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Abstract

In scholarly and political discourse, the revival of Islam in Central Asia is frequently presented within national identity construction or political radicalization paradigms. Beyond these frameworks, this article explores how the Islamic revival has influenced gender norms, moral discourse, and daily life in modern-day Uzbekistan. It focuses specifically on how women negotiate and engage in the re-Islamization of the public and private realms since the fall of the Soviet Union, especially in urban and semi-urban areas. Islam has been eliminated from public life and transformed into a private, frequently symbolic identity under Soviet control, reducing it to a closely monitored, folklorized heritage. A secular national ideology with occasional allusions to Islamic history (such as Imam Bukhari and Sufism) was promoted by the Uzbek state in the early years after independence, while unauthorized practice of religion was suppressed. However, over the last ten years, Islamic ethics and practices, often headed by women, have become more and more vernacularized. This has shown up in family life, clothing, moral discourse, and informal religious education.

Through a cultural lens that draws on ethnographic insights, media analysis, and interviews, this paper explores how pious Muslim women reclaim religious subjectivity in ways that both conform to and subtly challenge dominant secular-nationalist narratives. These women participate in informal Quranic study circles, engage with Islamic digital content, and promote halal aesthetics and modesty not as mere imitations of Arab or Turkish models but as rooted expressions of an emerging local Islamic modernity. The study also argues that the revival of Islam in Uzbekistan cannot be understood solely through state policy or geopolitical concerns; rather, it must be situated within the evolving cultural negotiations of meaning, morality, and modernity where women are not only shaped by revivalist currents but actively participate in changing the moral landscape of Uzbekistan’s post-Soviet society.