Don Lapre Jeffery
webmaster@john-don-lapre-world.com
www.john-don-lapre-world.com

“Even the idea of a stronghold of Islam in Usbekistan, Tadjikistan and Turkmenistan is more or less an illusion,”

Yes. The so-called ‘threat of Islamic extremism’ in the region is, if not a myth, then largely exaggerated, partly for poltical reasons, partly out of naivity.

“So, it seems that the revival of Islam in Kazakhstan and in Central Asia is limited to cultural development. (…) If repression continues, Islam will surely gain weight and significance.”

Here I don’t fully agree. This is indeed a very classical point of view but in my opinion it is too easy to limit interest for Islam as merely cultural (in the narrow sense of the word: art, folklore, history etc.) and as the outcome of negative factors (repression, poverty, unemployment).

What, for example, if a number of ex-Soviet Muslims (perhaps not a massive majority of them but not a few either) see Islam as an opportunity rather than as a threat? With opportunity, I mean: an identity, a source of dignity and self-respect and a social framework.

The vast majority of the region’s people naturally want a decent life and a minimum of social justice and security for themselves and their families. Yet I think there is a lot of truth in a statement made by Samuel Huntington in ‘The clash of civilisations’:

« People do not live by bread and reason alone. They cannot calculate and act rationally in pursuit of their self-interests until they define their self. Self-interest presupposes identity. »

What is that identity, or where to find it? The Soviet Union is gone, and even if its impact it still visible and popular nostalgia strong, it is dead as a project for the future. And the blind westernisation and the sort of capitalism that we saw in the region over the last decade was very often the worst of both (also, much of the imported western/international concepts simply do not ‘stick’ or are discredited in the eyes of many local people).

In my opinion, the ex-Soviet Muslims’ real identity today has two key elements:

*a continuing Russian influence due to the Soviet era;

*and a historical legacy undeniably rooted in Islam (Sufism in particular), the cultural sphere that was dominant during the region’s heyday. Both seem contradictory but IMO are not necessarily so.

IMO, a suitable, Eurasian form of Islam would be good for the region. It can help cement an identity at a time when ethnic traditions and Soviet codes of conduct erode fast, as they do elsewhere in the world. It can offer a social framework for an emerging middle class at least in parts of the region. If can foster a higher level of resistance against social decay (alcoholism, drug addiction) and more social responsibility. And even support certain social services where overburdened governments can not ? unless there’s indeed reason to panic if social networks around mosques and waqfi (Muslim charity foundations) take care of impoverished pensioners or set up sports facilities and computer classes?

Having said all that, I am not naïve or over-idealising Islam at all. Yet I do think that many (I do not mean anyone here but in general) are dangerously naïve about the benefits of wholesale ‘westernisation’ and ‘secularism’.

Baktygul of neweurasia discusses Islam in Kazakhstan and Central Asia since independence.

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