- Convenors:
-
Aksana Ismailbekova
(Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO))
Usmon Boron (Yale University)
Send message to Convenors
- Format:
- Panel (closed)
- Mode:
- Face-to-face part of the conference
- Theme:
- Anthropology & Archaeology
- Location:
- 212
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 19 November, -
Time zone: America/New_York
Abstract
The role of the post-Soviet Islamic revival in Central Asia is still viewed through a limited set of analytical and interpretive frameworks. Operating within security studies paradigms, many scholars have described Islamization as a threat to the region’s political stability. Others, working from normative liberal standpoints, have portrayed the Islamic revival as a challenge to liberal thought and the freedoms it celebrates. The identitarian lens has also been influential, as scholars interpret Muslim activism in Central Asia as a new component of regional identity politics.
Our panel invites papers that offer an alternative to these three approaches by focusing on a different dimension: social impact. Specifically, we are interested in how Muslim activists are playing an increasingly important role in the provision of public goods and services where the state is absent or limited; how Islamic initiatives are gradually developing into social institutions with their own voice and agency; and how Islamic activism resonates with—or reveals the limitations of—local discourses on human rights, gender equality, healthcare justice, business ethics, humanitarianism, disability, and other domains of public concern.
We particularly welcome papers that draw on diverse disciplinary perspectives and offer new conceptual insights.
Accepted papers
Session 1 Wednesday 19 November, 2025, -Abstract
The relationship between Islam and nationalism represents one of the most enduring and complex dynamics in the political and cultural development in Muslim societies. While the content of nationalism is often manifested through secularized modernity, Islam provides a transnational moral and spiritual framework that both intersects with and contests national boundaries. The coexistence, collaboration, and conflict between these ideologies have shaped regional and global discourses on identity and legitimacy. Islam and nationalism have become the main ideological forces within the nation-building in post-Soviet Kazakhstan. The reinterpretation or reimagining of national identity has been the main source of tension between the Kazakh state, nationalists, and the increasingly pious Muslim population. Although (folk) Islam has been an indispensable part of the Kazakh national identity, increased adherence to piety movement since socialism receded, has brought some contesting narratives of being Muslim and being Kazakh.
This paper examines the evolving interplay between Islam and nationalism in Kazakhstan through historical and contemporary analysis. It explores how these forces have co-developed in response to colonial legacies, state-building policies, and the pressures of globalization and identity politics. The study aims to identify recurring patterns, ideological frictions, and possible avenues for synthesis between Islamic values and nationalist discourses.
Abstract
This article analyzes the mechanisms related to the Islamic factor in the era of Uzbekistan's new development strategy.
In Uzbekistan, the Third Renaissance Policy is being established as a state policy aimed at creating a New Uzbekistan. In the era of global challenges, national identity, formed under synergetic conditions, is realized through crises of religious and national identity. The study of national identity in post-independence Uzbekistan poses significant challenges. Modern anthropological theories and unified paradigmatic criteria are not sufficient tools for understanding this complex phenomenon.
On the one hand, religion and nation, acting as the main factor of identity formation, simultaneously form a single organism. Because at a time when global wars were escalating in the modern world, Islam is a powerful political and regional defense tool to protect Uzbekistan from external attacks. On the other hand, at the same time, religion is being shaped as a social system that alienates the nation from the roots of nationhood. This is due to the fact that the stereotypes of religious identity of the independence period are fundamentally different from its historical form.
In the history of Uzbekistan, national and religious identity have been social systems that have shaped statehood on the basis of mutual symbiosis. In current time, there are mechanisms in which these two systems work in opposition to each other. This can be seen in the following: 1) The Islamic history of Central Asia developed on the basis of the traditions of the Hanafi madhhab. The revival of Islamic values during the years of independence brought new Islamic movements, different from the Hanafi madhhab, to a people whose Hanafi school had been detached from its Islamic roots for almost a century and a half. 2) The process of global desecularization has led to the introduction of radical, everyday and fundamental elements of Middle Eastern Islamic movements into Uzbekistan through propaganda in social networks. This is a potential threat to undermine the foundations of national statehood. 3) The Islamic factor of the New Era contains elements of Islamic feminism and cosmopolitanism. This quality began to have a destructive impact on the family, youth mentality in the country.
From this point of view, it is important to reveal the influence of the religious factor on the secular character and legal foundations of the state in Uzbekistan, the need to strengthen secularism, mechanisms for the beneficial integration of religious values into society.
Abstract
Abstract
In modern Tajikistan, practitioners of traditional healing, often called tabibs and folbins, are increasingly facing government-led persecution under the guise of fighting "superstition" and "illegal religious activity." Since the early 2000s, President Emomali Rahmon's secular-authoritarian government has actively criminalized these centuries-old practices, labeling them as fraudulent, deviant, or fanatical. This paper contends that the suppression of traditional healers in Tajikistan resembles a modern witch hunt, serving as a form of scapegoating driven by deeper fears about state control, social order, and cultural identity in a post-Soviet country going through ideological consolidation.
To analyze this phenomenon, the case of Tajikistan is compared to the Salem witch trials of 1692, a pivotal moment in the history of religious persecution in colonial New England. Although separated by centuries and rooted in different theological and political contexts, both cases show how dominant authorities create narratives of "deviance" to marginalize cultural "others" and strengthen their power during social instability. While the Salem panic was rooted in a theocratic environment characterized by religious extremism and gendered suspicion, the Tajik campaign against traditional healers is based on a secular discourse shaped by Islamic reformism and the recent endorsement by the state of a "pure Hanafi traditional cultural Islam" as the foundation of national identity.
In both contexts, alternative epistemologies, especially those used by marginalized groups who have lost trust in institutional systems, including biomedicine, are viewed with suspicion and targeted during times of cultural anxiety. Drawing on a wide range of primary and secondary sources, such as media reports and ethnographic studies from 2005 to 2025, this study examines how legal and extralegal methods used by the Tajik government have been employed to suppress faith-based healing practices. It situates this repression within larger theoretical frameworks related to medical pluralism, religious marginalization, and the historical sociology of witch hunts.
Methodologically, this paper engages with historiographical analyses of the Salem trials, especially theories of scapegoating, moral panic, and cultural crisis, to interpret the Tajik government’s rhetoric and punitive measures against traditional healers as strategic tools of cultural engineering. This comparative framework provides not only a metaphorical lens but also a typological model through which contemporary moral panics and repressive regimes can be better understood. Ultimately, the Tajik case shows how states create moral crises to discipline nonconformity, police cultural boundaries, and reaffirm dominant ideologies.
Abstract
The hero of the epic "Manas" is one of the most iconic characters in Kyrgyz folklore. The epic serves as a reference for determining the religious affiliation of the Kyrgyz people. In modern Kyrgyz society, people try to appeal to the fact that the hero Manas was a Muslim or was not a Muslim in disputes about the religion of the Kyrgyz. However, in the question of the religious affiliation of the hero, the religious views of the narrator of the epic "Manas" play a significant role. They are not just keepers of the tales in the epic, but also the entire historical and cultural memory of Kyrgyz people. Modern Manas tellers (manaschys) are the messengers of knowledge, values and worldview of the Kyrgyz people including religion. Since the epic “Manas” exists orally until now, each narrator of the story tells the story of the hero through his own beliefs and understanding of the world of Manas.
The purpose of the study is to explore how religious beliefs of Manas tellers (manaschys) impact the religious character of the hero Manas in the epic from the perspectives of the narrators. I will interview six to eight modern Manas tellers (manaschys) using semi-structured interviews, and analyze some episodes from the epic to better understand the religious belief of Manas (e.g. the episode where Manas was wounded by a Chinese hero Konurbai).
My argument is that Manas was a follower of syncretism since the elements of different religions are blended in different versions of the epic. The protectors of the hero Manas (alp kara kush (a mythical bird), dragon and kabylan) were the representatives of ancient totemic beliefs of the Kyrgyz people, and Manas worshiped ancestral spirits. Moreover, Umai ene was the patroness of mothers and children who assisted the birth of Manas.
The research will contribute to the existing knowledge on the epic Manas and religious study of Kyrgyz people. This knowledge will provide a solid foundation for a more informed discussion of the nature of religious affiliation of the Kyrgyz and the possibility of coexistence of different religious elements within the cultural and traditional practices of one ethnic group.
Abstract
After the breakup of the former Soviet Union the Central Asian countries demonstrated the resurgence of the Islamic religion. Since 90s the number of religious education institutions, mosques, and other religiously affiliated organizations has significantly increased. This fact drew attention not only of international experts and western scholars but also mass media and researchers on the post-Soviet space. The present study is aimed at understanding the government – religious organizations relationship via an analysis of policy initiatives and their intended impact areas, the driving forces behind the government's involvement in regulation of religion, and the current Islam status in the Central Asian countries. Data sources include ongoing research on Islam in the region, the literature, governmental documents and websites as well as mass media publications during the post-Soviet period. This desk research discusses the following questions: What are Post-Soviet policies on state-religion relations in the Central Asian Republics? What are the functions and responsibilities of emerging regulatory institutions in the religious field? It is shown that although the Islamic revival process is different in Central Asian countries, it is necessary to recognize the existence of common trends. The efforts of Central Asia states toward working in close cooperation via interstate associations and bilateral agreements help to ensure religious security alongside with secularization of Islam. Furthermore, institutionalization of the state - religious organizations relationship helps to reduce the ‘radicalization’ associated with Islamic revival. The findings of the study help better understand the significance of the regulatory role of the state in the fight with the threat of extremism and terrorism.