RELIGION IN THE SOCIAL AND POLITICAL LIFE OF THE REPUBLIC OF KYRGYZSTAN

Abstract

With the advent of Soviet power, Islam and Christian Orthodoxy in Kyrgyzstan retreated into the background and lost much of their former influence to the extent that, when the Soviet Union collapsed, the Muslim clergy proved incapable of alleviating the contradictions inside the Muslim community and preventing ethnic clashes. In 1989, the Kyrgyz and Tajiks came to blows over land plots—there are still about 70 disputed plots in the village of Uch-Dobo. In 1990, the Kyrgyz and Uzbeks clashed in the Osh Region in the country’s south. In both cases, the official Islamic clergy proved impotent in the face of the dramatic events and were unable to normalize the situation.

The Kyrgyz, however, remained devoted to popular Islam and its everyday practices: throughout the Soviet period it was a tool of self-identity and an element of the locals’ way of life. The local Muslims continued practicing it on an everyday basis, but on a national clan-dominated scale Islam lost some of its pre-revolutionary importance.

State atheism, the policy consistently pursued across the Soviet Union, left a void in the postSoviet world rapidly filled with all sorts of radical Islamic ideas and new sects and religious (including totalitarian) organizations. The Soviet Union’s demise revived religious feelings in all social groups. It was in the early post-Soviet period that the country acquired scores of new mosques and Orthodox  churches as well as new religious trends. The Koran was translated into the Kyrgyz and Uzbek languages, while the Bible appeared in Kyrgyz translation. Several bookstores in Bishkek sold Islamic and Christian books; the faithful received two periodicals, the national newspaper Islam madaniaty published in Bishkek and The Muslim, which appeared in Jalal-Abad.

The republic’s newly acquired independence changed the local religious structures: the republic set up the Muftiat and regional spiritual administrations of the Muslims. While in the Soviet past the republic did not have any Islamic educational establishments of its own and used the religious educational institutions in Uzbekistan, today it has 2,000 mosques (compared with less than 40 in 1991), 39 madrasahs, and 7 higher Islamic educational establishments, most of them built on foreign money. About 300 students from Kyrgyzstan are studying at Islamic educational establishments in Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan, Syria, and Kuwait. An Association of Religious Educational Establishments is functioning in Osh.