Globalization, extensively studied since the end of the bipolar era, preceeded the collapse of the Eastern bloc and was actually speeded-up because of it. We are particularly interested in its religious standing, for the light that it throws on the delicate transition of a region that has remained isolated for a longtime and confronted with the world only from 1991. The post-Soviet Central Asia and Caucasus belong to the Turkish-Iranian cultural space but they stand out more strikingly by the Russian and Soviet cultures they are imbued with in quick succession. We now bring a new light to the reconstitution of religious space, confrontation between local Islam and globalized Islam, policies implemented to manage one and check the other, to ascertain the Islamic future towards which this region is heading, situated as it were at the crossroads of several periods of turbulence.
Globalization, while stepping up trades, also influences structures of intra and extra state opportunities that affect social and religious movements. Understanding interactions that govern the new relations between globalization and nation-state therefore become important. If globalization does not strip the State of all its capacities of action, it reduces the leeway of the latter, by blocking off different spaces: economy, media, education, and throws out a challenge to some States that want to shield their citizens from this influence.
Although integrated into a certain ‘socialist globalization’ that put them in contact with the Eastern bloc and other Afro-Asian ‘brother’ States, the Republics originated from the USSR really entered the game from 1991, by attaining independence and striking relations with various players of the international scene (States, Inter Governmental Organizations, Non Governmental Organizations, medias, tourists…). But Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Azerbaijan find it difficult to accept the interference of these players already seen as so many potential threats to their fragile sovereignty. Let us analyze the Islamic aspect of this clash, setting young States being part of the continuity of a total control of policy on society against local and foreign movements, out to conquer individual and collective consciences.
1. Encounter between local Islam and external influences
The Islam of Central Asia especially belongs to the Hanefite school of Sunny Islam and has experienced two Sufi Brotherhoods, the yeseviyya and particularly the nakchibendiyya, born respectively in the XIVth and XVth centuries in Turkestan [Kazakhstan] and Bukhara. In 1991, the Central Asian Islam was weakened, absent from the public scene but with sufficient staying power in the sphere of private life where it still governed life cycles and formed one of the basis of identity. Very closely watched over, it had very little contact with the outside world, if not through insignificant cooperation between the official Directorate of Spiritual Affairs of Central Asia (based at Tashkent) and certain Arab States of social allegiance. As for the very small Shiite minority of Bukhara and Samarcand, or the Ismailis (Shia Seveners) they were getting assimilated and had no connection with the outside world.
In the Caucasus, Islam was more heterogeneous: for the most part the Shia Twelvers in Azerbaijan, but Sunni Muslims from the Shafii school in the North Caucasus, particularly in Dagestan, in Chechnya. Georgia had several communities: Shiite at the Azeri border, Sunni in Adjara, Abkhazia and the valley of Pankissi.
After 1991, religious globalization resulted in the interference of external Islamic movements that could be categorized – although they could be interlinked – into three movements depending on their origin: Arab, Turkish and Iranian and which were respectively and abusively described as Salafist, Sunni Brotherhood and Shiite.
Unlike western anxieties, the Iranian Islamic influence remained marginal. The Central Asia Islam was by a large majority Sunni, and the Shiite movements were not taken into consideration. Only Tadzhikistan let itself be penetrated relatively, more by linguistic ties than an inclination for the Islamic Republic’s religious philosophy. On the other hand, due to a very close sectarian proximity between Iran and Azerbaijan, the Iranian influence became more effective in the Shiite areas of South Azeri, Baku, Aras and Nakhichevan. This relative success was the work of private organisms, linked with big Ayatollahs like Lenkerani and Sistani, who attracted the young into the hoze, Iranian Islamic campuses. Their impact had to be however put into perspective because the political degradation between Baku and Teheran considerably slowed down missionary fervor from 1995.
Turkey, although secular, was more successful than Iran. Religion being a full-fledged dimension of its regional policy, Ankara’s diplomacy equipped each one of its embassies with the Religious Cooperation Bureau, entrusted with promoting the Turkish Islamic model, and at the end creating a sphere of influence. Thus, the Diyanet, official Turkish organism of Islam management in Turkey, financed mosques, theology faculties in all these countries and distributed Islamic literature in abundance, without neglecting the creation of new religious structures by promoting student accommodations. However, the private movements were the ones to have particularly worked for the reislamization of the region, the most active of them being Osman Nuri Topbas’ Nakchibendi, and Fethullah Gülen’s neo-Brotherhood Nurcu.
The latter’s disciples had created dozens of modern schools, that were secular but striving indirectly and moralizing with the spreading of a moderated Islam and an Islam highly mixed with Turkish nationalism, ensuring support of the Turkish embassies in this way. The great strength of these Turkish movements lay in the fact that they also enjoyed, everywhere else except in Uzbekistan, favorable consideration of the local official authorities which saw in it a bastion against Iranian or Saudi-Arabian Islam, perceived as overly anti-establishment and dangerous.
Finally, the third wave of influence originated from the Arabic peninsula and to a lesser extent from the Indian Sub-Continent. Designated in a caricatural way using the term wahhabite – by the name of Mohammad Abdal Wahhab (1703-1792), founder of Wahabism, puritan fundamentalism that prevails in Saudi-Arabia, also called Salafism – it actually covers several fundamentalist and radical tendencies. This very austere Islam, dominant in most of the Gulf countries, Pakistan and Afghanistan, was marginally established in the valley of Ferghana but especially in the Caucasus, Dagestan and Chechnya, where its instrumental role in the war against the Russians allowed a certain national cohesion. In this space where a brotherly and syncretic Islam borrowing from Anti-Islamic practices predominated, the progress of this Salafist Islam struck fear to the official authorities by its protest dimension capable of challenging the powers. That’s why the State machineries, inheritors of the Communist Party, did not hesitate to take over the traditional Islam once again and raise it to the status of an official religion.
These foreign processes did not anyway have to live down the local origins of the Islamic revival, already at work at the end of the Soviet era. As a matter of fact, the ambivalence of the Soviet regime vis-à-vis Islam meant that even under repression, some Ulemas had led an intense theological activity and trained some disciples who are today the players of Islamic revival.
2. The States confronted with the globalized Islam
In accordance with the vicissitudes of Islamization, the Central Asian societies did not live through a same Islam. In Kazakhstan and Kirghizstan where the populations were Islamized late and superficially and where a strong proportion of the population is Slavic, globalized Islam had only little hold, unlike Uzbekistan and Tadzhikistan, where Islam had a heavy impact on these old Muslim societies living in the heart of Islamic cultural capitals like Bukhara and Samarcand.
However, in spite of these variations, some similarities can be noted between the different state policies concerning Islam management. First of all, Islam is an integral part of all the national identity policies, without however going as far as including Islam in the Constitution. Also, all the States with the creation of muftiyat and kaziyat, are ‘nationalizing’ old Soviet religious control organs that are regional: one in Baku for the Caucasus, the other one at Tashkent for Central Asia. This nationalization also involves the formation of State committees in charge of Islam management and foreign relations control. Finally, the State runs the training of religious structures in the framework of educative policy, which amounts to distinguishing national Islam even more in every Republic by strengthening the Sunni Islam and leaning on local brotherhood legacy, responsible for a better stability.
If the control reflexes are comparable, the results do not match from one country to another. In Uzbekistan, the most populated country of Central Asia and where Islam is traditionally the most influential, the religious situation is defined by a high tension against several small fundamentalist groups tolerated and very active in the initial years of independence, and much later declared outlaw and as such opposed by central authorities. Refugees in Tadzhikistan where a terrible civil war ravaged (1992-1997), the main Islamist militants of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan then found refuge in the Taliban Afghanistan.
The American bombardments in Afghanistan in the aftermath of the 11th September 2001 attacks considerably weakened the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (MIO) of which one of the two chiefs, Namangani, was even killed. Another obscure Islamist movement, the Hizb ul Tahrir (Liberation Party), the only active one in Central Asia but originating from the Middle East, millenarian and obsessed by the restauration of the Caliphate, started to win over minds. Its ultra secret structure does not allow us to evaluate its real force, but it is assumed that it is quite well established in the country.
In Tadzhikistan, the relations between Islam and the State could best be described as original. After several years of civil war, the main branch of the political Islam, the Party of the Islamic Renaissance, is legalized and even associated with power, a first and to date a unique experience in Central Asia.
In Kirghizstan, a very clear dichotomy can be observed between the North, hardly Islamized and where Islamist movements activism is almost absent, and the South, more religious, where on several occasions clashes take place with the Uzbek and Kirghiz police, allies of convenience. Whether in the case of Uzbek, Kirghiz or Tadzhiki, most often it is in the valley of Ferghana, straddling the three Republics, that Islamism is apparent most violently. Besides, all the Islamist organizations that has spread in the valley has a multi-ethnic composition.
In Kazakhstan, the same dichotomy as in Kirghizstan exists between the North and the more Muslim South but it escapes from any Islamist fundamentalism.
In Turkmenistan, Islam has never been very influential. The mosques, constructed by the President to serve his personality cult are empty and are not going to be filled up any more with the new President, Kurbanguli Berdymuhammedov.
In Azerbaijan, the admittedly less radical but quite politicized Islamist movements are tolerated by the central authorities, which, without giving them any legal status, do not ban their existence and expression in public space. As for the North Caucasus, the irredentism of Salafist organizations ended up in confrontations with the Federal authorities even if the situation is relatively calm since a few years, except in the separate case of Chechnya.
In conclusion, let us emphasize that all the Republics are confronted with the same dilemma: how to enter globalization and occupy a place in the international scene and guarantee internal stability at the same time. Above all, promoting order in a world context where Islamism is perceived as the main source of unrest, most of the Central Asian States are tensed and agitated about their policy on how to manage people belonging to a religious order. Fearing that any concession to Islamist speeches might be misconstrued as an admission of weakness, all these regimes favor intransigence; thus indefinitely putting off any hope of dialogue and national reconciliation.
Bayram BALCI is the Director of the Institute for Central Asian Studies (Institut Français d’Etudes sur l’Asie Centrale - IFEAC) in Tachkent. |
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30/12/14
from 01/04/12 to 31/03/13
