Rasanayagam, Johan. "The politics of culture and the space for Islam: Soviet and post-Soviet imaginaries in Uzbekistan". Central Asian Survey, vol.33, no.1 (2014): 1-14.

Rasanayagam, Johan. "The politics of culture and the space for Islam: Soviet and post-Soviet imaginaries in Uzbekistan". Central Asian Survey, vol.33, no.1 (2014): 1-14.

• Much has been written about the secularization and control of Islam in Central Asia, particularly Uzbekistan, and the effects it may have on regime support. Little though, however, has been put towards understanding why Uzbekistan does this, and why certain acts are illegal despite not fitting into the general narrative, such as arrest for Muslim converts possessing bibles (1).
• Both the Soviet and Post-Soviet regimes in Uzbekistan have created conceptions of model 'citizen subjects', on which they base normative judgements of good or bad behavior. The Soviet citizen subject was enlightened and rational, w/ no space for religious belief. The Post-Soviet citizen subject is supposed to be a 'komil inson' [perfect person], with a focus on traditional 'Uzbek-ness' that encompasses certain varieties of pro-regime religious practice (2).
• These conceptions are not important b/c people believe them, the level of private heterodoxy within the Soviet system is testament to this fact, but b/c they regulate and control public performance and interaction with the state (2).
• Conceptions of culture, religion, and ethnicity are intertwined in Central Asia. This becomes prominent in stories of conversion to Christianity, where converts are often accused of being 'Wahhabis', not as a theological term, but as an insult for acting unnaturally in religion, in this case by being Christian w/o being European (3).
• This is due in a large part to Soviet policies of primordialism in culture, assigning the Central Asians official traits which included a tendency towards Islam and Islamic culture. A lack of access to the Qur'an and other holy texts has also curtailed the ability to express religion directly, leading to the adoption of 'cultural' Islam. This has been felt in contemporary Uzbekistan, where 'cultural' Muslims are everywhere, despite low levels of faith (4).
• The conversion process is not a transfer from one mode of belief -- Muslim -- to another -- Christian -- but instead the movement from a state of non-belief to one of belief. For although most Uzbekistanis are Muslim, they do not engage or even understand the associated religious practice. The transition thus separates the cultural practice of Islam from the faith by transitioning the faith to Christianity (4).
• The regime's definition of 'religious extremism' is important to looking at why Christian converts may be punished for 'Wahhabism'. The regime defines 'Wahhabism' as a form of Muslim practice which diverges from the 'authentic', state-sanction Uzbekistani form of Islam, but it has been broaden as a term for all 'unnatural' religious practice (4).
• Practices of important life events -- e.g., marriages, births, deaths -- are crucial to the interpretations of Islam in Uzbekistan. Traditional Uzbekistani practice involves cripplingly expensive feasts after each event, often to a degree that the family cannot afford. Wahhabis criticize the practice as innovation, and thus contrary to the example of the Prophet. Both the Soviets and the contemporary Uzbekistani government also critic these expenditures, but for different reasons (5).
• The Soviets criticizes large and expensive festivities at 'life events' as a superstitious and irrational waste of resources better spend elsewhere. This was also wrapped-up in conceptions of Central Asia as backwards and a general distaste for traditional cultural practices (5).
• The government claims that such expenditures on 'life events' are a foreign practice and thus contrary to the traditions of Uzbekistan. The practices are not objected to by rationality, but by claims that they do not represent authentic Uzbek traditions, and thus should not be supported (5).
• In both Western and Soviet models of modernity, traditional cultural beliefs and practices inhibit the full potential of the individual. In both models, the quest towards modernity is the use of rational thought to remove pre-modern traditions. This is in contrast to contemporary Uzbekistani modernity, in which modernity is conceptualized as a process towards authentic cultural values, where the 'modern' state would have fully rediscovered and embraced the 'traditions' of Uzbekistan (6).
• The difference between Western and Soviet modernity, meanwhile, was based on a Soviet rejection of self-interested individualism (6). Instead the rationality and industriousness of modernity should be used for the betterment of the socialist state, a practice encouraged in all aspects of life through moral education in schools (7).
• "The need for a national ideology is itself founded on the Soviet view that individual consciousness is a reflection of a material order of society. An important theme in post-independence state discursive production is the need to fill the ‘ideological vacuum’ left by the collapse of the Soviet project" (8).
• The ideology of Post-Soviet Uzbekistan has an essentialist concept of culture, as an inborn trait of the Uzbekistani people which shapes their ideas and actions. This stems from the Soviet understanding of ethno-national development, which stressed essentialized traits of different people groups (8).
• Contemporary Uzbekistani ideology and government focus on tradition and ma'naviyat can be seen as an excuse to endorse the continuation of dictatorship, but it also has far wider applications within Uzbekistani society in its effect on political discourse and public behavior (8).
• Ideology is seen as a natural part of the person in Uzbekistan, leading to a conflation of correct practice of the national ideology with membership in the nation. Whereas in the Kyrgyz Republic, conversion to Christianity might be seen as a betrayal of fellow Kyrgyz, in Uzbekistan it goes against Uzbek tradition, and thus represents a national betrayal, which is a public affair and a potential security risk (9).
• Islam and discussion of Islam in Uzbekistan is severely restricted, even compared to Kazakhstan and the Kyrgyz Republic. The state support version of Islam must be proselytized and promoted by imams in the country, including 'traditional' or 'authentic' practices which fall outside of Qur'anic Islam. The role of imams is thus tied to the state as promoters of 'national culture' in addition to actual religious tradition (9).
• Limited room for criticism exists, but only when it broadly follows government policy. For example, the National Council of Imams is allowed to criticize certain common rituals after death as non-Muslim and possible wrong, but only by at the same time promoting government statements on reducing the cost of wedding ceremonies (10).
• The role of contemporary religious officials in Uzbekistan has many similarities w/ the role played by imams and ulama during the later days of the Soviet Union. They both have a difficult role as supporters of the regime and sources of authentic authority on scripture, roles which they deftly maneuvered while expressing an honest belief in both national ideology and Islam (11).