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Paper long abstract:

Recent ethnographic scholarship on politics in Central Asia has emphasized the performative dimensions of state governance and the ways that ordinary people constitute the political in repeated actions and negotiations (e.g. Reeves, Rasanayagam, and Beyer 2014). In this frame the state is performed into being through acts of signification to the extent that state control holds the capacity to shape the terms of being Muslim (e.g. Rasanayagam 2011). This paper considers two large shrine complexes—Hazrati Amirjon in Kulob and Hazrati Mavlono outside Dushanbe—in order to explore contrasting approaches to the state administration over sacred space in Tajikistan. Though both sites accommodate pilgrims, Hazrati Amirjon primarily exists under the aegis of the Ministry of Culture as a museum and heritage site, while Hazrati Mavolono operates as an active congregational mosque, with its leadership appointed by the State Committee for Religious Affairs.

Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Tajikistan between 2010 and 2014, this paper takes Hazrati Amirjon and Hazrati Mavlono as test cases for how authoritarian approaches to governing Islam affect Central Asian believers on the ground. Hazrati Amirjon and Hazrati Mavlono are particularly compelling in that we can use them to chart the efficacy of state projects to connect sacred geography to state-endorsed forms of national belonging. This paper discusses convergences between sacred spaces, devotional practices, state heritage projects, museumification, official religious discourse, and ever-present performative politics at Hazrati Amirjon and Hazrati Mavlono. I argue that shrine practices in Tajikistan suggest an important lacuna in ethnographic studies of the state and religious life in Muslim Eurasia; greater attention needs to be paid to less agonistic sites and responses to Central Asia's authoritarian regimes' securitization of Islam.