain international legitimacy.
So how real is the threat of Islamic extremism - or, as its is commonly called, Wahhabism - in the region? Having mentioned Wahhabism, what in fact is it? One thing I noticed is, that officials, journalists and others who use the term, often don't know what it stands for exactly. Wahhabism is a puritanical branch of Islam and the official religion of Saudi Arabia, whose monarchy and clerical establishment use petrodollars to promote the Wahhabi branch of Islam. Wahhabism stands in sharp contrast to Sufism, the mystical form of Islam that is traditionally dominant in Central Asia and the Northern Caucasus.
The term sneaked into the former Soviet Union in the late eighties to designate the growing number of Muslims who worshipped outside of structures controlled by the Soviet muftiyat structures or KGB-infiltrated religious boards. It referred to Saudi-connected foundations that were funding mosques and distributing translations of the Quran and other literature (especially in Uzbekistan and the North Caucasian republic of Dagestan) and were considered competitors of the muftiyats.
Over the years though, 'Wahhabism' became a random denominator for Muslims who worship outside of mosques controlled by the official religious boards and those who are considered 'too pious' for one reason or another - even if most of those targeted have little to do with the Wahhabi interpretation of Islam or even abhor it.
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In the early nineties, I wrote a master's thesis in Political Geography about Islam and Muslims in the former Soviet Union. Thanks to a small research grant, I could travel to Tashkent, Namangan and other places in the region to have at least a feel of the climate and events back then. That was in 1993. Along with Dagestan, the region of Namangan was one of the main centres of a certain Islamic revival among part of the Soviet Muslims. But what was actually going on?
There were radical hotheads around in Namangan at the time, and some Islamic-inspired vigilantes were too heavy handed, though not necessarily unpopular among the crime-weary population. The Islamic movement, at least as I observed it, definitely had a provincialist and rural-conservative character. But the bulk of these people were not really extremists or revolutionaries. Groups like the Islamic Renaissance Party did function as a mouthpiece for regional and social discontent. But in all, it was a far cry from radical Islamic groups of the kind they had in Afghanistan or Algeria -forget about links to any international extremist plot.
Some may point to the wars in Tajikistan and Chechnia and ask if that Muslim revival was so innocent then. Those who studied the situation a bit deeper than the 'Islamic extremists fighting Soviet nomenclatura'-line know that the core cause of the Tajik civil war was a power struggle fanned and manipulated by very secular outside actors. Just like Chechnia's secession was the result of the climate of the time, as much as a reaction against Stalin's mass deportations of the Chechens and other North Caucasian Muslims half a century earlier.
During the nineties, the sharp raise in the number of placesof worship and other religious institutions caused concern about a 'fundamentalist wave'. If Tajikistan, for instance, had only 17 registered mosques and no Quranic school in 1980, it had already 128 registered mosques, one Islamic institute and five Quranic schools in 1991 and about three thousand mosques by 1998. Dagestan, where there were 27 mosques in 1983, had more than 1,600 registered mosques and 35 Quranic schools by 2001. The revival trend was certainly there. The question is, of course, if an increase in the number of houses of worship and the revival of a long-supressed culture is equal to 'extremism'.
"Islam indeed made people curious when Soviet society started to stagnate and collapse", a 37 year old computer technician from the Tajik town of Isfara, told me a couple of years ago. "People realised that their ancestral religion was also the one of millions of people outside of the Soviet Union. It was also a reaction against decades of Soviet dominance. Despite the social security brought by the Soviet system, it was, after all, Russian domination and colonialism. Even if Muslims learned Russian, shrugged off their own cultural background and eventually assimilated, as many did, they somehow remained second class citizens."
Compared to the situation in 'classical' Muslim countries, the number of mosques per thousand inhabitants and their attendance rates in the former Soviet Union remain limited. Even if it was the opposite - if people find a certain solace and dignity in Islam, there is nothing wrong with that per se. There is the popular myth that much of the Islamic revival in the region was orchestrated and funded from outside, especially groups and foundations from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, Iran and Turkey. That definitely happened. But to say that the whole Islamic revival of the early independence years was hijacked by 'foreign fundamentalists' is nonsense.
As the computer technician from Isfara adequately described, there was renewed interest in Islam or the region's Muslim heritage among certain coats of society without foreign interference. Part of the Arab and Turkish missionaries were disliked by the people because of their pedantic approach. And for every Saudi-funded mosque there are dozens that were built with contributions, in labor, money or materials, from local public figures, businessmen and believers themselves.
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The religious revival abated by the mid-nineties and then stagnated. The fact that these societies had been considerably secularised during three generations of Soviet rule certainly set the limits for religious revival and, at the same time, the risk of so-called fundamentalist contamination from outside. At least as important is that people's rediscovery and experience of Islam has been suppressed by the family-run cleptocracies and neo-Stalinist regimes that hold sway over most of the region.
The aversion against Islam of the Soviet apparatchiks that remained in power in these countries was not necessarily doctrinal or ideological, even though Islam contrasted with their Soviet-shaped lifestyles. Due to its decentralised organisation, non-state Islam is especially something that is difficult to control. As such, it is threatening for power elites whose sole political raison d'être is to cling to raw power.
Today, probably a larger part of the population in these countries - not a majority but not a few either - would live more 'the Muslim way' if only they were allowed to do so. But they are all too often not allowed. The anti-Islamic intimidation can go quite far, all the way to the private level and not only in Uzbekistan. I remember one case of an owner of a private café in the Kyrgyz mining town of Kyzyl Kia who was forced by a police officer to remove a photo of the Qa'abah in Mecca and serve pork, otherwise he would be blacklisted as a Wahhabi.
Or this family in the Kanibadam area in Tajikistan who planned a simple Muslim wedding for their son but were bullied by regime-connected goons to hold 'a proper European marriage' with music, dancing and alcohol. Otherwise, they'll be blacklisted as Wahhabis. These are no isolated incidents in the region. This can no longer be called war on terror.
The repression and intimidation has indeed radicalised a fringe of the Muslims, especially in Uzbekistan and Chechnia. Some have been driven into the arms of foreign radicals there where such contacts hardly existed before. It is indeed that fringe, which pretty much determined the image of Islam in the former Soviet Union. In turn, that image has been gratefully inflated and manipulated by the region's regimes to justify repression and their very existense - the outdated 'it's the status quo or the Taliban!' gimmick.
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How dangerous is that violent fringe? Years after my first research stint to the region, I worked for an international humanitarian organisation in the Kyrgyz provinces of Osh and Batken. For those who remember, in 1999 and 2000, Batken and the mountains on the Kyrgyz-Tajik border were the scene of incursions by fighters of the until then little-known Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan or IMU. The group, led by one Juma Namangani, was allegedly operating from bases in the Tajik regions of Jirgital and Sangvor and North Afghanistan. The IMU came into the international spotlight when its fighters crossed the Tajik-Kyrgyz border for the first time and took four Japanese and - that seems forgotten all too often - many more Kyrgyz hostages in 1999.
I started to have my doubts about the size of the IMU threat in late 2000, after the group's second performance in Batken and surroundings. We probably only have a sketchy picture about the actual events in Batken at the time. I do not pretend that the IMU was a mere invention. It was definitely there. I saw the refugees in and around Batken town and later visited villages that were held by IMU guerrillas and met the people who saw the rebels. Though the numbers of casualties of the two IMU attacks differ widely, it is certain that dozens of people died.
But if it was true, for example, that Namangani's IMU had several thousand of heavily armed and well-trained fighters in the Tajik-Kyrgyz border area - as several analytic reports and media had it then - they could have easily overpowered the surprised Kyrgyz border guards in no time and carved out a guerrilla-controlled area in 1999. What we got instead were several weeks of cat-and-mouse skirmishes high up in the mountains of Batken. It could have been a strategy by the IMU leadership who was hoping that the mere news of the incursion would trigger a revolt in Namangan and other parts of Uzbekistan. Not so, as we came to know. It is more likely that we actually never faced a Central Asian version of the Palestinian Hamas or the Algerian Groupe Islamique Armé (Armed Islamic Group).
Another element of the so-called pan-regional Wahhabi threat is the war in Chechnia and the dramatic hostage takings in the Dubrovka theatre in Moscow in 2002 and Beslan in 2004. Dubrovka and Beslan sent a shock wave through Central Asia as well, largely due to the coverage brought by the everinfluential Russian state news channels. The terror acts, attributed to Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev and his Riyadh al Saliheen martyr brigades, were no myth. They were as real though as that they are the outcome - not the cause - of the sordid war in Chechnia rather than the product of a twisted interpretation of Islamic teachings. A war that has disrupted a whole generation of Chechens and driven a part of the Chechen rebels straight into the arms of international terror networks.
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Since 2001, the so-called Islamic threat in Central Asia largely revolves around the Hizb ut Tahrir and, occasionally, lesser known local groups like Bayat. The advantage for all those who see a political advantage in upholding a threat is that the Hizb ut Tahrir and Bayat are not tangible and seem to be everywhere and nowhere. There are no leaders like Juma Namangani or Shamil Basayev to catch or kill, and nobody really knows how effective these groups are or how large their following actually is. In other words, they are the perfect ghosts that, to quote one correspondent, everyone should be afraid of but nobody has actually seen.
This is not to say that the Hizb ut Tahrir is just a fairytale. I do not pretend that there is no potential for violence by fringe groups, including split factions within the officially non-violent Hizb ut Tahrir, either. The question is, how much support these fringe groups enjoy in society and to what extent have the capacity to destabilise the region or take power. The bombings and shootings close to the US and Israeli embassies in Tashkent in 2004 were conveniently linked to the Hizb ut Tahrir and Al Qaeda by the Uzbek regime. If we brush the usual gamut of conspiracy theories aside and take a closer look at what is known about the the attacks, then it is striking how clumsy and ineffective they were. Certainly not the work of the allegedly well-trained, professional and lavishly funded global terror network that was at one time able to hit US interests in the Gulf and the US itself.
It would be good if we start to admit that for years we have bought into an exaggerated threat. Unfortunately, the 'Wahhabi menace' has been an excuse for local regimes to destroy the lives of many bona fide ex-Soviet Muslims. Muslims who have been intimidated, deprived of their income and often worse for the sole 'crime' that they found dignity and direction in Islam and wanted to live more according to their religion.
Islamic radicalism is not the main problem in the region. Let's go one step further: what if reconnecting with the region's Muslim heritage and identity is part of the solution rather than the problem? And if so, what problem are we talking about?
Again, this is a personal observation and reality is certainly more complex that what is outlined in this essay. But according my observations and understanding, the region's societies face a chronic twin problem of identity crisis and lack of economic democracy.
Although three generations of Soviet power brought advantages and progress in a number of fields, it left these societies dependent and uprooted. This is no primal anti- Soviet or anti-Russian opinion. This is a historical reality in which Central Asia, and the Northern Caucasus as well, have to live. Since then, one and a half decades of 'transition' - in fact a lapse into Third World capitalism - and loandependence has caused even more social disruption and confusion. "We were cut off from the Muslim world for decades so we're not really Muslims anymore", one woman in the Kazakh town of Shymkent summarised. "We have been Sovietised and Russianised, lost our culture and language. But the Soviet Union is gone and we are not Russians. So who or what are we now?"
Upon independence in 1991, the regimes in the region tried to fill the void and legitimise themselves by concocting state nationalisms, centered around mythical figures (Timur, Manas, the Rukhnama cult), lavish celebrations, folklore troupes and a set of sanitised architectural monuments. Yet these are very Soviet, artificial concepts that seem to have little appeal among the younger generations. The post- 1991 years were also a period of westernisation, of what is perceived as such. Yet its outcome could be a mixed bag. As it has turned out in other parts of the world, wholesale westernisation mostly leaves the affected societies half-way and even more disrupted: as a parody of the West.
The other source of frustration is the lack of what we could call economic democracy. What is meant by this is a situation, whereby the key hard currency sectors of the economies (mostly oil, gas, cotton and other raw materials) are in the hands of ruling families and regime barons. While the totalitarian bureaucracy that was inherited from the Soviet era suffocates all economic initiative that is not under the control of the power elite and both its local and foreign cronies. This way, a substantial part of the population is not only - often deliberately - kept in poverty and the underground economy, which also poses a serious hindrance to the formation of an entrepreneurial middle class.
Sufi Islam could become some sort of social fabric and a means of self-confirmation for such a middle class should it eventually arise, pretty much as it has happened in Muslim countries like Turkey or Indonesia. And likely this is, more than anything else, the core reason of the anti-Islamic repression by the region's rulers: prevent the rise and consolidation of a middle class that could become a threat to the economic interests of those in power. The arrest of the 23 Andijan businessmen prominent in Islamic-inspired charitable work on the usual vague charges of belonging to 'a criminal and extremist organisation' is most typical in this regard.
From what I could understand, what many people in the region long for is bringing dignity and a minimum of social justice back. For many, this translates into a strong nostalgia for the Soviet Union, which is a dead-end though. Others, including women, see a way in Islam as a set of values and a social system much more than as a political system.
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Central Asia's roots largely lay in the Islamic cultural sphere. The area between the Caspian Sea and the Pamirs is not only the cradle of several influential schools of Sufism - the Naqhsband'iyya and Qubraw'iyya in particular - the region's heydays that gave the world Ibn Sina and Al Farabi were inextricably linked to Islamic civilisation.
That is maybe a key factor in reaffirming Central Asia's identity and dignity: Islam, and Sufism in particular, is both part of the region's historical heritage and a semi-global cultural sphere. More than just a religion, it offers a number of social norms and values.
Sufism is believed to have 250 million adepts in the world, about a quarter of the global Muslim population. It is both present in the Sunni and Shia branch of Islam. It is largely thanks to the flexibility and decentralised structure of Sufism that three generations of Sovietism could not eradicate Islam from the region completely.
Likewise, reconnecting with Sufi Islam, being a heritage, a spiritual experience and a social network with a rich tradition of interpretations and currents, could be a way out of the present confusion and anomy. An Islamic renewal in Central Asia will have to come from the people themselves, from international Sufi brotherhoods and perhaps Russian Muslims (because of the Russian language and a common Soviet past).
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As the examples of, say, Sudan and the Taliban show, an extremist Islamic state is not a viable concept. Nor is it desirable even for pious Muslims, if only because if the regime fails, Islam on the whole shares the blame. The idea of an Islamic state has little social base and support among the population in Central Asia even though I personally estimate that non-violent political parties with an Islamic agenda could appeal to around ten per cent of the population in some parts of the region.
That Central Asia will lapse into Afghan- and Algerian-style wars and that everyone will have to wear a turban, a beard all the way to the chest and a burqa 'if Islam becomes too free' is a chimera. The present challenge, in my opinion, is to move away from caricatures and demonising and to look into the constructive role that Islam, and Sufism in particular, could play in the region's societies.
In my opinion, it's not necessarily a bad thing if Islam helps to reduce crime and other social diseases like alcoholism.
Would it cause 'regional instability' if Muslim charities connected to Sufi brotherhoods take care of impoverished pensioners and drug addicts or organise computer classes? Is it a problem if a mosque functions as a social meeting point in the neighbourhood? Is there reason to panic if a number of women wear headscarves and if some men grow beards provided they chose to do that? Even more important: are the social problems that women and non-Muslim minorities in Central Asia currently face the fault of Islam? These are questions that should be asked to challenge clichés that are eagerly used by certain groups and regimes to criminalise a religion and a culture for the sake of their own power interests.
It's time to stop seeing demons where there are none and to render Islam its role of a component of the social fabric and cultural framework of Central Asia. And to let at least those who wish to live more like Muslims free to do so.
Bruno De Cordier is with the Conflict Research Group, Belgium.
This article was originally published on the Conflict Research Group website.
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