Paper long abstract:

This papers seeks to investigate the recent discursive shift from Wahhabism to Salafism as the main "non-traditional movement" that poses a security threat to Central Asian societies. By looking at past and current official discourses, I argue that the recent reinforcement of political control over the religious sphere operates under a discursive shift that aims at sidelining non-traditional religious movements, mostly Salafism, and legitimating Hanafism, which is officially endorsed by state authorities. Countries of the former Soviet Union exercise a tight control over religious organizations and practices through the Spiritual Direction of Muslims, which stand as official clergies. In Central Asia, a certain securitization of Islam was initiated in the 1990s-2000s (Lemon and Thibault 2018, Omelicheva 2011, Rasanayagam 2006) but the control over religious institutions was still rather limited in most of the states until the mid-2000s. This rhetorical shift should also be seen in light of the emergence and subsequent demise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which thousands of Central Asian nationals joined (Tucker 2016).

This paper will retrace the evolution of the understanding of the Islamic threat on the territory of the former USSR while emphasizing the recent shift from Wahhabism to Salafism. In Soviet times, Sufism was repeatedly characterized as 'non-conformist Islam' that opposed Soviet outlooks. It was later replaced by Wahhabism, which held even more radical and violent views (Knysh 2004). Today, the term Wahhabism has almost entirely disappeared from public discourses and Salafism is now branded as the most hostile branch of Islam. The discursive shift is also accompanied by a series of institutional responses to promote Hanafism and strong actions against public displays of faith such as clothes that cover the head and/or face, certain types of beards and short trousers, which are associated with Salafism (Thibault 2018). The idea is to associate certain religious behaviours with a type of Islam that is considered foreign and incompatible with the values of Central Asian societies. Ultimately, this paper will highlight the debates over the interpretation of religious practices and the expressions of Salafism in the Central Asian context and the equivocal legitimacy of these interpretations.