McGlinchey, Eric. "Islamic Leaders in Uzbekistan". Asia Policy, No.1 (2006): 123-144.

McGlinchey, Eric. "Islamic Leaders in Uzbekistan". Asia Policy, No.1 (2006): 123-144.

• The report looks at the loyalty of Islamic elites within Uzbekistan to the Karimov administration. Because Islamic elites respond to both governmental and societal demands, they are not subject to the patronage system elsewhere among the Uzbekistani elite (124).
• Although the government assumes that independent Islam is militant and state-controlled Islam is friendly to the Karimov regime, both forms of Islam are present in Uzbekistan and pose threats to the current administration. Militant Islamist pose a clear threat by calling for the replacement of the Karimov administration with a caliphate. Independently-minded Islamic leaders also pose a threat by providing opposition figures with a community and place to organize within the mosques (124).
• The effort of the Karimov administration to blame the events of the Andijon Incident entirely on Islamic extremism, rather than the numerous other problems which played into the tensions, demonstrates a highly politicized nature of discourse about Islam in Uzbekistan (126-127).
• The sensitivity of these issues in Uzbeksitani society means that several factors in the study conducted are inherently flawed. No widespread survey of Islamic opinion is feasible at this time, and most Islamic elites would be wary of discussing religion with an American researcher. The sample interviews here therefore reflect that political active minority which was willing to discuss these charged issues (127).
• In order to maintain some degree of control over religious activities in the Republic of Uzbekistan, the Karimov regime uses a Soviet-style system of religious registration, with a muftiate being administered and financed centrally, which in turn controls the individual imams (125).
• The system is imperfect, however, and the demands of a religious life mean that systems of finance and coercion are not as effective towards controlling Imams as they are towards other elites. Numerous independent imams still exist, and support political alternatives to the current administration (125). None of the imams interviewed preach revolution, but all present a vision of a value-based governance system and are therefore not supporters of the current order (126).
• Although all registered imams comply with the muftiate to some degree, many only do the bare minimum and flout other regulations. A common violation is holding independent sessions to study the Quran, in contravention of a 1998 prohibiting religious study outside of public preaching (130).
• Just like its Soviet predecessor, the current muftiate system faces difficulties controlling Islam. Early Soviet efforts to ban veils in the hujum campaigns demonstrated distinct limits in state control over religion in Central Asia (128). The Soviet Muftiate rewarded loyal religious leaders with control over larger areas of mosques, guaranteeing that loyal Muslims would be promoted and dissenting imams would remain a local phenomenon (129-130).
• The Karimov regime has expanded the role of the muftiate to oversee all religious education and the appointment of imams, who can be fired or imprisoned for failing to comply with official views of the muftiate or the Committee on Religious Affairs (130).
• Interviews with imams in Qoqon and Qarshi indicate that there is some public support among Islamic elites for this regulation of legitimate forms of Islamic practice. These individuals observed that Uzbekistanis are vulnerable to radicalization and that censorship was necessary to keep peace (130).
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• The author has interviewed a number of regular, but not devout, Muslims believers from Namangan, Andijon, Qoqon, Qarshi, and Toshkent on issues of Islamic practice and leadership in the Islamic community (131-132). All focus groups valued independence and knowledge of the Quran in their imam, and preferred that religious leaders not be involved in politics, either supporting the state or the opposition (132).
• The focus groups in Namangan, Andijon and Qarshi were organized with the help of human rights groups and expressed the most independent opinions. The Namangan group included members of the unofficial clergy, and stressed the necessity of independence from the state. All members also had been persecuted by the state (132).
• Although the issue was disputed within the Andijon focus group, most groups recognized a disparity between the knowledge of official imams and unofficial leaders, including oqsoqollar. The Namangan group was especially insistent that younger official imams were uneducated compared to older authorities, who had fired because the younger group was easier for the government to control (132-133).
• The Qoqon and Qarshi groups, the latter of which was all female, were the most optimistic about the current situation. They both experienced persecution during the 1990s, but retained a faith than independent Islam could exist within the current system despite knowing about the arrest of a prominent local imam and some of the Qarshichi husbands (133).
• "The Karimov government is markedly less influential when it comes to Uzbekistan’s Islamic elite. Religious leaders face different incentive structures than do their political counterparts, and it is these incentive structures — as much society-driven as they are state-manipulated — that ensure the continued future of independent Islam in Uzbekistan" (134).
• Of the imams interviewed by Dr. McGlinchey, the only imam associated with the Uzbekistani opposition was Mohammed Sodik Mohammed Yusuf (134), an imam who was a prominent figure of the opposition until 2000, and remains respected as popular and independent. He was also the only national figures that the focus groups could name with regularity (135).
• Mohammed Sodik was the Chief Mufti for Central Asia from 1989 to 1991 and a major figure in promoting Muslim unity among Islamic elites in Central Asia following independence. He attempted, unlike the Tajik leader Qazi Turajonzoda, to maintain independence from politics despite calls for him to lead an Islamist movement (135-136).
• Despite his official stance that religion and politics should remain separate, the support for Mufti Sodik in Islamist groups made him a threat to the Karimov administration. Protesters in November 1991 demanded that President Karimov resign in favour of Mufti Sodik, and the Adolat members in Namangan held President Karimov hostage in 1991 believed that Mufti Sodik would support them (136).
• Islom Karimov remained extremely suspicious of Mufti Sodik's influence, despite statements supporting a secular state, and exile him to Libya from 1993 to 2000. Apparently, Mohammed Sodik was allowed back into the country because the government thought that his presence would be conciliatory towards rising Islamism linked to the IMU (137).
• There is no evidence of any actual deal between Islom Karimov and Mohammed Sodik, but all respondents in the focus groups believes that some kind of agreement of that nature had been made between Mohammed Sodik and the government (138).  
• Even following his return, Mohammed Sodik has not entirely conformed to the government position and it would be incorrect to dismiss him as a puppet of the regime. He was criticized the government's restrictions of the study of moderate Islam as the main factor driving people towards more accessible, and more radical, alternatives (138).
• The author also provide a profile of another opposition imam from Qarshi, know to the Qarshi focus group as well as some Islamic students in the Toshkent group, Rustam Klichev. He was respected as knowledgable, kind, and did not participate in politics -- meaning his sermons were also not laudatory of the Karimov regime. He was arrested in April 2004 on fabricated charges of undermining the constitutional order and planning to bomb the Xanabad airbase (140).
• Unlike other imams, including the head imam in Qarshi, Rustam Klichev was independent and diverged from the suggestions of the administration so that his sermons touched on local issues of poverty and unemployment. This reputation allowed him to gather a large audience from beyond the mahalla, including many young opposition figures, which alarmed the local government (141).
• When Imam Klichev made the hajj in 2002, he befriended a number of Saudis, who began supply his mosque with Islamic materials and aiding him financially. While donation from Saudi Arabia had been common, they had become taboo by the late 1990s as some Saudis wanted to support Wahhabism. These connections were used to create accusations against Rustam Klichev (141-142).
• A popular and independent imam in Qoqon identified a key problem facing independent imams in Uzbekistan. He says that it is difficult to balance the demands of the government with those of popular expectation. As confirmed by the focus groups, ordinary Uzbekistanis do not want their imam to express opinions of the government. The government, on the other hand, wants imams to praise the government. Accommodating these expectation is a challenge (143).
• Most imams are still worldly and fear the tremendous coercive force which can be exercised by the Uzbekistani government through the Committee on Religious Affairs and the Central Muftiate, but to a certain minority their beliefs in spreading the word of Allah trump their fear of the state, a commitment reinforced by the popularity which usually comes with such a decision (144).
• Because imams like Rustam Klichev, and the anonymous imam in Qoqon still exist in Uzbekistan and will continue to exist by the nature of religious belief, the government will continue being unable to fully control Islam. Mosques work within a market more than other aspects of administration, meaning that popular imams are rewarded and slavishly pro-government imams are punished with lower attendance (144).