The subject of this reading response concerns the relationship bet.docx

The subject of this reading response concerns the relationship
between Islam and national identity. The readings for next
week, one by David Radford, and two by myself (I was not able
to scan the Borbieva chapter, unfortunately) give us very
different perspectives on what this relationship looks like.
Please write 200-250 words comparing Radford and Artman’s
perspectives on the relationship between Islam and national
identity. What were their main arguments? Where do they
agree? Where do they disagree? Please also discuss how some
of the readings from week 11 (Peshkova, Rasanayagam,
Privratsky) might inform our understanding of the debate about
national identity and religion. Which perspective did you find
most persuasive? (and you don’t have to agree with me just
because I wrote some of the readings – remember what we’ve
learned in class: it’s ok to disagree!). What did you find most
interesting about the readings for these two weeks?
1
CONTEMPORARY MODES OF ISLAMIC DISCOURSE IN
KYRGYZSTAN: RETHINKING THE MODERATE -
EXTREMIST
DUALITY
CAP PAPERS 170
(CERIA SERIES)

Vincent M. Artman1
Islam’s growing political, cultural, and social influence in
Central Asia has become a major
preoccupation of analysts and policymakers since 1991. Much
of this discussion, however, has
focused on questions related to security, extremism, and
terrorism.2 A characteristic motif in
this literature is the juxtaposition of “moderate Islam” with
“Islamic extremism.” The struggle
between moderates and extremists, in turn, works to shape a
broader geopolitical metanarrative
in which Central Asia is constructed as a place of instability,
violence, and political repression.3
Some have even depicted the region as being faced with the
possibility of a Eurasian “Arab
Spring” scenario.4
Not surprisingly, the actual religious landscape in Central Asia
is substantially more complex
than this binary admits: rather than a stark division between
local moderates and foreign
extremists, closer inspection reveals a myriad of different
theologies, religious groups and
1 Vincent M. Artman is is an instructor in the Center for Peace
& Conflict Studies at Wayne State
University. He holds a Ph.D. in Geography from the University
of Kansas. His publications include
“Documenting Territory: Passportisation, Territory, and
Exception in Abkhazia and South Ossetia” in the
journal Geopolitics and a co-authored piece entitled “Territorial
Cleansing: A Geopolitical Approach to
Understanding Mass Violence” in Territory, Politics,
Governance.

2 An example of this genre is R. Sagdeev, Islam and Central
Asia: An Enduring Legacy or an Evolving
Threat? Washington, DC: Center for Political and Strategic
Studies, 2000. See also S.F. Starr, “Moderate
Islam? Look to Central Asia,” New York Times, February 26,
2014.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/27/opinion/moderate-islam-
look-to-central-asia.html; A.
Masylkanova, “Radicalization in Kyrgyzstan is No Myth,” The
Diplomat, June 22, 2016.
http://thediplomat.com/2016/06/radicalization-in-kyrgyzstan-is-
no-myth/
3 For more on this “discourse of danger,” see: J. Heathershaw,
N. Megoran, “Contesting Danger: A New
Agenda for Policy and Scholarship on Central Asia,”
International Affairs 87:3 (2011), pp. 589-612.
4 R. Kaplan, L. Goodrich, “Central Asian Tensions,” Stratfor,
January 30, 2013.
https://www.stratfor.com/weekly/central-asian-tensions
2
movements, and discourses about the proper role of religion in
society. In the end, attempts to
conceptualize Islam in terms of generalized moderate and
extremist variants obscures the very
real diversity that exists within such categories. The end result
is an inaccurate and unhelpful
depiction of the role of religion in Central Asia today.
The focus of this brief will be Kyrgyzstan, where government
regulation of religion has typically
been less severe than in neighboring states, affording greater
freedom for debates within the

religious sphere to occur openly. Indeed, one of the most
striking developments in Kyrgyzstan
since the 1990s has been the growth of popular interest in Islam
and the increasingly visible
participation of Muslims in the public sphere. At the time of the
Soviet collapse, however,
Kyrgyzstan was widely considered by Western observers to be
one of the most secularized
republics in the Soviet Union.5 Even as late as 1999, one
scholar wrote, “At first glance, there is
no obvious sign that Islam is the official religion of the Kyrgyz.
When you walk in the street of
the capital, you feel only the cold breeze of ‘Scientific Atheism’
blowing in your face.”6
Such an assessment would make little sense today: even in the
country’s cosmopolitan capital,
Bishkek, it is common to see people in modern professional
attire walking side by side with
friends wearing fashionable, brightly-colored hijabs. 7 Vendors
sell Islamic literature on the
streets and in public markets, and stores advertise their stocks
of halal products.8 Theologians
hold popular seminars in conference centers in the city center,
which are attended by hundreds
of young men and women, and parents can send their children to
any number of Islamic
schools.9 Consumers can now do business with any of several
Islamic banks, and universities,
government offices, and even bazaars often set aside space for a
namazkhana, or prayer room.
On Fridays, the streets around Bishkek’s Central Mosque are
even more choked with traffic than
usual, while the mosque itself is usually filled beyond capacity.
During warmer seasons
hundreds of men lay their prayer rugs on the ground in the

courtyard and perform prayers
(namaz) under the open sky.
The growing conspicuousness of such conventional markers of
religiosity, however, only tells
part of the story, and it would be a mistake to interpret these
developments as evidence of a
general consensus about the role of Islam in Kyrgyzstan today.
After all, the so-called “Islamic
revival”10 in Central Asia has never been a uniform
phenomenon. Historically, there have always
been many competing streams of Islamic discourse and practice
in the region. A full accounting
of this diversity is well beyond the scope of this paper. 11
Instead, what follows is a brief
5 A typical assessment notes: “The Kyrgyz received Islam late,
and lightly, and Soviet rule left them with a
vague conception of being ‘Muslim,’ as much in a cultural as a
religious sense.” R. Lowe, “Nation Building
in the Kyrgyz Republic,” in T. Everett-Heath (ed.), Central
Asia: Aspects of Transition, New York:
RoutledgeCurzon, 2003, p. 122.
6 M. Gardaz, “In Search of Islam in Kyrgyzstan,” Religion 29:3
(1999), p. 276.
7 As in many other countries, the practice of veiling has taken
on a political dimension in Kyrgyzstan. See
N. Schenkkan, Kyrgyzstan: Hijab Controversy Charges Debate
over Islam’s Role in Society,” Eurasianet,
October 12, 2011. http://www.eurasianet.org/node/64306
8 There are several competing standards for halal certification
in Kyrgyzstan, a fact which has caused
some confusion for consumers. See “Kyrgyzstan: Rival Halal
Standards Means ‘Trust with Your Eyes
Closed,’” Eurasianet, January 15, 2014.

http://www.eurasianet.org/node/67943
9 B. De Cordier, “Kyrgyzstan: Fledgling Islamic Charity
Reflects Growing Role for Religion,” Eurasianet,
December 8, 2010. http://www.eurasianet.org/node/62529
10 M. Haghayeghi, “Islamic Revival in the Central Asian
Republics,” Central Asian Survey 13:2 (1994), pp.
249-266.
11 To get a sense of this diversity during the post-Soviet era
see: A. Khalid, Islam after Communism:
Religion and Politics in Central Asia, Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2007; M. Louw, Everyday
Islam in Post-Soviet Central Asia, London: Routledge, 2007; B.
Privratsky, Muslim Turkistan: Kazak
3
examination of some of the many cleavages and perspectives
that make up the contemporary
religious scene in Kyrgyzstan, where the meaning of terms like
extremist and moderate is
everything but self-evident.
Textualists
Much of the literature on Islam in Central Asia devotes a
disproportionate amount of attention
to a motley assortment of what are called “Islamic extremist”
organizations. At different times
this list has included groups like Hizb ut-Tahrir, Tablighi
Jama’at, the Islamic Movement of
Uzbekistan, the Islamic Jihadist Union, al-Qaeda, and, most
recently, the Islamic State. It is
worth noting several key points about these organizations,
which are in many respects quite

different from one another. First, not all of them embrace
violence, and those that are violent
have had a negligible impact in Central Asia. For example,
according to one account, “From
2001-2013, there were three attacks that have apparently been
claimed by such groups, with a
total of 11 deaths.” 12 Despite their apparent impotence, the
fear of violent extremism has
nevertheless been seized upon by governments in the region as a
convenient justification both
for domestic political repression and as a means of “ensuring
the cooperation and support of the
West but also of Russia and China.”13
A second crucial point is that the very designation of extremist
likely obscures more than it
explains. Indeed, one of the few characteristics held in common
among the various extremist
groups in Central Asia is a perspective on Islam that might be
referred to as “textualist” or
“originalist.” This perspective tends to understand the Qur’an
and Hadith (accounts of the words
and deeds of the Prophet Muhammad) as the only authoritative
source of religious norms and
rejects much of the broader Islamic scholarly tradition that
developed over the centuries. From
the textualist point of view, moreover, local customs and
traditions that came to characterize the
practice of Islam in various geographical and social contexts are
condemned as bid’a, or
“unwelcome innovations.” Textualists of all stripes, meanwhile,
typically claim to represent a
more pure and authentic form of Islam; however it is not a
given that this purist perspective
necessarily constitutes extremism.

A third, related, point is that the term “extremist” is misleading
because it usually serves as an
umbrella label that conflates truly violent radical organizations
like the Islamic Movement of
Uzbekistan, non-violent, albeit revolutionary, movements like
Hizb ut-Tahrir, and wholly
apolitical groups like the Tablighi Jama’at. While this kind of
terminological fuzziness often
works to the advantage of state regimes interested in controlling
the religious sphere, it tells us
little about the nature of the organizations in question.
Hizb ut-Tahrir, for example, is banned throughout Central Asia
because the group’s propaganda
advocates the establishment of an Islamic caliphate. Moreover,
the group is often viewed as an
“Uzbek phenomenon” 14 in Central Asia. In Kyrgyzstan, this
perception plays into prevalent
Religion and Collective Memory, London: Routledge, 2001; J.
Rasanayagam, Islam in Post-Soviet
Uzbekistan: The Morality of Experience, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2011.
12 J. Heathershaw, D. Montgomery, “The Myth of Post-Soviet
Muslim Radicalization in the Central Asian
Republics,” London: Chatham House, 2014, p. 14.
13 B. Balci, D. Chaudet, “Jihadism in Central Asia: A Credible
Threat after the Western Withdrawal from
Afghanistan?” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace,
2014.
http://carnegieendowment.org/2014/08/13/jihadism-in-central-
asia-credible-threat-after-western-
withdrawal-from-afghanistan
14 E. Karagiannis, Political Islam in Central Asia: the
Challenge of Hizb ut-Tahrir, London: Routledge,

2010, p. 58.
4
narratives regarding the potential for a repeat of the traumatic
inter-ethnic violence akin to that
which ravaged the country in 2010.15 At the same time, Hizb
ut-Tahrir has won many adherents
by providing social goods that the Kyrgyz state has been unable
to supply.16 Thus, while Hizb ut-
Tahrir’s goal of establishing a caliphate is shared with violent
organizations like the Islamic
State, its non-violent, gradualist methods are not; simply
grouping both together as “extremist”
obscures the very real differences between them.
In a similar fashion, the case of the Tablighi Jama’at clearly
illustrates the difficulties in using
the broad, overarching terminology of “extremism” to refer to
textualist Islamic movements. The
group, whose name loosely translates as “the society of
spreading the message,” was founded in
the 1920s in India, and its primary mission is “faith renewal…to
make nominal Muslims good
practicing Muslims by helping them to get rid of un-Islamic
accretions and observe Islamic
rituals faithfully.” 17 However, like Hizb ut-Tahrir, the
Tablighi Jama’at is banned as an
“extremist” organization throughout most of Central Asia,
despite the fact that it is non-violent
and expressly apolitical. In most cases, the unstated motivation
behind such restrictions is a
desire on the part of governments to maintain a monopoly over
the religious sphere.18

In Kyrgyzstan, however, the Tablighi Jama’at operates openly,
and in fact appears to be widely
influential. In some respects, the group’s appeal is not difficult
to understand: its message of
helping Muslims to practice a more “pure” Islam based solely in
the Qur’an and Hadith, attracts
many who are in search of what they feel to be a more authentic
religious experience. Moreover,
the fact that the Tablighi Jama’at is an apolitical movement
means that participation in its
activities, especially daavat,19 the act of inviting fellow
Muslims to pray at the mosque, provides
a risk-free avenue for exploring and expressing a self-
consciously Islamic identity rooted in the
foundational texts of the religion.20
Yet, even in Kyrgyzstan the Tablighi Jama’at is not entirely
without detractors. Adherents have
sometimes provoked controversy for wearing what are
sometimes derided as “Pakistani” styles
of dress – “long tunics, baggy pants and turbans in emulation of
the Prophet Mohammed.”21
Many Kyrgyz consider such clothes to be culturally
inappropriate, or even a potential sign of
extremist beliefs. In response to the controversy, members of
Tablighi Jama’at have been
encouraged to adopt more familiar “national” styles, including
the traditional Kyrgyz kalpak hat.
15 I. Rotar, “Situation in Southern Kyrgyzstan Continues to
Smolder Two Years Since Ethnic Riots,”
Eurasia Daily Monitor 9:115 (2012).
http://www.jamestown.org/single/?no_cache=1&tx_ttnews[tt_ne

ws]=39507
16 E. McGlinchey, “Islamic Revivalism and State Failure in
Kyrgyzstan,” Problems of Post-Communism
56:3 (2009), pp. 16-28.
17 M. Ayoob, The Many Faces of Political Islam: Religion and
Politics in the Muslim World, Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press, 2008, p. 135.
18 G. Saidazimova, “Uzbekistan: Tabligh Jamaat Group Added
to Uzbek Government's Blacklist,” Radio
Free Europe/Radio Liberty, December 20, 2004.
http://www.rferl.org/content/article/1056505.html
19 Davaat is the local pronunciation of the Arabic word dawa.
So prevalent is this activity in Kyrgyzstan
that members of Tablighi Jama’at are colloquially referred to as
daavatchilar.
20 Numerous other Islamic funds and organizations also operate
in Kyrgyzstan, including the Turkey-
based Nurçular (also known as the Gülen movement),
Mutakallim, an Islamic women’s organization, and
Adep Bashati, a Kyrgyz group whose leadership received
training at the renowned Al Azhar University in
Egypt. Like the Tablighi Jama’at, these organizations often
operate schools and medresehs, run charities,
and provide other kinds of social services. The Kyrgyz
government maintains a list of officially registered
organizations, which can be found here:
http://www.religion.gov.kg/ru/muslim.html
21 N. Schenkkan, “Kyrgyzstan: Islamic Revivalist Movement
Quietly Flourishing,” Eurasianet, 2011.
5
While such compromises appeased some critics, officials in the

State Commission for Religious
Affairs continue to express skepticism about the group’s
ultimate goals. Some suggest that the
Tablighi Jama’at could be “laying the groundwork” for radical
extremist movements.22 Other
observers, such as the popular Kyrgyz theologian Kadyr
Malikov and Emil Nasritdinov, a
professor of anthropology who has himself participated in
daavat, 23 argue that the group
actually siphons potential recruits away from more violent
groups by providing Kyrgyz Muslims
with an apolitical avenue for exploring the possibilities of faith
renewal.24 Nevertheless, the
Kyrgyz government is still considering the possibility of
following the example of its Central
Asian neighbors and banning the Tablighi Jama’at as an
extremist organization alongside the
Islamic State and al-Qaeda.
In the end, such overly broad and politically arbitrary
definitions of what constitutes extremism
ultimately reinforce the notion that the term itself is usually of
limited analytical value.
Normative Hanafism
If the word “extremist” lacks definitional clarity, then the term
“moderate” is similarly imprecise.
For example, in Kyrgyzstan the definition of “moderate Islam”
is in many respects a product of
the mobilization of theology in the service of state policy.
According to an official report entitled
the “Conception of State Policy of the Kyrgyz Republic in the
Religious Sphere 2014-2020”: “[I]n
order to ensure national security and cultural identity, the state
is creating conditions for the

strengthening and development of traditional forms of moderate
Sunni Islam, based on the
religious-legal school of Hanafism and the Maturidi creed.”25
To this end, the government has
begun to promote what it calls “traditional Kyrgyz Islam,”
which “does not place in opposition
Islamic beliefs and national traditions and customs, and has an
ideological basis for the
development of partnership with the state.”26
As a secular entity the government is constrained in the degree
to which it directly intervenes in
theological issues. Nevertheless, the State Commission for
Religious Affairs, a secular body
under the jurisdiction of the President of Kyrgyzstan, has broad
authority to “regulate the
religious sphere or other activities of religious organizations
through laws and other normative
legal acts.”27 At the same time, Kyrgyzstan also has an
“official” Islamic governing body, which is
called the Muslim Spiritual Authority of Kyrgyzstan. Although
this institution, which is also
known as the Muftiate, is legally separate from the Kyrgyz
government, in practice it cooperates
closely with the state. Moreover, unlike the State Commission
for Religious Affairs, the Muftiate
is an explicitly religious body, and it is composed of ulema, or
Islamic scholars.
22 Personal communication.
23 E. Nasritdinov, “Spiritual Nomadism and Central Asian
Tablighi Travelers,” Ab Imperio 2 (2012), pp.
145-167.
24 Personal communications.
25 Kontseptsiia gosudarstvennoi politiki Kyrgyzskoi Respubliki

v religioznoi sfere na 2014-2020 gody
(2014), p. 17.
http://www.president.kg/files/docs/kontseptsiya_na_rus._priloje
nie_k_ukazu_pkr-1.pdf.
The Hanafi madhhab is one of the four major schools of Islamic
jurisprudence, and the one that is most
widespread in Central Asia. Typically, Hanafism allows for
more consideration of local customs and
practices than other madhhabs, and is sometimes interpreted as
advocating political quietism.
Maturidism is a philosophical doctrine that grew out of the
teachings of Abu Mansur Muhammad al-
Maturidi, a tenth century philosopher from Samarkand.
Maturidism affords a greater role to human
reason and free will than some other schools of thought.
26 Ibid,. p. 10.
27 Chotaev, Z., Isaeva, G., Tursubekov, Z. “Metodicheskie
materialy: gosudarstvennaya politika v
religioznoi sfere: zakonodatel'nye osnovy kontseptiya i
"traditsionnyi islam" v Kyrgyzstane,” Bishkek:
Gosudarstvennaya komissiya po delam religii Kyrgyzskoi
Respubliki, 2015, p. 12.
6
A significant proportion of the Muftiate’s activities is aimed at
spreading “correct” knowledge of
Islam among Kyrgyz Muslims.28 In addition to holding classes
on the basics of the Qur’an and
Hadith, the Muftiate also publishes religious literature, much of
which is devoted to outlining
the basics of Islamic belief and ritual, providing answers to
common questions about religion,

giving religiously-grounded advice on topics like marriage,
child-rearing, and so forth. But the
Muftiate’s efforts to promote knowledge of Islam are not
limited to remedial religious
instruction; they are also intended to foster the development of
patriotic, nationalist, political
quietist, and moderate Kyrgyz Muslims.
The Muftiate thus provides important theological underpinning
to the state’s broader efforts to
combat extremism. For example, along with representatives
from the president’s Security
Council and the State Committee for Religious Affairs, the
Muftiate now evaluates imams on
their “knowledge of Islam.”29 The tacit goal of this process is
to ensure that imams are not
spreading religious extremism, which is defined as “adherence
to violence and radical acts
directed towards the unconstitutional change of the existing
order, and threatening the integrity
and security of the state, society, or individuals using religious
rhetoric.” 30 Similarly, the
Muftiate argued that “real sacred ‘jihad’ is…a struggle against
‘terrorism,’ which is accursed by
God and the angels.”31 In 2015 the Muftiate hosted an
international symposium on “Extremism
and Takfirism32 as a Threat to Modern Society.” This
symposium brought together religious
officials from across the Central Asian region, as well as from
countries like Egypt, Saudi Arabia,
Kuwait, India, and Pakistan, to discuss the problem of
extremism and terrorism. Among the
resolutions adopted by the delegates were a declaration that
terrorism and violence are contrary
to the teachings of Islam and calls to put an end to communal,
tribal, and sectarian divisions

among Muslims.33
Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambayev himself used the
symposium as an occasion to remind
people of the nature of traditional Kyrgyz Islam. In remarks
from a local newspaper, which were
reproduced in the preface to the symposium proceedings,
Atambayev noted, “The Kyrgyz people
were never religious fanatics. That our forefathers belonged to
the Hanafi madhab was not a
coincidence. I would like to stress one feature of the Hanafi
madhab. In modern parlance: it was
tolerant.”34 Similarly, an analyst in the Kyrgyz Commission for
Religious Affairs, commented:
“Maturidism is [our] traditional Islam. It says that Islam and the
state should live in harmony
and that there is no necessity to build a caliphate.”35 The
“Conception of State Policy” also
highlights the patriotic and quietist character of Maturidism,
noting that “[t]his school, which is
28 N. Kurbanova, “Islamic Education in Kyrgyzstan,” Central
Asia and the Caucasus: Journal of Social
and Political Studies 15:1 (2014), pp. 90-103.
29 “Kyrgyzstan Testing Clerics’ Knowledge of Islam,”
Eurasianet, May 28, 2015.
30 “Kontseptsiia gosudarstvennoi politiki Kyrgyzskoi
Respubliki v religioznoi sfere na 2014-2020 gody,”
op. cit., p. 34.
31 F. Yusupov, “Musul’manin ne terrorist – terrorist ne
musul’manin, paralelli mezhdu dzhikhadom i
terrorismom,” March 17, 2016.
http://muftiyat.kg/ru/article/musulmanin-ne-terrorist-terrorist-
ne-

musulmanin-paralleli-mezhdu-dzhihadom-i-terrorizmom
32 To accuse someone of takfir is to accuse them of being an
unbeliever, even of they call themself a
Muslim. “Takfirism” is thus not a coherent ideology, as the
name might suggest, but rather a label that
refers to a broad spectrum of purist or extremist viewpoints that
categorize many, if not most, other
Muslims as having been corrupted by un-Islamic ideas and
practices.
33 “‘Ekstremizm zhana takfirizm koomgo keltirgen
korkunuchu’: I el aralyk simpoziumu,” Bishkek, April
16, 2015.
http://muftiyat.kg/sites/default/files/books/simozium_2015_fina
l_akyrky.pdf
34 Ibid., p. 3.
7
shared by the majority of the citizens of the Kyrgyz Republic,
has a historically proven capacity
for tolerance, good-neighborliness, and respect in conditions of
ethnic and religious diversity.”36
The defection of what constitutes moderate Islam in Kyrgyzstan
today therefore effectively
conforms to the government’s preferred qualities: politically
inert, loyal to the state and the
existing order, and unreceptive to extremist ideologies like
“takfirism” or calls to establish a
caliphate in Central Asia. It is important to recognize, however,
that the fact that traditional
Kyrgyz Islam is rooted in the venerable Hanafi tradition imbues
it with a theological legitimacy

that is independent of its political utility. However, the
traditional Kyrgyz Islam promoted by the
state and the Muftiate is not the only form of moderate,
culturally authoritative Islam in
Kyrgyzstan.
Traditionalists
According to a report published by the State Commission for
Religious Affairs, Islam, “[h]aving
become an integral part of our culture and history…exists in
harmony with the customs and
traditions that spread in Kyrgyzstan over the course of
centuries.”37 From the perspective of the
state and the Muftiate, “tradition” refers to moderate, tolerant
Hanafism. But for many Kyrgyz,
the concept of tradition also refers to a broad constellation of
beliefs and practices that are
linked to the concept of kyrgyzchylyk, which translates roughly
as “the essence of Kyrgyzness.”
Although it is a somewhat vague concept, kyrgyzchylyk
typically includes practices like
divination, performing ziyarat to mazars,38 attending to the
spirits of the ancestors, and various
other practices, many of which are linked with the Kyrgyz
people’s nomadic past. Importantly,
for many Kyrgyz such traditional practices are also closely
intertwined with Islam. Although the
two are not necessarily conceived of as being identical, the
boundaries that separate one from
the other are often indistinct. It is important to note, however,
that this “traditionalist Islam”
does not constitute an organized movement or group; rather it
should be understood as a
perspective on the faith that is less concerned with bid’a than it
is with honoring Kyrgyz customs

and traditions.
Not surprisingly, many practices associated with kyrgyzchylyk,
and thus with traditionalist
Islam, are frequently excoriated as “un-Islamic” or as
“shamanism” by textualists and others.
For example, members of the Tablighi Jama’at sometimes argue
that people who engage in
fortune telling derive their powers from djinni, or evil spirits.39
The supernatural powers of
healing and fortune telling manifested by clairvoyants, from this
perspective, are simply
intended to mislead people and tempt them into shirk (idolatry
or polytheism). Similarly, the
Muftiate itself has argued, “There are still many superstitions in
Kyrgyzchilik [sic] that go
against Islam and are sinful…The one who commits shirk
certainly can expect to be thrown into
the fires of hell.”40
36 “Kontseptsiia gosudarstvennoi politiki Kyrgyzskoi
Respubliki v religioznoi sfere na 2014-2020 gody,” op.
cit., p. 17.
37 Chotaev et al., op cit. p. 19.
38 Ziyarat is the practice of performing a pilgrimage to a mazar,
or a sacred place. Mazars can include the
graves of ancestors or saints, as well as natural sacred sites like
springs, trees, or stones, which are said to
have a special holy quality. Visiting mazars is an important
aspect of religious practice throughout Central
Asia.
40 Quoted in N. Borbieva, “Parallel Worlds: Male and Female
Islam in the Central Asian Republics,”

presented at “The Turks and Islam: An International
Conference,” Bloomington, Indiana, 2010, p. 7.
8
Traditionalism’s historical connection with Kyrgyz culture and
identity, however, also imbues it
with prestige and authority. Many traditionalists view both
textualist interpretations of Islam
and the normative Hanafism promoted by the Muftiate as posing
a threat to authentic Kyrgyz
Islamic customs. As one traditionalist argues, “Pure Qur’an is
good. But today’s Islam is a
negative influence. It is destroying all our traditions. Women
have started wearing the hijab.
People are wearing Pakistani clothes. The number of mosques
has grown in villages. Mullahs are
prohibiting crying and saying koshok [mourning of the dead] at
funerals. Our ancestors
accepted pure Islam. It didn’t contradict our culture.”41
Suggestions that traditional practices are somehow not
consistent with Islam are often met with
confusion and scorn. As one practitioner argues, “[W]e perform
namaz, read and recite the
Qur’an, we often do feasts of sacrifice, and perform alms.
[Islam] is in our blood, and it is passed
to us from our ancestors from seven generations ago.”42 Indeed,
despite pressures from the
Muftiate to conform to normative Hanafism, one observer notes
that people with “pieces of
crucial local knowledge – knowledge of texts in Farsi and
Chagatay Turkic, knowledge of rituals
at mazars, local vernacular poetry, and songs and epics – have

asserted their voices as
purveyors of real and legitimate Central Asian Islamic
traditions.”43
Traditionalism thus represents another authoritative modality of
Islamic belief and practice in
contemporary Kyrgyzstan, one that has strong roots in culture,
history, and tradition. At the
same time, however, traditionalism occupies a peculiar position
outside the boundaries both of
extremism and normative moderate Hanafism. But, since
traditionalists do not constitute an
organized group or movement, they have not attracted the
attention of the state. Consequently,
disputes over belief and practice between traditionalists and the
Muftiate tend to play out on the
theological and rhetorical planes, rather than in the realms of
politics and national security.
Conclusion
The meta-discourse about the nature and threat of Islamic
extremism, both in Central Asia and
elsewhere, is likely to continue unabated. However, as the furor
over President Obama’s refusal
to blame “radical Islam” in wake of the June 2016 massacre in
Orlando has made clear, the act
of labeling extremism is not neutral.44 Some have accused the
President of ignoring the reality of
the threat posed by extremists, while others, including the
President himself, have countered by
pointing out that simply using the label “radical Islam” achieves
little of substance. Much the
same argument could be made regarding the habit of classifying
Islam in Central Asia into
moderate and extremist varieties: as the foregoing has

demonstrated, just what these labels
mean is not always self-evident, and their apparent homogeneity
begins to break down upon
closer inspection.
In the end, “moderate” and “extremist” are essentially political
categories, not descriptive or
analytical ones. Such labels not only mask the considerable
diversity of religious practice and
theological perspectives in Central Asia, but they also work to
perpetuate dominant geopolitical
metanarratives about the region as a zone of danger and
instability. Understanding Islam’s role
in contemporary Central Asia will therefore require us to
reassess the value of these labels and
43 V. Schubel, “Islam's Diverse Paths: Seeking the ‘Real Islam’
in Central Asia, in G. Aitpaeva & A.
Egemberdieva (eds.), Sacred Sites of Ysyk-Köl: Spiritual
Power, Pilgrimage, and Art, Bishkek: Aigine,
2009, pp. 281.
44 C. Amidon, “Why We’re Debating the Term ‘Radical Islam’
in the Wake of Orlando,” Huffington Post,
June 17, 2016. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kicker/why-
were-debating-the-ter_b_10488686.html
9
the ideological baggage they come freighted with. Once we have
freed ourselves from the
necessity of deciding who counts as an “extremist” and who

counts as a “moderate” we can begin
to turn our attention to the more difficult – and more rewarding
– project of trying to make
sense of the ways in which different actors mobilize Islamic
authority, mapping the fault lines
that separate disparate modalities of belief and practice, and
observing how these contestations
shape policy, theology, and public discourse.
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‘My Poor People, Where Are We Going?’: Grounded
Theologies and National Identity in Kyrgyzstan
Vincent M. Artman
To cite this article: Vincent M. Artman (2019): ‘My Poor
People, Where Are We Going?’:
Grounded Theologies and National Identity in Kyrgyzstan,
Europe-Asia Studies, DOI:
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‘My Poor People, Where Are We Going?’:
Grounded Theologies and National Identity
in Kyrgyzstan
VINCENT M. ARTMAN

Abstract
Although Islam is described as a fundamental aspect of Kyrgyz
national identity, its theological aspects are
generally elided in nationalist discourse. However, as Islam
becomes more prominent in Kyrgyz society,
anxieties about ‘Arabisation’ and the weakening of national
traditions permeate popular and political
discourse. These anxieties operate simultaneously in the
national and religious registers, suggesting the
extent to which theological beliefs inform national identity,
even in secular states. Examining a recent
controversy over veiling in Kyrgyzstan, this article argues that
theology is both linked to nationality and
also a site of contestation over the terms of nationalism itself.
IN THE DECADES SINCE THE SOVIET COLLAPSE,
SOCIAL, CULTURAL, economic and
political landscapes across Eurasia have been dramatically
refashioned. However, along
with sometimes halting and geographically uneven integration
into the global economy
(Laruelle & Peyrouse 2013), the most transformative processes
affecting this region have
arguably been nation-building and the revival of religion in the
public sphere. These
developments, importantly, have not occurred in isolation from
one another, and the
numerous zones of interpenetration between religion,
secularism, and ethnic and national
identities have attracted substantial interest from scholars
working on Central Asia
(Laruelle 2007; Louw 2012; Thibault 2013; Montgomery 2016;
McBrien 2017).
A recurrent theme in this literature has been a critique of the

framing of nationalism and
the nation-state as ‘the bearers of modernity par excellence’
(van Biljert 1999, p. 317) and the
habit of dismissing religion as ‘traditional’ and ‘backwards’
(van der Veer & Lehmann 1999,
p. 3). Such narratives feed into stereotypical depictions of Islam
as antipathetic to the modern
© 2019 University of Glasgow
https://doi.org/10.1080/09668136.2019.1656167
I would like to acknowledge Dr Alisa Moldavanova, for her
support and her invaluable feedback and
suggestions; the anonymous reviewers whose comments helped
to improve the article from its original
version; Dr Alexander Diener; the University of Kansas
Department of Geography and Atmospheric
Science and the Wayne State Centre for Peace & Conflict
Studies, where substantial portions of the research
included in this article were conducted; IREX; and all of the
people who participated in this research
project. This work was supported by International Research and
Exchanges Board: Grant Number
Individual Advanced Research Opportunity.
EUROPE-ASIA STUDIES, 2019
https://doi.org/10.1080/09668136.2019.1656167
http://www.tandfonline.com
sovereign-territorial regime (Huntington 1997, p. 175); as
Bassam Tibi has pointed out,
‘Western scholars argue that the idea of the nation-state was
exported from Europe to the

“abode of Islam”. Those who have adopted it are viewed as
modernisers, whereas those
who reject it are considered to be traditionalists’ (Tibi 1997, p.
10). By contrast, other
scholars have sought to highlight the dynamic and often
contradictory roles that Islam
plays in the modern nation-state, as well as in the articulation
and performance of national
identity itself (Piscatori 1986; Hashmi 2002; Rasanayagam
2011). Indeed, there is growing
recognition that the spheres of ‘the political’ and ‘the religious’
are not as alienated from
one another as classical theories that link nationalism with
secularisation would hold
(Hobsbawm 1990; Gellner 2006).1 This is to say, putatively
secular ideologies like
nationalism are often bound up with notions of religious
solidarity (van der Veer 1994),
and collective memories of national origins are frequently
rooted in religious stories,
myths and symbols (DeWeese 1994; Smith 2003). Rather than
an antagonism between
religion and nationalism, we instead find that religion, national
identity and the nation-
state overlap in sometimes unexpected ways.
In Central Asia, for example, Islam has often been described as
an inalienable part of the
cultural patrimony of the titular nationalities (Haghayeghi 1994;
Tazmini 2001; Hann &
Pelkmans 2009; Rasanayagam 2011; Olcott 2014). At the same
time, Islam has
occasionally been characterised as playing an ‘instrumental’
role for Central Asian
governments (Peyrouse 2007; Omelicheva 2016), insofar as they
are seen as trying to

invoke religious heritage to bolster their own legitimacy.
However, while nationalist
ideology has undeniably made use of religious symbols and
rhetoric for political purposes
(recall the late Uzbek president, Islam Karimov, taking his oath
of office on the Qur’ān),
the intensity and frequency of such mobilisations has been
geographically uneven and has
varied substantially over time. The Karimov government, for
example, went from
emphasising Islam to imposing harsh controls over the religious
sphere in reaction to the
perceived threat posed by radical groups such as Hizb ut-Tahrir
and the Islamic
Movement of Uzbekistan (Rasanayagam 2006). Similarly, the
Islamic Renaissance Party
of Tajikistan (Hizbi Nakhzati Islomii Tojikiston), long the only
legal Islamic political party
in Central Asia, was outlawed in 2016 and many of its members
imprisoned.2 In
Kyrgyzstan, meanwhile, Islam has never figured prominently in
the state’s official ideology.
We must also be wary of too readily accepting the oft-repeated
dictum that being Kyrgyz/
Uzbek/Kazakh/etc., means being a Muslim (Khalid 2007, p.
107; Omelicheva 2011, p. 246;
Radford 2015, p. 55). This dictum explains neither how that
relationship has been constructed
and articulated, nor the emotional and spiritual resonance with
which it has become imbued.
Instead, it is necessary to examine how discourses surrounding
national identity shape the
ways in which people think about religion, and vice versa. How
are these discourses
embodied and performed? How do the connections between

religion and national identity
implicate the secular nation-state? This article seeks to address
these questions by using
controversies over the hijāb as a lens through which to examine
how theological ideas and
1See Zubrzycki (2010) and Tse (2014) for a critique of this
paradigm.
2‘Shuttered Tajik Islamic Party Branded As Terrorist Group’,
29 September 2015, Radio Free Europe/
Radio Liberty, available at:
http://www.rferl.org/content/tajikistan-islamic-party-terrorist-
organization/
27277385.html, accessed 15 July 2016.
2 VINCENT M. ARTMAN
organization/27277385.html
organization/27277385.html
arguments can become interwoven with discourses surrounding
national identity. What we
find is that nationalist narratives, even in secular states like
Kyrgyzstan, often contain
religious arguments and are in fact grounded in particular
theological formations.
Furthermore, the debate over veiling practices suggests that the
theology/nationality nexus
is also a site for renegotiating the meaning of national tradition
and its relationship with
religion.

The majority of the data analysed in this article was collected
over a five-month period,
August–December 2014. Fieldwork consisted of participant
observation as well as semi-
structured interviews with government officials, representatives
of the muftiyat,3
theologians, local scholars and ordinary Muslims. Subsequent
data were obtained from
publicly available primary documents, including religious
literature, government
documents and published interviews.
The article begins by looking at how the objectification of
Muslim consciousness has
transformed the nation-state into an arena for contestation
between putatively ‘national’
and ‘foreign’ Islamic practices. It takes as an example an
ongoing debate in Kyrgyz
society over the propriety of veiling, a debate that came to a
head with the appearance of
a series of controversial billboards in Bishkek in the summer of
2016. As we will see, the
billboards’ critique of veiling was couched in nationalist
paranoia about cultural
‘Arabisation’, which is in turn connected with fears that
conservative forms of Islam are
poised to overwhelm the moderate and tolerant forms of Islam
that are depicted as being
traditional among Kyrgyz. The article then turns to an
examination of this ‘traditional
Kyrgyz Islam’, arguing that it effectively constitutes a semi-
official ‘national theology’
that is supported by the state and promulgated by Kyrgyzstan’s
religious authorities.
Traditional Kyrgyz Islam, which is rooted in the Hanafi school

of Islamic jurisprudence, is
tied to discourses surrounding Kyrgyz national identity through
appeals to genealogy, as
well as the fact that it incorporates various customs and rituals
associated with Kyrgyz
ethnic traditions. As an objectified theology, it is contrasted
with other forms of Islam,
which are often depicted as being foreign or hostile to Kyrgyz
culture. The final section of
the article returns to the question of veiling, and examines how
the hijāb has become a
focal point in the renegotiation of Kyrgyz national identity
itself, in some ways
challenging, or at least revising, the ways in which the
relationship between Islam and
national identity has traditionally been conceived in
Kyrgyzstan.
Religion, the nation-state and the objectification of Muslim
consciousness
Despite the profound influence that the ‘secularisation
paradigm’ has exerted on the social
sciences (Tschannen 1991), it has become apparent that the
‘death of religion’, long
regarded as ‘conventional wisdom in the social sciences during
most of the twentieth
3The word muftiyat is derived from the term mufti, an Islamic
legal expert. The Kyrgyz Muftiyat is currently
headed by Mufti Maksat azhi Tokotmushev, who is assisted by a
board of deputy muftis. Organisationally, the
Kyrgyz Muftiyat is the descendant of a Soviet-era institution,
the Dukhovnoe upravlenie Musul’man Srednei
Azii i Kazakhstana, or the Spiritual Administration of the
Muslims of Central Asia and Kazakhstan

(SADUM), which administered Islamic religious affairs from its
inception in 1943 until the dissolution of
the Soviet Union in 1991. See Saroyan (1997a, 1997b) and Ro’i
(2000).
‘MY POOR PEOPLE, WHERE ARE WE GOING?’ 3
century’ (Norris & Inglehart 2004, p. 3), has not come to pass.
Across a literature that ranges
from critical reassessments of the idea of secularisation
(Hadden 1987; Swatos & Christiano
1999; Berger 2012), attempts to theorise a ‘post-secular’ order
(Habermas 2008; Gorski et al.
2012) and explorations of religion vis-à-vis modernity
(Casanova 1994; Asad 1999; Lambert
1999), scholars have taken note of the seemingly anomalous
persistence of religious belief in
a modern, industrialised and disenchanted world. Increasingly,
the very notion of a ‘great
divide’ (van der Veer 1994) between ‘traditional religion’ and
‘rational modernity’ appears
antiquated: the faithful today are visible and assertive
participants in social and
(geo)political discourses throughout the world (Westerlund
1996; Eisenstadt 2000; Petito
& Hatzopoulos 2003; Thomas 2005). Thus, as Cavanaugh and
Scott remind us,
‘theological discourse has refused to stay where liberalism
would prefer to put it.
Theology is politically important, and those who engage in
either theology or politics
ignore this fact at their peril’ (Cavanaugh & Scott 2004, p. 1). It
should be noted from the
outset that the term ‘theology’, as employed in this article, does

not (necessarily) refer to
the systematic study of the nature of the Divine. Rather, the
article draws upon Tse’s
(2014, p. 202) conceptualisation of ‘grounded theologies’,
which are defined as
‘performative practices of place-making informed by
understandings of the transcendent’.
According to Tse, grounded theologies:
remain theologies because they involve some view of the
transcendent, including some that take a
negative view toward its very existence or relevance to spatial
practices; they are grounded
insofar as they inform immanent processes of cultural place-
making, the negotiation of social
identities, and the formations of political boundaries, including
in geographies where theological
analyses do not seem relevant. (Tse 2014, p. 202)
Importantly for the present discussion, Tse makes clear that
grounded theologies ‘are not
abstract speculations, for they have concrete implications for
how practitioners understand
their own existence in ways that inform their place-making
practices’ (Tse 2014, p. 208).
The notion of ‘grounded theologies’, then, is a useful lens
through which to make sense of
the ways in which ‘the religious’ intersects with secular forces
such as nationalism while
freeing us from the epistemological baggage carried by the term
‘religion’ (Asad 1993).
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Islam has become an
increasingly prominent factor in
Kyrgyzstan’s social, cultural and political discourse. However,
if Islam has assumed a role that

was impossible under communism, then, as Hann and Pelkmans
note, ‘the new religious
marketplaces’ that emerged in the 1990s have nevertheless been
shaped by the political
imperatives of the governments in the region (Hann & Pelkmans
2009, p. 1518). Although
this ‘framing’ has sometimes been described as the
‘instrumentalisation’ (Peyrouse 2007) or
even ‘étatisation’ (Hann & Pelkmans 2009, p. 1519) of religion,
it may be more helpful to
understand it through the lens of what Eickelman and Piscatori
refer to as the ‘objectification
of Muslim consciousness’. This term refers to ‘the process by
which basic questions come to
the fore in the consciousness of large numbers of believers:
“What is my religion?” “Why is it
important to my life?” and “How do my beliefs guide my
conduct?”’ (Eickelman & Piscatori
1996, p. 38). Objectification is an outcome of widespread
literacy, mass education and the
growing availability of multiple forms of mass media
(increasingly including social media),
which have changed the ways in which Muslims think about and
discuss their own beliefs:
4 VINCENT M. ARTMAN
‘Like mass communications, mass education and publishing
contribute to objectification by
inculcating pervasive “habits of thought.” They do so by
transforming religious beliefs into a
conscious system, broadening the scope of religious authority,
and redrawing the boundaries
of the political community’ (Eickelman & Piscatori 1996, pp.

41–2).
What has emerged out of this process is a way of thinking about
Islam as a self-contained
system of beliefs and practices, one that can be readily
described and compared against other
belief systems—or, indeed, against other forms of Islam
(Eickelman 1992). As we will see in
this article, both the Kyrgyz state and the religious authorities
have contributed to and
leveraged the objectification of Muslim consciousness by
defining what has often been
referred to as ‘traditional Kyrgyz Islam’, arguably a sort of
‘national theology’ that is
counterpoised with other forms of Islam. As the name suggests,
traditional Kyrgyz Islam
is explicitly connected with notions of Kyrgyz ethnic and
national identity and is
portrayed as being bound up with Kyrgyz history, genealogy
and traditions. Meanwhile,
other forms of Islam, particularly those espousing more
conservative or rigidly textualist
theologies, are depicted as at best culturally incongruous, and at
worst as extremist and a
threat to social cohesion and state survival.
An interesting example of this dynamic can be found in a
controversy that erupted over a
series of billboards that suddenly appeared around Bishkek in
the summer of 2016. The
billboards provoked heated debate because they openly
criticised the more conservative
veiling practices that have become increasingly conspicuous
among many Muslim women
in Kyrgyzstan. This critique, importantly, was framed in
explicitly national terms: the

implication was that such forms of veiling were associated with
Arabs, Bengalis or
Pakistanis—outsiders, in short—and were thus inappropriate for
Kyrgyz women. While
the ‘billboard controversy’ was ultimately short-lived, it
nevertheless suggests the degree
to which objectified theological assumptions, grounded at a
variety of scales, from the
individual body to the national community, have become
embedded in normative
conceptions of Kyrgyz national identity.
The hijāb and Kyrgyz national identity
In August 2016, the then president of Kyrgyzstan, Almazbek
Atambaev, held a long press
conference during which he addressed a variety of important
topics, ranging from
proposed constitutional reforms, the closure of the US military
base at Manas Airport and
the political pressure emanating from Turkey to close schools
operated by the Gülen
movement. The event’s most notable moments, however,
transpired when the president
began discussing the topic of veiling. Invoking the spectre of
terrorism, Atambaev
lamented the growing popularity of the hijāb among Kyrgyz
women, linking it with
religious extremism and even terrorism:
in Kyrgyzstan in the 1950s, women went about in mini-skirts,
but it did not occur to one of them to

put on a ‘martyrdom belt’ and blow someone up. You can go
around if you like with a boot on your
head, but do not blow anyone up. Because this is not religion.4
President Atambaev’s remarks added fuel to a controversy that
had been smouldering in
Kyrgyzstan since the appearance of several billboards along
Bishkek’s major thoroughfares
earlier that summer (see Figure 1). The billboards depicted
three contrasting images: the
leftmost panel showed a group of smiling Kyrgyz women
wearing traditional national
costumes; the middle picture portrayed women wearing white
hijābs; and the final panel
depicted a group of women fully covered by black chadors, with
only their eyes visible.
Beneath the pictures were the portentous words ‘My poor
people, where are we going?’
(‘Kairan elim, kaida baratabyz?’) superimposed upon a red
arrow that pointed ominously
towards the black-clad women on the right (Nasritdinov &
Esenamanova 2017). In the
end, the billboards, though they only lasted a few weeks, laid
bare the thorny issues
surrounding secularism, Islam and national identity in Kyrgyz
society.
Not surprisingly, Kyrgyzstan’s official Islamic authority, the
Muftiyat, denounced the
banners, calling them ‘divisive’ and ‘provocative’ for offending
the sensibilities of pious
Muslims (Shuvalov 2016).5 At the same time, however, many
politicians and other public
figures expressed their support for the anti-hijāb message;
President Atambaev even
endorsed the notion of placing similar billboards throughout the

entire country.6 The
popular television host Meerim Shatemirova argued that the
billboards struck a blow for
the principles of secularism and women’s rights: ‘If I’m being
honest, I would have hung
up the banners myself … . I want to live in a society that is
based on the law of the
Constitution, not upon religion!’.7 Curiously, a few days later,
several new billboards
appeared, emblazoned with the same slogan, but this time
juxtaposing women in
traditional Kyrgyz clothing with those in more revealing
‘Western’-style mini-skirts. They
were quickly removed, and the whole affair came to an
ignominious close (Nasritdinov &
Esenamanova 2017).
Although a local controversy over a short-lived series of
billboards defending Kyrgyz
national costume against the Islamic headscarf may seem like a
somewhat idiosyncratic
affair, it is emblematic of the complex and ambiguous role that
religion often plays in
Kyrgyzstan’s putatively secular political sphere. Wearing the
hijāb—or choosing not to—
is ‘an embodied spatial practice through which women are
inserted into relations of power
in society’ (Secor 2005, p. 204), and as such is a political act
irrespective of intent.
Veiling, as both a symbol and as a grounded theological
practice that engages practitioners
4‘Atambaev: Pust’ luchshe khodyat v mini-yubkakh, no nikogo
ne vzryvayut’, ASIA-Plus, 2 August 2016,
available at: https://news.tj/ru/node/228994, accessed 29 July
2019.

5‘DUMK: banner “Kayran elim, kayda baratabiz?” mozhet
naverit’ edinstvu’, Sputnik, 13 July 2016,
available at:
http://ru.sputnik.kg/society/20160713/1027634490.html,
accessed 28 November 2016.
6‘Kyrgyzstan: President Throws Weight Behind Anti-Veil
Posters’, Eurasianet, 14 July 2016, available at:
http://www.eurasianet.org/node/79661, accessed 16 September
2016; ‘Atambaev poruchil povesit’ bannery
“pro parandzhu” po vsei strane’, Sputnik, 14 July 2016,
available at: http://ru.sputnik.kg/society/20160714/
1027672085.html, accessed 28 November, 2016.
7‘Snyat’ nel’zya ostavit’! 7 avtoritetnykh mnenii o
skandal’nykh bannerakh’, Sputnik, 13 July 2016,
available at:
http://ru.sputnik.kg/opinion/20160713/1027636498.html,
accessed 28 November 2016.
6 VINCENT M. ARTMAN
https://news.tj/ru/node/228994
http://ru.sputnik.kg/society/20160713/1027634490.html
http://ru.sputnik.kg/opinion/20160713/1027636498.html
in the ‘contestations that continually shape everyday human
geographies’ (Tse 2014, p. 205),
therefore exists in dialogue with other social and ideological
currents, including nationalism,
secularism and prevailing religious norms. Thus, even though

96% of Kyrgyz report that they
were ‘raised Muslim’ (Bell 2012), and while many Muslim
women in Kyrgyzstan cover
themselves in some fashion, wearing the hijāb remains a
contested practice owing to its
ambivalent status vis-à-vis Kyrgyz national tradition.
During the Soviet period, veiling was virtually non-existent, an
outcome of the prevailing
anti-religious atmosphere of the times, as well as of Soviet
campaigns to ‘liberate’ women
from what were portrayed as harmful and backwards customs
(Northrop 2004). Indeed,
ending the practice of veiling was linked with what was viewed
as ‘one of the biggest
triumphs of Soviet modernizing campaigns—women’s
emancipation’ (McBrien 2017,
p. 117). However, the disappearance of the atheist regime in
1991 resulted in a
‘deprivatisation’ of religion (Casanova 1994) in a place where
many religious people
simply practised their faith in private to avoid mistreatment by
the state. Since
independence, Islam has re-entered the public sphere as both a
source of moral and
spiritual authority and as a publicly embodied set of practices,
even if many people lack a
precise understanding of what constitutes Islam.
For many, an interest in rediscovering ‘authentic Islam’, which
was felt to have been lost
during the Soviet period (Simpson 2009; McBrien 2017), has
encouraged, among other
things, the adoption of self-consciously ‘Islamic’ styles of
dress. Wearing the hijāb has thus
become increasingly commonplace in Kyrgyzstan, even though

activists are still fighting the
stigma surrounding veiling, which has manifested in restrictions
on wearing the hijāb in
schools and in the workplace and other forms of discrimination
(Shenkkan 2011; Nasritdinov
FIGURE 1. ANTI-VEILING BILLBOARD IN BISHKEK
Source: ‘DUMK: Banner “Kairan elim, kaida baratabyz?”
mozhem navredit’ edinstvu’, Sputnik, 13 July 2016,
available at:
https://ru.sputnik.kg/society/20160713/1027634490.html,
accessed 29 July 2019.
https://ru.sputnik.kg/society/20160713/1027634490.html
& Esenamanova 2017). Nevertheless, by the end of the 2000s,
the sight of women wearing the
hijāb, even in cosmopolitan Bishkek, no longer seemed as
remarkable as it had in 1992.
But if the hijāb is no longer an uncommon sight, then it is not a
practice that all Kyrgyz
people are comfortable with. As Mohira Suyarkulova explains:
‘as women wearing various
styles of hijāb and veils became more numerous and visible on
the streets of Bishkek after
independence, many citizens and authorities reacted with
irritation, and often the
discomfort with this new practice was expressed in ethnic
terms’ (Suyarkulova 2016,
p. 258). Particularly among older generations raised during the
Soviet period (McBrien

2017; Nasritdinov & Esenamanova 2017), as well as among
nationalists concerned with
defending ‘authentic’ national traditions, the veil is interpreted
as ‘fundamentally at odds
with the Kyrgyz character’ (Murzakulova & Schoeberlein 2009,
p. 1240).
Ethno-nationalist anxieties related to the hijāb can partly be
seen as by-products of the
Kyrgyz state’s efforts to articulate a coherent ‘national idea’.
Such efforts have welded
Kyrgyz cultural memory and its attendant myth-symbol complex
(notably the Manas epic)
with a teleological narrative of the modern Kyrgyz nation-state
as the political-territorial
culmination of the Kyrgyz nation’s historical destiny (Akaev
2003; Gullette 2008). This
process has been accompanied by deliberate efforts to revive
Kyrgyz epic poetry, nomadic
customs,8 indigenous sports and musical styles, and distinctive
national costumes. In an
ideological environment like this, the politics and symbolism
invested in national costume
can become particularly intense (Suyarkulova 2016, p. 247);
choosing to wear the hijāb
may be interpreted as an affront to national identity.
Consequently, the juxtaposition on
the billboards of traditional Kyrgyz clothing with hijābs and
chadors served as a potent
reminder of the apparent erosion of Kyrgyz national culture.
With this in mind, the response of Tynchtykbek Chorotegin, the
director of the Muras
Foundation, which is dedicated to the study and preservation of
Kyrgyz historical and
cultural heritage, to the hijāb controversy and, more broadly,

Islam’s role in Kyrgyz
society, is particularly revealing:
We are not against Islam, and we respect the historical choices
of our ancestors. But we are against
mankurtism and the imposition on us of alien clothing, since
[clothing is] an important part of the
culture of every nation. … [People have] only just begun to
openly support and develop their
culture and wear clothes with Kyrgyz ornaments. So, at this
moment there is a real threat of what
is known as ‘Arabisation’. … But we are Kyrgyz Hanafis, who
managed to preserve all our
Muslim and non-Muslim traditions through hundreds of
centuries. … We hope that our citizens,
regardless of the depths of their religious beliefs, will
understand correctly the meaning of the
billboards [that read] ‘My poor people, where are we going?’
We have always had our own
Kyrgyz headscarves, elecheks, embroidered kalpaks, and
skullcaps. … Our grandmothers and
great-grandmothers never wore black chadors or parandzhas.
(Begalieva 2016)9
8Many people, for instance, will decamp to a jailoo, or high
mountain pasture, to live in yurts during the
summer.
9A chador is a garment that covers the entire body, apart from
the face. A parandzha, like the burqa, covers
the face and eyes.
8 VINCENT M. ARTMAN

Chorotegin’s invocation of mankurtism in the context of his
warnings about ‘Arabisation’ is
particularly notable. Coined by the revered Kyrgyz author
Chingiz Aitmatov, the term mankurt
refers to a person who ‘did not know who he had been, whence
and from what tribe he had
come, did not know his name, could not remember his
childhood, father, or mother—in short,
he could not recognise himself as a human being’ (Aitmatov
1983, p. 126). The figure of the
mankurt has been widely interpreted as a thinly veiled allegory
for Russified Kyrgyz, who, in
adopting the modern Soviet (or Russian or Western) way of life,
had ‘forgotten who they
were’. Chorotegin’s implication that veiling constitutes a form
of ‘mankurtism’ that rejects
ancestral traditions in favour of ‘Arabisation’ thus works as
powerful nationalist appeal that is
also grounded in particular theological traditions; that is,
‘Kyrgyz Hanafism’.
From whence does this implicit connection between ‘Kyrgyz
Hanafism’ and Kyrgyz
nationalism derive in the first place? As the next section
describes, both the secular state
and the religious authorities in Kyrgyzstan have objectified
particular theological traditions
and combined them with narratives about Kyrgyz history and
national identity. The result
has been the articulation of what has sometimes been referred to
as ‘traditional Kyrgyz
Islam’, which in many respects functions as a de facto national
theology.
‘Traditional Kyrgyz Islam’ as a national theology

Since independence, the Kyrgyz state has worked to foster a
cohesive nationalist ideology,
though such efforts have been inconsistent and have shifted in
response to changing political
circumstances (Marat 2008; Laruelle 2012). Significantly, the
idea that Islam constitutes an
important part of the cultural and historical patrimony of the
Kyrgyz nation has been a
prominent, though ambiguously represented, feature of this
project (Murzakulova &
Schoeberlein 2009; Chotaev et al. 2015a, p. 4). Consequently,
despite being cast as ‘an
indispensable, central element of Kyrgyz identity’ (Hann &
Pelkmans 2009, p. 1530), Islam’s
‘intrinsic qualities … as a faith [are] rarely mentioned in
official rhetoric’ (Hann & Pelkmans
2009, p. 1528). Islam, moreover, has not played a major role in
Kyrgyz nationalist rhetoric or
ideology, which has often focused instead on romantic
reconstructions of Kyrgyz history,
genealogy and the Manas epic (Akaev 2003; Biard & Laruelle
2010; Gullette 2010).
However, the ambivalent place of Islam vis-à-vis Kyrgyz
nationalism, which is as much a
reflection of the Kyrgyz state’s commitment to secular values as
it is an indication of the
leadership’s lingering Soviet-conditioned scepticism about
religion, does not mean that
religion is irrelevant to how national identity is constructed.
Indeed, the backlash against
the hijāb suggests that nationalist anxieties regarding
‘Arabisation’ are overlaid with
religious anxieties as well. ‘Traditional Kyrgyz Islam’, for
example, is portrayed as having
been the religion of the ancestors of the modern Kyrgyz people.

In religious terms, it is
grounded in the Hanafi tradition, and characterised as tolerant
and pluralist, politically
quietist and open to rational thought, scientific inquiry and
cooperation with the government.
Theology and the secular state
One of the most important actors involved in the delineation of
traditional Kyrgyz Islam is not
a religious body, but the state. In particular, the Kyrgyz
Respublikasynyn Prezidentine
Karashtuu Din Ishteri Boyuncha Mamlekettik Komissiyasy,
hereafter the State
Commission for Religious Affairs, which is tasked with
registering and regulating religious
organisations operating in Kyrgyzstan, plays a leading role in
the formulation of government
policy toward the religious sphere.10 Mirroring similar
initiatives elsewhere in Central Asia
(Epkenhans 2011; Rasanayagam 2011; Yemelianova 2014), the
Kyrgyz government has
defined ‘traditional Islam’ as being ‘closely interwoven’ with
Kyrgyz national traditions.
In fact, policies pertaining to religion are viewed as being
central to the project of nation-
building itself, effectively blurring the boundaries between the
secular and the religious.
Thus, according to the ‘Conception of State Policy in the
Religious Sphere, 2014–2020’:

State policy concerning religion and religious organisations in
the Kyrgyz Republic is aimed at the
development and strengthening of Kyrgyz statehood, the
preservation of state sovereignty and the
unity of the nation. … While maintaining a neutral stance
towards religious institutions, assuming
certain religious, cultural and national particularities, the state
will implement its policy by
respecting traditional moral values, and will create conditions
for the consolidation and
development of the spiritual potential and cultural heritage of
the people of Kyrgyzstan.
(Emphasis added)11
Rather than amounting to the simple appropriation of religious
discourse for raisons d’état,
however, state interventions into the religious sphere have had
quite real theological
implications.
Traditional Kyrgyz Islam is explicitly grounded in the Hanafi
juridical school. As one of
the four Sunni madhabs,12 Hanafism constitutes a rich
theological tradition associated with
broader Islamic philosophical and legal currents. In Kyrgyzstan,
Hanafism has been
positioned as ‘traditional’, largely on account of its historical
prevalence in Central Asia.13
More specifically, however, its legitimacy as a normative
national theology is rooted in
genealogy and Kyrgyz cultural memory. One report, entitled
‘State Policy in the Religious
Sphere: Legislative Bases, Concept, and “Traditional Islam” in
Kyrgyzstan’, notes that:

for every Muslim, the teachings followed by his ancestors [are
considered to be] traditional, because
in Kyrgyzstan all people who consider themselves to be
Muslims, in addition to performing prayers
and other religious rites in accordance with the teachings of
Abu Hanafi, also follow the example and
borrow from the experiences of their elders. (Chotaev et al.
2015a, p. 31)
10It is worth noting that, while the commission’s purview
extends to all religious groups, a disproportionate
focus has been placed on Islam. The reason for this, according
to one analyst working at the commissions is that
Islam is more politically important since most of the population
are Muslim (Personal communication with
Z. Tursunbekov, Bishkek, 2 December 2014).
11Kontseptsiya gosudarstvennoi politiki Kyrgyzskoi Respubliki
v religioznoi sfere na 2014–2020 gody,
2014, available at: http://www.gov.kg/wp-
content/uploads/2014/11/Kontseptsiya-na-rus-prilozhenie-k-
Ukazu-PKR.docx, accessed 16 November 2015.
12Madhabs are schools of Islamic jurisprudence. In Sunni
Islam, the four main madhabs are the Hanbali,
Shafi, Maliki and Hanafi schools.
10 VINCENT M. ARTMAN
http://www.gov.kg/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Kontseptsiya-

na-rus-prilozhenie-k-Ukazu-PKR.docx
Another official document describes the syncretic nature of
traditional Kyrgyz Islam in
similarly historicised terms:
After the birth of a male child into a family, along with a prayer
he will receive a name and be
circumcised; during marriage, rituals will be performed; when a
person dies prayers will be read,
and in order to receive the blessings of the ancestors the Qur’an
is read, and so forth, and that is
how the elements of the religion of Islam, combined with the
way of life of our people, have
become traditional religion. Therefore, the traditional character
of Islam, which was adhered to by
our ancestors, is considered the spiritual patrimony of the
Kyrgyz, passed through the centuries
from generation to generation. For the Muslims of Kyrgyzstan,
the traditional values of Islam are
the Hanafi madhab of the Maturidi school. (Chotaev et al.
2015b, p. 23)
As this passage suggests, within the broader Hanafi tradition,
traditional Kyrgyz Islam is
also marked by the kalam (theology) of Abu Mansur Muhammad
al-Maturidi, a tenth-century
theologian from Samarkand. Indeed, the ‘Conception of State
Policy’ specifically calls for the

‘strengthening and development of a traditional and moderate
form of Sunni Islam on the
basis of the Hanafi religio-legal school and the Maturidi
creed’.14 Maturidi theology is
notable among other kalam schools in Sunni Islam, notably
Ash‘arism, for emphasis on
human reason, free will and scientific inquiry (Glassé 1989;
Özervarli 2004). Maturidism
thus affords believers:
a relatively large degree of freedom for rational speculation to
act. The intellect is said to be capable
of proving the existence of God from His creation and knowing
what good and bad acts are. This
greatly distinguishes al-Maturidi’s epistemology from that of
[the influential Sunni theologian] al-
Ash‘ari, who did not give human though a comparable type of
autonomy and fundamentally
restricted the priority of the intellect in favor of transmission
[of knowledge from authoritative
sources]. (Rudolph 2015, p. 232)
These ‘rationalist’ aspects of Maturidi thought have become a
cornerstone of the normative
national theology in Kyrgyzstan, while Imam Maturidi himself
is held up as an exemplary
Islamic intellectual, one whose ideas are still relevant:
[Imam Maturidi’s] main methods in the study and understanding
of religion were rationalism, reason,
and thinking. … He, relying on logic and kalam, which is one of
the methods of decision-making in
the Sharī‘a, sought … to widely disseminate religion in a multi-
confessional society. … Imam
Maturidi began his work with an analysis of socially significant
phenomena: politics, religion, law

(shariat), society, and social life. … [He] relied, first of all on
the verses of the Qur’an and
hadiths of the Sunna of the Prophet. At the same time, he
continued his attention on the mind,
evidence, theory, and logic. … Imam Maturidi believed that for
the development of religious
education, reason and morality are necessary as two important
sources, not opposed to one
another, but complementing each other. (Chotaev et al. 2015a,
p. 25)
One analyst at the State Commission for Religious Affairs even
explained connections
between Maturidi perspectives on rational thought and free will
in terms of the Kyrgyz
people’s nomadic heritage: ‘Maturidism accorded with the
nomadic way of life. Nomads
were used to being free, to thinking freely, to expressing their
opinions. Islam could not
put us in a box’.15
Importantly, within the paradigm of ‘traditional Kyrgyz Islam’,

Maturidi-Hanafism has
also been imputed with rather contemporary concerns, including
tolerance (for other
religions and among different ethnic groups), respect for
national traditions, as understood
through the lens of modern ethno-nationalism, and an
ideological predisposition for
scientific inquiry and cooperation with the state (Chotaev et al.
2015a). Indeed, the
Kyrgyz government has played a crucial role in fixing the
boundaries of acceptable
religious discourse in ways that are compatible with official
perspectives on Kyrgyz
nationalism. By emphasising the Kyrgyz nation’s historical
affiliation with Hanafi Islam,
portraying Islam’s natural entanglement with national
traditions, and by appealing to
genealogy, specific theological positions have been interwoven
with broader discourses
surrounding secularism and Kyrgyz national identity, even
while religion itself is largely
omitted from official nationalist ideology.
Religious education and national theology
Although the state is a key arbiter in Kyrgyzstan’s religious
economy, it lacks the kind of
religious authority possessed by the Kyrgyzstan
Мusulmandaryndyn Din Bashkarmalygy
(Muslim Spiritual Authority of Kyrgyzstan). This institution,
often simply referred to as
the Muftiyat, is composed of ulama (religious scholars), whose
opinions carry religious
authority. Importantly, while the Muftiyat is legally separate
from the government, it is
nevertheless a registered religious organisation, classified by

the State Commission for
Religious Affairs as a ‘public organisation uniting and
regulating all Muslims, Muslim
religious organisations, communities, mosques, educational
institutions, funds, and other
Islamic structures in the territory of the republic’ (Chotaev et
al. 2015a, p. 31).16
Talal Asad has suggested that the concept of orthodoxy refers
not to ‘a mere body of
opinion but a distinctive relationship of power. Wherever
Muslims have the power to
regulate, uphold, require, or adjust correct practices, and to
condemn, exclude, undermine,
or replace incorrect ones, there is the domain of orthodoxy’
(Asad 1986, p. 15). As the
preeminent Islamic religious authority in Kyrgyzstan, the
Muftiyat wields precisely this
sort of power. It does so through its control over the sermons
delivered in mosques and
the curricula taught in religious schools, the power to issue
authoritative fatwas (religious
15Personal communication with Z. Tursunbekov, Bishkek, 2
December 2014.
16It is important to note that, while the Muftiyat is independent
from the state and derives the majority of
funding from the Muslim community itself (Isci 2010), the
government has not hesitated to intervene in its
business. Despite its complex relationship with the state,
however, the Muftiyat largely ‘enjoys
independence and regulates its own affairs’ (Isci 2010, pp. 77–
8). Moreover, while there have at times been
tensions between the government and the Muftiyat, the Deputy
Kazi of the Bishkek Central Mosque

maintains that ‘there is no strict control [by the state]. There is
no contradiction between the followers of
Islam and those who are in power’ (Personal communication
with Imam Almanbet, Bishkek, 11 November
2014).
opinions), as well as through its publication of religious
literature and, not inconsequentially,
its relationship with the state, all of which are used to inculcate
the norms of traditional
Kyrgyz Islam in the population.
This is not to suggest that the Muftiyat is a monolithic body: the
religious authorities do
attempt to accommodate, or even co-opt, the activities of
reformist groups such as the
Tablighi Jama’at, which is based on a belief system that
conflicts in some respects with
those of the religious authorities. Within the Muftiyat, there are
also conflicting views on
conservative streams of Islam, such as Salafism. As Mirsaiitov
points out, ‘for some
ulama, Salafism is simply a sect that has departed from
traditional Islam’, while others,
like Kadyr Malikov, a member of the Muftiyat’s Council of
Ulama, argue that Salafism
‘poses a threat to the most traditional school of Islam, based on
Abu Hanafi’ (Mirsaiitov
2013, pp. 49–51). Despite the Muftiyat’s internal diversity,
however, the national theology
to which it lends its religious authority remains based on a
fairly circumscribed

interpretation of what constitutes traditional Kyrgyz Islam.
For example, the Muftiyat tests imams for their command of
Arabic and their knowledge
of sharī‘a law.17 Such tests are not merely intended to ensure
that imams possess sufficient
knowledge and skills to properly do their jobs: they are carried
out in conjunction with the
security services and the State Commission for Religious
Affairs, and their primary
purpose is ‘to train imams to preach traditional norms of Islam’,
to combat religious
‘ignorance’, and to prevent the spread of ‘radical extremism’.18
In other words, in addition
to evaluating basic competencies, such appraisals are a means
of signalling the normative
religious conventions that imams are expected to adhere to and
transmit.
The norms of traditional Kyrgyz Islam are also communicated
through various forms of
religious education. The Muftiyat pursues various initiatives,
such as hosting Qur’ān readings
and classes covering the ‘basics’ of Islam that are aimed at the
general public and are intended
to circulate and instil in believers sanctioned religious beliefs.
The Muftiyat also oversees the
operations of Islamic schools throughout Kyrgyzstan. In
addition to providing limited
funding to such schools,19 the Muftiyat effectively controls
their curricula. Subjects
typically include a three-year course in Arabic, the Qur’ān and
sharī‘a law, as well as
secular subjects. Taken as a whole, this course of study helps to
ensure that the next
generation of students will be habituated to the Muftiyat’s

interpretation of orthodox Islam
—that is, traditional Kyrgyz Islam.
The Muftiyat also publishes a wide range of religious literature.
Some of these works
include hadith collections, manuals of Qur’anic interpretation,
treatises on the origins of
the Sunni madhabs, and other serious theological writings. A
significant proportion of this
literature, however, is aimed instead at a broader, and perhaps
less religiously
sophisticated, audience. Many pamphlets and handbooks
published in this popular genre
17‘Kyrgyzstan Testing Clerics’ Knowledge of Islam’,
Eurasianet, 28 May 2015, available at: http://www.
eurasianet.org/node/73636, accessed 16 November 2016.
December 2014.
19The director of one madrasah located on the outskirts of
Bishkek explains that the Muftiyat provides the
school with money based on enrolment, and periodically
allocates funds for activities linked to Ramadan and
holidays such as Kurman Ait, the Feast of Sacrifice. The
director also noted, however, that most of the school’s
funding was still derived from the community. Personal
communication with M. Sulaymanov, Chong Aryk, 9
October 2014.

consist of compilations of catechisms, collections of important
prayers, short booklets
explaining how Islam relates to important family affairs
(funerals, marriage, child-rearing),
and even instructional manuals outlining how to properly
perform namaz (prayer).
Additionally, popular theologians such as Kadyr Malikov
publish their own books. Some
of these works address, in an accessible way, issues like the
true meaning of jihād, the
importance of ijtihād (independent reasoning), tolerance in a
multi-confessional state, the
differences between ‘official, traditional Islam’ and so-called
‘folk Islam’, and the
relationship between religion and national tradition (Malikov
2014).
These sorts of publications may appear somewhat quotidian and
unremarkable, and in
many respects they are. However, their focus on rudimentary
religious knowledge is
precisely why they constitute such a crucial channel through
which the national theology
can be widely disseminated: their focus on basic questions of
belief and practice serves to
concretise objectified understandings of traditional Kyrgyz
Islam in a way that is easily
comprehensible by ordinary believers. At the same time, the
doxa and practice of
traditional Kyrgyz Islam is subtly politicised and contrasted
against other, more putatively
‘radical’ theologies. Kadyr Malikov’s Kratkoe posobie po
Islamu (A Short Handbook on
Islam), for example, contains a chapter on ‘political
organisations, movements, jamaats

(groups), and parties’, but the chapter is largely devoted to
explaining concepts such as
jihād, terrorism and takfirism (accusations of unbelief), as well
as condemning
organisations like the Islamic State, Hizb ut-Tahrir and the
Islamic Movement of
Turkestan (Malikov 2014, pp. 100–35). The implication is that
beliefs and practices
associated with traditional, moderate Kyrgyz Islam naturally
diverge from the extremist
theological positions espoused by such groups.
In tandem with the state, Kyrgyzstan’s religious authorities play
a crucial role in
objectifying and propagating traditional Kyrgyz Islam as a
national theology. Alongside
the sermons delivered at Friday mosque and the various
religious opinions delivered by
the ulama, it is educational initiatives, ranging from curricula
taught in Islamic schools to
religious instruction in mosques and the publication of various
forms of religious
literature, that serve as the cornerstone of its efforts. Of course,
while the Muftiyat is not
publicly concerned with nationalism as such, the interplay
between religion, national
identity and the nation-state is nevertheless subtly embedded in
the Maturidi-Hanafi
theology it embodies. As we will see, however, traditional
Kyrgyz Islam is not a static set
of beliefs. In the next section, the article discusses how the
dispute over veiling, which
came to a head with the appearance of the controversial
billboards, reveals the fissures in
the national theology and makes clear how the meaning of being
Kyrgyz and Muslim is

constantly being contested.
Veiling and the renegotiation of traditional Kyrgyz Islam
Objectified notions about traditional Kyrgyz Islam are in many
respects at the heart of
anxieties about the imposition of non-Kyrgyz religious customs
and their potential for
undermining Kyrgyz national identity. Veiling has played a
central role in these debates.
On the one hand, the hijāb functions as a ‘universal’ marker of
Islam, insofar as veiling is
understood by Muslims and non-Muslims alike as being a sign
of Islamic piety
(Mahmood 2005; Fernando 2010; Gökarıksel & Secor 2012;
McBrien 2017). At the same
time, attitudes towards veiling vary substantially among
Muslims with different philosophies,
beliefs and cultural backgrounds. These divergences, of course,
frequently have an ethno-
national dimension. As Kadyr Malikov explains:
We do not have a conflict between religion and national
tradition … we have conflict between
[different] national understandings [of Islam] … . For example,
traditions [concerning] the hijāb
are a big cultural problem … . First of all, the black colour is an
Arabic [custom]. And [their]
hijāb is worn over the [whole] body. Of course, this is not a
problem [in general], but it is a
[particular] form of wearing [the hijāb]. It is not Kyrgyz.20

Malikov’s perspective speaks to an objectified understanding of
Islam, wherein fault lines
over the hijāb emerge from the friction generated by the
confrontation of incommensurate
religious beliefs and practices shaped by different cultural
contexts. The dissonance
engendered by conservative modes of veiling thus stems from
how ‘foreign’ modes of
practising Islam introduce symbolic elements into the Kyrgyz
religious economy that are
recognised as universal while also being experienced by some
as incongruous with the
local customs that are said to characterise traditional Kyrgyz
Islam.
As a pan-Islamic symbol, the hijāb is not viewed as
objectionable in and of itself, although
many secular-minded Kyrgyz and others may indeed see it as a
worrisome sign of deepening
social conservatism and religious influence in the public sphere.
However, the association of
certain forms of veiling with Arab, Pakistani or even Uzbek
culture, which tend to be coded
as ‘conservative’, ‘fundamentalist’ or ‘radical’ (Rashid 2001;
ICG 2012; Tromble 2014),
suggests that those forms of veiling are interpreted as an
implicit challenge to dominant
narratives about ‘authentic’ Kyrgyz religious traditions.
For many hijābis, then, the decision to wear the veil collides
with social expectations and
narratives surrounding national tradition. Ainura, for example,
is a young hijābi who lives in
Bishkek. She reports that, despite progress in recent years, the
social stigma surrounding

veiling remains palpable, particularly among older generations,
for whom the hijāb is a
sign of religious zealotry, or even extremism.21 Ainura went to
school in a madrasa
operated by the Tablighi Jama’at, a group that originated in
South Asia and adheres to a
conservative, textualist interpretation of Islam. Despite the fact
that it is strictly apolitical
and devoted primarily to da’wa (calling Muslims to the
mosque), the group is banned as
an extremist organisation in most of Central Asia and Russia;
however, with the approval
of the Muftiyat and the State Commission for Religious Affairs,
it operates freely in
Kyrgyzstan.
However, the Tablighi Jama’at has still attracted controversy.
Its conservative views mean
that it has been accused by some, including the State
Commission for Religious Affairs, of
‘laying the ground for the development of radical extremist
movements’.22 This
assessment has been disputed by others, who note that the
organisation does not involve
itself in politics and may therefore give people who might
otherwise join more politicised
Islamist organisations, such as Hizb ut-Tahrir, an avenue to
explore a textualist
20Personal communication with K. Malikov, Bishkek, 17
December 2014.
21A pseudonym. Personal communication with Ainura, Bishkek,
1 October 2014.
December 2014.

interpretation of Islam in a politically disengaged way
(Ismailbekova & Nasritdinov 2012,
p. 181; Malikov 2013).
Tablighi Jama’at has come under fire from Kyrgyz nationalists
as well. In the past,
members of the group have been criticised for wearing loose-
fitting pants and skirts, long
beards and skullcaps, which some people view as alien to
Kyrgyz culture. As one
observer protested: ‘these are Pakistani clothes, these are not
Kyrgyz clothes’ (quoted in
Ismailbekova & Nasritdinov 2012, p. 189). Such complaints
about dress styles, which
invoke both religious and nationalist anxieties, mirror the fears
about the hijāb being a
vector for Arabisation and mankurtism. And while members of
Tablighi Jama’at have
altered their attire to better conform to Kyrgyz sensibilities,
stereotypes, particularly those
surrounding the hijāb, persist. According to Ainura:
People who lived in Soviet times do not understand our religion.
They criticise us and say, ‘since you
are Kyrgyz you should not wear the hijāb’. But youth have a
good understanding about Islam. [Older
people] claim that Kyrgyz women never covered themselves … .
Some people say, ‘I am not a
Muslim, I am a Kyrgyz’. But being a Kyrgyz means being a
Muslim. A long time ago the
Kyrgyz prayed to fire and to stones. But today we are
Muslims.23

For Ainura, as for many other Muslim women, wearing the hijāb
is a central aspect of the
performance of Muslim subjectivity. She does not perceive any
contradiction between
donning a headscarf and being Kyrgyz. What this suggests is
that veiling has become not
just a focal point for debates about religion and national
identity, but also a site of
contestation over the terms of that debate.
Today, the notion that the hijāb can and should be reimagined
as consistent with Kyrgyz
national culture is being articulated daily by activists and
ordinary women like Ainura, for
whom the supposed contradiction between piety and nationality
is largely irrelevant. Thus,
when World Hijāb Day was celebrated in Bishkek in February
2017, posters for the event
depicted a silhouetted hijābi, her headscarf fashioned from a
map of the world—an image
that in many respects symbolised the universality of the Muslim
community. At the same
time, however, the event’s slogan was ‘We are different, but we
are united!’.24 This motto
acknowledged the umma’s aspirational wholeness while
simultaneously recognising its
manifest national and cultural diversity.
The hijāb was thus subtly reimagined as part of Kyrgyz Islam;
meanwhile, ‘traditional’
Kyrgyz styles are being reimagined as being part of the broader
Islamic cultural heritage.
During the event, the fashion designer Aizhan Akylbekova
alluded to this duality, noting
that wearing the veil was ‘not just a sign of obedience to Allah,

but a tribute to the history
and traditions of the Kyrgyz nation’.25 However, while
Akylbekova was dressed in
traditional Kyrgyz clothes including a traditional elechek
headdress, many participants wore
other, more concealing forms of the hijāb. Concerns about the
‘appropriateness’ of veiling
23Personal communication with Ainura, Bishkek, 1 October
2014.
24‘Mezhdunarodnyi Den’ Platka V Bishkeke’, Umma. Islamskii
zhurnal, 2017, available at: http://
ummamag.kg/ru/news/752_mezhdunarodnyi_den_platka_v_bish
keke, accessed 2 February 2017.
25‘Vsemirnyi Den’ Platka Obedinil Bolee Trekhsot Zhenshin’,
Umma. Islamskii zhurnal, 2017, available at:
http://ummamag.kg/ru/news/757_vsemirnyi_den_platka_obedini
l_bolee_trehsot_zhenschin, accessed 14
April 2017.
http://ummamag.kg/ru/news/752_mezhdunarodnyi_den_platka_v
_bishkeke
_bishkeke
http://ummamag.kg/ru/news/757_vsemirnyi_den_platka_obedini
l_bolee_trehsot_zhenschin
vis-à-vis Kyrgyz national traditions, however, were essentially
moot. For the participants of the
World Hijāb Day events in Bishkek, wearing the hijāb—or the
elechek—is part of a lived

theology that integrates the universal and the particular, the
religious and the national.
‘We are different, but we are united!’ can thus be read not only
as a testament of
Kyrgyzstan’s inclusion in the Islamic world, but also an appeal
against the tendency to
draw distinctions between the hijāb and ‘authentic’ Kyrgyz
forms of veiling. The slogan
also carried an implicit message of peace and inter-ethnic
harmony. Photographs from the
event depicted a multi-ethnic group of women, some of whom
were not veiled at all. The
women held signs bearing messages like ‘We are citizens of the
same country!’, ‘Dispute
and strife—this is not us!’ and ‘Contrary to stereotypes, we
have peace and friendship!’.26
Veiling was thus portrayed as a means of uniting people from
different backgrounds and
cultures, thereby strengthening the country, not undermining
unity. So, much like the anti-
veiling billboards, the World Hijāb Day events in Bishkek
operated on both the national
and the religious registers simultaneously.
What all of this suggests is that veiling is a grounded
theological practice that is gradually
being reconciled, often uncomfortably, with normative
understandings of what it means to be
Kyrgyz; indeed, what it means to be a Kyrgyz Muslim. The
cultural landscape of Kyrgyzstan
is changing inexorably as a result. Scholars in the 1990s could
write of the ‘cold breeze of
scientific atheism’ blowing down Bishkek’s wide boulevards
and call into question

whether Kyrgyzstan ‘is a Muslim country or not’ (Gardaz 1999,
p. 276). Today, Islam’s
dynamic and evolving place in Kyrgyz society is inscribed on
the urban landscape as a
matter of everyday life: in the hijābis on the street and in the
throngs of worshippers at
mosques throughout the city on Friday afternoons, of course,
but also in the vendors
selling Islamic literature in the bazaars; in the Islamic banks
springing up around the
country; in the markets that advertise their selection of halal
products; in the signs that
point the way to a public namazkhana (prayer room); and in the
amulets and rosaries that
hang from the rear-view mirrors of Kyrgyzstan’s endlessly
circulating marshrutki.
These quotidian images, however, are indicative of larger
social, cultural and political
shifts. Jürgen Habermas has pointed out that ‘the collective
identity of a liberal
community cannot remain unaffected by the fact of the political
interaction between
religious and non-religious parts of the population’ (Habermas
2011, p. 224). In other
words, as Kyrgyz people’s relationship with, and understanding
of, Islam evolves—
guided, perhaps, by the normative discourses promoted by the
state and the Muftiyat, but
also by religious and popular media, da’wa and so forth—so too
will ideas and arguments
about how to articulate their identities at various scales, from
the personal to the
neighbourhood and the city, to the national, the international, or
even in disembodied
cyber spaces. The hijāb and the controversies about national

identity that surround it
constitute part of a broader, ceaseless negotiation of what it
means to be Kyrgyz.
Moreover, while ‘traditional Kyrgyz Islam’ is conceived of in
objectified terms, it is not a
static discourse. Rather, it is a theology that is constantly
shifting in dialogue with social
26‘Mezhdunarodnyi Den’ Platka V Bishkeke’, Umma. Islamskii
zhurnal, 2017, available at: http://
ummamag.kg/ru/news/752_mezhdunarodnyi_den_platka_v_bish
keke, accessed 2 February 2017.
_bishkeke
_bishkeke
currents, political pressures and the evolving perspectives of the
faithful themselves. Far from
occupying separate spheres, the secular and the sacred are
inextricably bound together.
Conclusion
As Muhammad Qasim Zaman reminds us, ‘not long ago,
contrasts between “tradition” and
“modernity” were a convenient shorthand way of explaining
what traditional societies had to
get rid of in order to become part of the modern world’ (Zaman
2002, p. 3). In a world of
secular nation-states, religion has usually been consigned to the
realm of the ‘traditional’,

and so the persistence of religious identities and worldviews has
often been treated as
anomalous and a threat to the normative nationalism that
underpins the modern sovereign-
territorial regime. Islam in particular is often held to be
incompatible, or at least uneasy
with, the nation-state. But, as Justin Tse noted, the term
‘religion’ is largely ‘a
construction that in the modern era has demarcated an illusory
line between matters of
faith and secular spaces of the purely social and political’ (Tse
2014, p. 214). The notion
of ‘tradition’ itself, moreover, is neither static nor uncontested
(Zaman 2002, p. 3;
Salvatore 2009). The inclusion of religious perspectives in
democratic discourse not only
highlights the relevance of religion to the formation of the
modern nation-state, but in the
process, it also renegotiates religion’s meaning and
significance. Social, cultural and
political battlegrounds such as national identity cannot help but
be affected by the
outcomes of such negotiations. The secular and the religious not
only overlap, but are in
fact crucial in constituting one another: if ‘we are the nation,
and the nation is us’ (Hallaq
2013, p. 106), then who ‘we’ are, and thus ‘who’ the nation is,
is constantly in a state of
becoming.
In April 2017, the theologian Kadyr Malikov was selected to
become a member of the
Muftiyat’s Council of Ulama. When asked what issues the
council should address, he
responded that religious authorities needed to accomplish ‘the
reform of Islamic education,

the preparation among young cadres of an Islamic intelligentsia,
[and] the development of
theological and legal issues that take into account modern
realities … [in order] to ensure
that the norms of the shariat can successfully respond to the
challenges of modern
society’ (Bolotbekova 2017). Malikov, who is active on social
media, hinted at what some
of these modern challenges might be. In a post to his followers,
he noted that one of the
primary challenges facing young Kyrgyz Muslims today is how
to answer such questions
as: ‘Who am I? First a Muslim and then Kyrgyz? Or am I
Kyrgyz first and then a
Muslim?’.27 As the debates surrounding the hijāb suggest, these
sorts of questions are far
from settled. What is clear, however, is that many Kyrgyz
Muslims are already articulating
ways of not having to choose.
As a final note, it should be recognised that the argument
presented in this article is not
intended to suggest that traditional Kyrgyz Islam is hegemonic
in either the religious or
political spheres. Normative Hanafism exists in a broad field of
grounded theologies that
are embodied and performed daily by Christians, committed
secularists, Tengrists and
27‘Segodnya my mozhem tochno skazat’’, Facebook, 4 January
2017, available at: https://www.facebook.
com/permalink.php?story_fbid=1454650814547905&id=731591
116853882, accessed 30 January 2017.

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