RELIGIOUS-POLITICAL EXTREMISM IN CENTRAL ASIA: WHY AND HOW IT IS SPREADING

Abstract

There can be no doubt that the most conspicuous event of the last century was the un-precedented revival and spread of extremism and terrorism. Today, the concepts “extremism and “terrorism” have become the most commonly used terms in the political vocabulary of most people writing about present-day problems and security. People are writing about ethnic and religious extremism and terrorism, about political and state terrorism, about domestic and inter-national terrorism, and so on. It would seem that there is nothing more to be said about these phenomena, and we would do well to agree with the opinion that if we look a little more closely at all that has been written, it becomes clear that most publications contain a merely emotional description of events that once took place.1
 Extremism has many different faces, just as there are many different reasons and sources engendering and feeding it. Religious fundamentalism is often given as the reason for the spread of extremism in today’s world. The true meaning of this concept is the striving to adhere to the initial principles of a particular teaching and overcome the deviations that appear during its development.
e cannot help but note that today definitions such as “Islamic extremism” and “Islamic terrorism” have become rather widespread. There is an obvious substitution of concepts here, for we are all perfectly well aware that there is in fact no aggression in Islam itself. Nevertheless, it should be noted that the strong emotional load of all the events involving Islam and Muslims is making it difficult to analyze such a complex problem as religious-political extremism and prevents this issue from being dealt with in a calm and level-headed manner.
 An analysis of the nature of extremism is leading to the rather simple conclusion that this phenomenon is based on a natural clash of interests and political, economic, social, ethnic, and confessional contradictions. In the event that one of the sides is unable to uphold its interests for one reason or another, it is fully capable of re-sorting to extreme methods to resolve its political, religious, ethnic, and other problems. In so doing, the problem of extremism forms not for some specific reason or factor, but due to a whole set of problems, each of which is making its negative contribution to the overall terrorist potential.