POST-SOVIET RADICALIZATION OF ISLAM IN KYRGYZSTAN: HIZB UT-TAHRIR

Abstract

In August 2006, Kyrgyzstan marked 15 years of its independence: a historically short period that upturned the course of history in this republic. The Soviet Union disappeared together with the communist utopia of an atheist state to let religion finally reap the fruits of its opposition to the official Marxist-Leninist ideology. The state loosened its grip on religion somewhat earlier under the impact of perestroika, which brought in democratization and the 1988 ceremonies dedicated to the millennium of Christianity in Russia. Kyrgyzstan, and many of its Central Asian neighbors, inherited a weak economy and spiritual vacuum from the Soviet Union: for seven decades of Soviet rule most people, be they Muslims or Christians, were too frightened to openly demonstrate their devotion. The socialist system disintegrated to bury the bipolar world of socialism/capitalism confrontation under its debris, the resulting gap being filled with another confrontation: the rich and economically dynam-ic West and the poor Muslim Southeast.
 There is the opinion that religion’s new status in society legalized the people’s previously hidden devoutness and allowed religion to come out into the open (thus ending the “underground period” of religious activities). People were no longer afraid to discuss their religious convictions; mosque and church attendance as well as religious rites at home were no longer a crime. Atheists and people earlier indiffer-ent to religion developed an interest in it. Islam and Christianity launched wide-scale propaganda cam-paigns and distributed religious publications in large numbers. As a result, in two years, the number of believers nearly doubled, together with the number of religious associations. By 1991, in Kyrgyzstan 25 churches and parishes of the Russian Orthodox Church and 39 main mosques had received official status; 1,000 more mosques were operating unofficially. By the early 1990s, religion in the republic was represented mainly by Sunni Islam and Orthodox Christianity. In Soviet times, there were underground communities of Baptists, Adventists, Pentecostals, Catholics, and Jehovah’s Witnesses operating across the country—Kyrgyzstan being no exception. Today the republic is a multi-confessional country with over 25 religions and religious trends. This is the result of legalization and the resumed activities of some of the religious trends earlier banned and persecuted. Foreign missionaries, who brought absolutely new religions to the republic, have also contributed to the present confessional diversity.