Introduction

The 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union faced Central Asia's political leaders with the existential challenge of ensuring the political and economic survival of their suddenly independent states of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan. This Herculean task was aggravated by the demise of communist and internationalist ideologies which had underpinned their countries’ societal cohesion – ideologies that were replaced by nationalism and Islam. In Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan the former Communist Party leaders managed to retain their power by repackaging themselves as their countries’ national leaders and by including Islam in their national discourse. Internationally, they distanced themselves from ‘democratizing’ and ‘liberalizing’ impulses emanating from Moscow and moved closer to Turkey and other countries of the Muslim world. In Kyrgyzstan, however, the Communist Party leadership was replaced by new, non-nomenklatura leaders who pursued the Russialike liberalization and multifaceted engagement with the West, with equally devastating consequences. In Tajikistan, the break-up of the USSR triggered a bloody Civil War (1992–97) which acquired an Islamic dimension and attracted radical Islamists from other parts of Muslim Eurasia and the Middle East. The divergent political trajectories of the new Central Asian states have determined the pace of their ‘Islamic revival’, the nature and specific forms of state–Muslim relations and the influence of their Islamic official and non-official leadership.

The chapter contains five sections corresponding to the five Central Asian states. It begins by addressing the ‘Islamic revival’ in Uzbekistan, the region's most populous country and the historical heart of Central Asian Islamic civilization. It discusses the theological and political stance of the ‘young imāms’ and other official Muslim clerics, as well as the ‘unofficial’ Salafī preachers who were active in the Ferghana valley throughout the 1990s. It pays special attention to government policy towards the pro-Salafī and projihādist Islamic opposition and the impact of the Tajik Civil War. The following section examines the role of the leaders of the pro-Salafī Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT) during the Civil War and in the post-war period. It then discusses their relationship with official Dushanbe and with Tajikistani Islamic officialdom.