115th CONGRESS Printed for the use of the 

2nd Session Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe 

Mosque and State in Central Asia: 

Can Religious Freedom Coexist with 

Government Regulation of Islam? 

DECEMBER 17, 2018 

Briefing of the 

Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe 

Washington: 2019 

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CSCESeal.EPS
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Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe 

234 Ford House Office Building 

Washington, DC 20515 

202–225–1901 

csce@mail.house.gov 

http://www.csce.gov 

@HelsinkiComm 

Legislative Branch Commissioners 

HOUSE 

CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, NEW JERSEY

Co-Chairman 

ALCEE L. HASTINGS, FLORIDA

ROBERT B. ADERHOLT, ALABAMA

MICHAEL C. BURGESS, TEXAS

STEVE COHEN, TENNESSEE

RICHARD HUDSON, NORTH CAROLINA

RANDY HULTGREN, ILLINOIS

SHEILA JACKSON LEE, TEXAS

GWEN MOORE, WISCONSIN

SENATE 

ROGER WICKER, MISSISSIPPI, 

Chairman 

BENJAMIN L. CARDIN. MARYLAND

JOHN BOOZMAN, ARKANSAS

CORY GARDNER, COLORADO

MARCO RUBIO, FLORIDA

JEANNE SHAHEEN, NEW HAMPSHIRE

THOM TILLIS, NORTH CAROLINA

TOM UDALL, NEW MEXICO

SHELDON WHITEHOUSE, RHODE ISLAND

Executive Branch Commissioners 

DEPARTMENT OF STATE

DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE

DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE

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ABOUT THE ORGANIZATION FOR SECURITY AND COOPERATION IN EUROPE 

The Helsinki process, formally titled the Conference on Security and Cooperation in 

Europe, traces its origin to the signing of the Helsinki Final Act in Finland on August 

1, 1975, by the leaders of 33 European countries, the United States and Canada. As of 

January 1, 1995, the Helsinki process was renamed the Organization for Security and 

Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). The membership of the OSCE has expanded to 56 participating States, reflecting the breakup of the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia. 

The OSCE Secretariat is in Vienna, Austria, where weekly meetings of the participating States’ permanent representatives are held. In addition, specialized seminars and 

meetings are convened in various locations. Periodic consultations are held among Senior 

Officials, Ministers and Heads of State or Government. 

Although the OSCE continues to engage in standard setting in the fields of military 

security, economic and environmental cooperation, and human rights and humanitarian 

concerns, the Organization is primarily focused on initiatives designed to prevent, manage 

and resolve conflict within and among the participating States. The Organization deploys 

numerous missions and field activities located in Southeastern and Eastern Europe, the 

Caucasus, and Central Asia. The website of the OSCE is: <www.osce.org>. 

ABOUT THE COMMISSION ON SECURITY AND COOPERATION IN EUROPE 

The Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, also known as the Helsinki 

Commission, is a U.S. Government agency created in 1976 to monitor and encourage 

compliance by the participating States with their OSCE commitments, with a particular 

emphasis on human rights. 

The Commission consists of nine members from the United States Senate, nine members from the House of Representatives, and one member each from the Departments of 

State, Defense and Commerce. The positions of Chair and Co-Chair rotate between the 

Senate and House every two years, when a new Congress convenes. A professional staff 

assists the Commissioners in their work. 

In fulfilling its mandate, the Commission gathers and disseminates relevant information to the U.S. Congress and the public by convening hearings, issuing reports that 

reflect the views of Members of the Commission and/or its staff, and providing details 

about the activities of the Helsinki process and developments in OSCE participating 

States. 

The Commission also contributes to the formulation and execution of U.S. policy 

regarding the OSCE, including through Member and staff participation on U.S. Delegations to OSCE meetings. Members of the Commission have regular contact with 

parliamentarians, government officials, representatives of non-governmental organizations, and private individuals from participating States. The website of the Commission 

is: <www.csce.gov>. 

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Mosque and State in Central Asia: 

Can Religious Freedom Coexist with 

Government Regulation of Islam? 

DECEMBER 17, 2018 

Page 

PARTICIPANTS 

Everett Price, Senior Policy Advisor, Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe .... 1 

Nathaniel Hurd, Senior Policy Advisor, Commission on Security and Cooperation in 

Europe .......................................................................................................................................... 9 

Dr. Kathleen Collins, Associate Professor, Political Science, and Russian and Eurasian 

Studies, University of Minnesota ............................................................................................... 3 

Dr. Emil Nasrutdinov, Associate Professor of Anthropology, American University of Central 

Asia ............................................................................................................................................... 5 

Dr. Edward Lemon, DMGS–Kennan Institute Fellow at the Daniel Morgan Graduate 

School of National Security ........................................................................................................ 7 

APPENDIX 

Forum 18 statement for the record on religious freedom in Central Asia ................................. 29 

Journal article for the record: ‘‘Counter-extremism, Power, and Authoritarian Governance 

in Tajikistan’’ ............................................................................................................................... 31 

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Mosque and State in Central Asia: 

Can Religious Freedom Coexist with 

Government Regulation of Islam? 

December 17, 2018 

Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe 

Washington, DC 

The briefing was held at 3:04 p.m. in room 562, Dirksen Senate Office Building, 

Washington, DC, Everett Price and Nathaniel Hurd, Senior Policy Advisors, Commission 

on Security and Cooperation in Europe, presiding. 

Panelists present: Everett Price, Senior Policy Advisor, Commission on Security and 

Cooperation in Europe; Nathaniel Hurd, Senior Policy Advisor, Commission on Security 

and Cooperation in Europe; Dr. Kathleen Collins, Associate Professor, Political Science, 

and Russian and Eurasian Studies, University of Minnesota; Dr. Emil Nasrutdinov, Associate Professor of Anthropology, American University of Central Asia; and Dr. Edward 

Lemon, DMGS–Kennan Institute Fellow at the Daniel Morgan Graduate School of 

National Security. 

Mr. PRICE. Good afternoon. Thank you—we’re very glad to have you here. My name 

is Everett Price, and this is my colleague Nathaniel Hurd. On behalf of our chairman, 

Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi, and co-chairman, Congressman Chris Smith of New 

Jersey, we would like to welcome you to this Helsinki Commission panel entitled ‘‘Mosque 

and State: Can Religious Freedom Coexist with Government Regulation of Islam?’’ 

Nathaniel and I will be moderating this panel together, he in his capacity as a Helsinki 

Commission senior policy advisor for religious freedom, and I in my capacity as senior 

policy advisor with responsibility for Islamic affairs in Central Asia. 

The gravity of the situation facing religious freedom in Central Asia is underscored 

by the U.S. State Department’s decision just last week to redesignate Tajikistan and 

Turkmenistan, alongside eight other countries, as countries of particular concern, or 

CPCs, for engaging in or tolerating systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of religious freedom. Turkmenistan and Tajikistan have appeared on the list for the past 3 

years. A third Central Asian country, Uzbekistan, had also appeared on the State Department’s list since 2016, but was upgraded this time to a special watchlist, reflecting modest 

improvements in its respect for the religious freedom of its citizens. Uzbekistan’s positive 

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trajectory of incremental reforms began following the death of the country’s longtime 

strongman leader Islam Karimov in 2016. 

Since that time, Karimov’s successor, current President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, has 

demonstrated his interest at opening the country to increase foreign investment in part 

by loosening some of the Karimov era’s strictest regulations on public and private life. 

One element of this reform plan includes amendments to the national law governing religious affairs and institutions, which we understand the government is currently drafting 

and preparing for public comment. Nathaniel and I traveled to Uzbekistan last month to 

hear from Uzbekistani officials and civil society about the changes taking place there, 

particularly in the religious sphere. Despite the government’s professed desire to enact 

more permissive regulations on religious life, the arguments opposing far-reaching reforms 

are cast in terms of national security and regime stability—namely, that the ebb of 

government control over religion will inevitably cede territory to religious-based political 

activism and potentially violent extremism. 

Indeed, the terms of this argument are familiar in Central Asia, not to mention in 

other parts of the Muslim world, where Islam simultaneously occupied a revered position 

in national, social, and private life, while also preoccupying national security agencies and 

regime loyalists who fear its potential to catalyze political opposition and terrorism. These 

concerns have some merit. In one of the most recent and dramatic incidents of Islamic 

extremist violence in Central Asia, this summer an ISIS-linked terrorist cell in Tajikistan 

carried out the horrific murder of four cyclists, including two Americans, in the southwestern Danghara District. Such incidents only reinforce the inclination of all five Central 

Asian countries to prioritize national security and their administration of religious affairs, 

in particular by strictly regulating and often outright co-opting and controlling Islamic 

belief and practice. 

In a statement for the record submitted today to this briefing, the renowned international religious freedom monitoring organization Forum 18 underscored how Islamic 

institutions are subject to particularly invasive state interventions, compared with 

minority faiths, effectively controlling Islam not just from the outside, but also from 

within. The statement reads: ‘‘These states have effectively subsumed the only permitted 

Islamic bodies into the apparatus of the state. The regimes control all clergy appointments, especially at senior levels, and remove clerics as they see fit. Some of them even 

dictate the sermons that imams are allowed to preach in the mosques they do permit to 

exist.’’ 

Yet such a heavy-handed and security-minded approach violates the religious 

freedom of individuals that is enshrined in the national constitutions and international 

commitments of these states. The resulting dilemma begs the question that serves as the 

subtitle to this briefing today: Can religious freedom coexist with government regulation 

of Islam? 

To help answer this question, we have convened a superb panel of Central Asia 

experts who have studied these matters from numerous angles and over dozens of years. 

Their remarks will help us to understand the reality of state regulation of Islam, and the 

intended and unintended consequences of this heavily centralized policy. They will also 

help us understand the terms of the policy debate between religious freedom and national 

security, and hopefully suggest ways to escape this binary that appears to propose a zerosum tradeoff between the two. 

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I’m sorry to say that our fourth panelist, Peter Mandaville, has taken ill and will not 

be able to participate. We will genuinely miss his contribution, which was to focus on 

policy lessons from other approaches to state regulation of Islam elsewhere in the Muslim 

world. 

First this afternoon we’ll hear from Professor Kathleen Collins of the University of 

Minnesota, who will provide a brief overview of her extensive research and of the mechanisms and consequences of state control of Islam in Central Asia. Next we will hear from 

Professor Emil Nasrutdinov of the American University of Central Asia in Bishkek, 

Kyrgyzstan. Professor Nasrutdinov will describe key conclusions from his research into 

radicalization, particularly in his home country of Kyrgyzstan, the only semi-free country 

in the region that applies somewhat less draconian approaches to Islamic practice when 

compared to other regional states. And finally, we’ll have Dr. Edward Lemon DMGS– 

Kennan Institute fellow at the Daniel Morgan School, who will explore the case of 

Tajikistan, where he’s conducted extensive research into the state’s harsh counterextremism policy. 

I will refer you to your audience folders for their full biographies, which are impressive, which goes without speaking, of course. And unless my colleague Nathaniel has any 

comments, I will turn the floor over to Dr. Collins. 

Thank you. 

Dr. COLLINS. Thank you very much. Good afternoon. Thank you for coming. And 

thanks especially to the Helsinki Commission and to Everett and Nathaniel for organizing 

this panel. 

I will focus my brief remarks today on three points. First, religion in the Central 

Asian states, particularly Islam, continues to be the target of aggressively secular government policies. A few years ago, a young man I interviewed in Kyrgyzstan characterized 

the government as atheist oppressors even worse than the Soviet Union. The post-Soviet 

states are not any longer seeking to eradicate Islam, the way the Soviet Union was. However, despite some concessions to religious practice, government elites generally view any 

manifestation of independent Islam as inherently political, radical, and a threat to their 

survival. 

Two caveats are in order, one of which Everett just talked about. One is that 

Uzbekistan has, over the past year or so, made some significant improvements under 

President Mirziyoyev, and things seem to be in process there to ameliorate the situation 

in terms of religious freedom for Muslims as well as Christians. 

Second, there is also some variation, certainly regionally, de facto and de jure. My 

comments to initiate this panel are somewhat broad, sketching out the situation in the 

region. Turkmenistan still remains the worst-case scenario, as it has long been, and 

Tajikistan is still the best. And yet, many Soviet-style laws and practices on religion 

severely regulate Islam. The Soviet attitude of a sort of atheist suspicion of Islam I think 

still pervades the views of many government elites. These governments ban any political 

Islamic activity as extremist and terrorist, including not only violent organizations such 

as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, but also the pro-democratic Islamic Renaissance 

Party in Tajikistan and the extreme, but nonviolent, party Hizb ut-Tahrir. Those accused 

of membership are subject to torture and lengthy imprisonment. 

The governments also severely restrict or criminalize many ordinary, everyday religious practices, including religious education, even at home; possessing the Koran on one’s 

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cellphone, or one’s laptop, or even in hard copy; possessing other religious literature; certainly proselytization; and various forms of Islamic dress. Furthermore, security services 

control or monitor imams’ sermons, and even videotape mosque attendees. Unregistered 

mosques are frequently raided and closed. States have threatened, arrested, and occasionally killed popular imams who either preach an unsanctioned version of Islam—such as 

Salafism, Shi’ism, Tablighi Jamaat—or who raise a voice on political issues, whether it’s 

about corruption or about the right for women to wear a hijab. Family members of 

accused or imprisoned extremists are also regularly threatened. As in the Soviet era, it’s 

not just radicals but ordinary believers who become the victims of state oppression. 

Second, religious oppression has fostered a widespread sense of injustice. In addition 

to corruption and other political and economic abuses, people are angered by unjust 

attacks on their identity and beliefs. I’ve seen this interviewing people across the region 

with a team of Central Asian colleagues. For example, one of our respondents, Tahir, 

believed that a free Islamic practice was essential to justice. He said, ‘‘Justice is necessary. And for there to be justice, people must live in faith.’’ Another man, Alisher, linked 

the lack of justice to state secularism. He said, ‘‘There are many atheists. And they treat 

us believers badly. There is no justice. The situation is very bad.’’ Shukrat exclaimed, 

‘‘Everywhere justice is a problem. We need justice. Where there is no justice, evil things 

happen, like here. Justice is every person’s demand!’’ 

A man from the Ferghana Valley explained: ‘‘Now the religious schools are gone. 

There is only one imam for 9,000 people. The mosque can’t even teach people anymore.’’ 

An older Uzbek woman, Nodira, observed that banning home religious teachers for 

women, otinchas, had been awful because now instead of them there are only a lot of 

extremists. Her colleague added that forbidding education caused youths to be drawn to 

radicals. ‘‘They use religion as a weapon and lure children to their movements,’’ she said. 

Likewise, one man noted that in government those who work in government cannot 

participate in the mosque. This is also generally true of schoolteachers, and students, and 

university students. One young woman even complained that she was given a warning 

merely for carrying an Arabic language textbook in public. She had been trying to teach 

herself Arabic so that she could read the Koran. 

Some link such forms of repression to politics. Abumalik from Dushanbe complained, 

‘‘These officials who are preventing Friday prayer are also those who are opposing Muslim 

unity. If people would work according to the Sharia, then many problems in our country 

would be resolved, including corruption.’’ He was not an Islamist, but his words suggested 

that he saw repression of Islam as a fundamental political problem. Islamist propaganda 

clearly appealed to some. One man, attracted to Hizb ut-Tahrir’s ideas, said, ‘‘We want 

to live in a just and fair society. Nowadays there is no justice. But the caliphate was a 

just system.’’ And Erkin proclaimed, ‘‘There is no justice, not in Kyrgyzstan and not in 

Uzbekistan! They only talk about democracy. They oppress Muslims more now in comparison with the Soviet times, even though they talk about freedom of religion. It’s because 

of this that we should become an Islamic State!’’ 

Third, repression of Islam has spawned opposition movements centered around politicized Islamic ideas and identity. Islamist movements target those angry at injustice. Their 

ideologies advocate Islam, whether an Islamic nation-state, the caliphate, or simply jihad, 

as the solution to injustice. We have seen this pattern take place across Central Asia for 

over three decades now. The latest wave of Islamist extremism involving Central Asians 

is the flow of foreign fighters to Syria and Iraq since about 2014. Overall, estimates of 

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foreign fighters from Central Asia number from about 3,000 to 5,000. The number on the 

whole seems low, but on the other hand, this is up to 20 percent of foreign fighters documented there. This is striking for a region far from Damascus, where transnational militant Islamism was almost unthinkable a decade or two ago. 

On a per capita basis, from 2015 to 2017 Kyrgyzstanis and Tajikistanis were particularly high state contributors of jihadist fighters. In both countries, religious oppression 

has escalated significantly over the past 10 years as each state has reneged on its commitment to democratization and, with that, to religious freedom. The case of Kyrgyzstan is 

telling. There, religious policy was liberal from the late Soviet era through the early to 

mid–2000s. During that time, Kyrgyzstan did not have a serious problem with radicalism. 

Yet, since about 2006, there has been a steady increase in repression of Islam, both legally 

and extralegally. This is particularly so amongst ethnic Uzbeks in the south. The killing 

of Imam Rafiq Kamalov and the arrest of his son, Imam Rashod Kamalov, both Salafis, 

generated extreme discontent at religious and political injustice. Kyrgyzstan subsequently 

became a significant source of recruits to Syria. 

As of 2017, over 1,300 Kyrgyzstanis had joined militant groups there and, according 

to Radio Free Europe, about 30 percent of these jihadists came from the southern region 

where the Kamalovs lived and preached. About 90 percent of those recruits are also ethnic 

Uzbeks. Over the past few years, ISIS and multiple Central Asian battalions, affiliates 

of al-Qaida, have all put forth radical anti-democratic ideologies which propose Islam as 

a solution to political and religious injustice, corruption, and the torture of Muslims. They 

specifically endorse violence. They deride Muslim democrats who have sought to work 

within the system, like the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan. Their propaganda 

videos call Central Asians with slogans such as, ‘‘Do not be afraid to fight in jihad,’’ or 

‘‘The path of honor is jihad.’’ In one video, the leader of the Unity and Jihad Battalion, 

an ethnic Uzbek from southern Kyrgyzstan preaches, ‘‘Nowadays, Muslims face lots of 

hardships. Women are forced to remove their hijab. Having a beard is now a crime. Some 

Muslims say there is no need for jihad now, but who will defend Muslims in Palestine 

and Syria if there is no need for jihad?’’ 

Hundreds of such messages on social media lure Central Asians to fight. 

In short, oppressing religious freedom is a major contributor to radicalism. When the 

state indiscriminately represses many or most expressions of Islam, some will inevitably 

turn to Islamist messages and solutions for a just life. 

Mr. PRICE. Thank you very much. 

Dr. Nasrutdinov. 

Dr. NASRUTDINOV. Thank you. Thank you, Everett and Kathleen. 

I would like to continue the discussion that has been started by Kathleen. Notwithstanding the criticism, I would still suggest that Kyrgyzstan remains the best country in 

the region, with regard to the freedom of religion, with the most liberal religious policy 

in Central Asia. At the moment, we have nearly 4,000 mosques in the country, and more 

than 100 madrasas. This is double the size of the number of madrasas for all other Central Asian countries taken together. 

Research shows that madrasas which are governed and regulated by the special 

board of Muslims in Kyrgyzstan have a positive influence on reducing vulnerability of 

people to radicalization, since the curricula is standard. It teaches moderate, traditional 

Islam, which is very critical of the radical movements, particularly of the Salafi influence 

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in the region. Perhaps the only area where madrasa education is lagging is in regard to 

Russian-speaking madrasas. For nearly 100 madrasas in the country, there is no single 

one that would teach subjects in Russian. Thus, we observe a large number of Russianspeaking Muslim population in the north of the country, including ethnic Kyrgyz and 

ethnic minorities who are more vulnerable to influence of radical ideas because they often 

cannot simply understand the message given by imams on the mosques. 

Yet, there are several influential religious groups, such as Turkish Khizmet, 

Nurjular, Sulaimanchiler, Southeast Asian Tablighi Jamaat, and several moderate Salafi 

groups, which are legal in Kyrgyzstan, while they have been banned in other Central 

Asian countries. This relative freedom of religion applies not only to Islamic groups, but 

also to other religious communities as well. There are nearly 400 Christian groups which 

are registered with the state committee on religious affairs. Once they are registered, they 

do not experience significant pressures. The only Christian organization that is banned 

in Kyrgyzstan is the Church of Mormon. There are 90 names in the list of banned 

organizations that are all Muslim. 

Kathleen rightly pointed to the complications of relations and more pressure on the 

religious communities from 2006. Yet, approximately from 2013–2014, we see a bit of a 

reversal in the trend. This is caused mostly by the change of leadership on three levels. 

First of all, the president himself, the director of the state committee on religious affairs, 

and the sort of grand mufti of the country. In the past there were major conflicts between 

the latter two, the state committee and mufti. But since 2014, most of these conflicts have 

been resolved and we observe quite a lot of collaboration. A third actor in this collaboration are international organizations, which successfully engage with the state and the religious communities in various projects on CVE [countering violent extremism], gender, conflict resolution, et cetera. 

I would also maybe have a debate with Kathleen in regard to the high representation 

of Kyrgyzstani fighters in Syria, particularly the engagement of ethnic Uzbeks. I—as well 

as our experts—believe that figures for Uzbeks might be exaggerated, particularly by the 

Kyrgyz security officials who are mostly homogeneous ethnic Kyrgyz. A lot depends on 

what we look for as a source of information; therefore, these kinds of numbers mostly represent the outcomes of a specific security project [inaudible] which targeted only Uzbek 

communities in the period of 2013 and 2016, the exact same period when the statistics 

on Uzbeks went up. I agree that Uzbek communities in the south are significantly persecuted until nowadays, since the conflict of 2010, but there are a number of reasons why 

you should perhaps take the official statistics with a grain of salt. 

But, the big question of ethnic Uzbeks being very important, we still see the 

Kyrgyzstani model as the most progressive and the most productive. This peaceful model 

of groups can function freely. They do not see the state as an oppressor. They play an 

important role in drawing the practicing Muslim community away from the more radical 

influences. Yet, with all that, there are still many questions to consider, and issues. So 

last year we conducted research, a nationwide study of young people’s vulnerability and 

their resilience to radicalization. We conducted this analysis across five major domains of 

young people’s life—grievances, politics, religion, socialization, and psychology. Our 

research shows that the grievances are the most important factor of vulnerability. Young 

people who experience discrimination have the highest vulnerability score. 

These scores are particularly high for young people who experience discrimination 

from the state officials and from the police. Such young people are much more likely to 

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have strong desires to avenge others and justify violence for various purposes, including 

religious ones. Young people in Kyrgyzstan grow up seeing a number of social and state 

injustices, and very high levels of corruption around them. They name corruption and 

amorality as the biggest problems of Kyrgyz society. They see the state institutions and 

actors as predatory agents who use their privileged positions to make money from the rest 

of society. The theme of corruption and state predation make the core of many young people’s radical ideas. Members of radical organizations can exploit such perceptions to 

recruit young people, by promising them the just Islamic alternative. 

Young people also report a high degree of injustice and discrimination, particularly 

from police, toward practicing Muslims. For young women, it is often related to their 

Islamic attire. Nonetheless, young people believe the situation with religion freedom and 

conditions for Muslim populations in Kyrgyzstan are better than they are in the neighboring Central Asian countries, Russia, Western countries, and China. 

Mr. PRICE. Professor, can I ask you to summarize the other elements of the vulnerability that you’re talking about, just in the interest of time? 

Dr. NASRUTDINOV. Young people’s political ideas become more and more connected to 

their religious views. Nearly one-third of the survey respondents would support a more 

religious candidate, and even introduction of a Sharia law instead of a constitution. So, 

we see that in regard to the geopolitics, there is a very positive evaluation of the influence 

of Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, but negative evaluation of the influence of United 

States, Europe, and Iran. China is somewhere in the middle, with one exception, in regard 

to the evaluation of the Muslim in their own country. 

The important role of religion is that religious leaders, religious imams, and religious 

scholars have a positive influence. Young people who obtain knowledge through personal, 

face-to-face communication are less vulnerable than the young people who obtain information on the internet. Socialization is important, and I can talk about this later. 

Mr. PRICE. Thank you. 

Dr. Lemon. 

Dr. LEMON. Thank you, once again, to Everett and Nathaniel for inviting me to speak 

on this panel. I’m going to focus particularly on Tajikistan, which reflects many of the 

dynamics that Dr. Collins introduced in her opening remarks. Three things may separate 

Tajikistan from the other countries within the region, maybe with the exception of 

Turkmenistan. First is the sort of severity of the state secular campaign against Islam. 

As Everett mentioned in his opening remarks, Tajikistan has been classified as a CPC 

for the past 3 years. And like the other countries in the region, counterextremism is not 

really about addressing security issues—although that is obviously part of it—but it is 

more sort of about the dynamics of authoritarian politics within the region. Effectively, 

it’s a tool for the governments of the region to crack down on potential opposition to their 

role, and effectively secure their regimes. Obviously, some of these policies have the potential to counter extremism, but that’s maybe a secondary objective. 

So what have we seen in Tajikistan? We’ve seen particularly a focus on the visible 

signs of piety: the forced shaving of men with beards; campaigns against women wearing 

hijab; both official and unofficial campaigns. Women have been not allowed to wear hijabs 

in schools since 2007—both students and teachers. There have been a series of campaigns 

against men with beards. If there are 100 madrasas operating in Kyrgyzstan, every single 

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madrasa in Tajikistan—the 19 that to my knowledge operated around 5 or 6 years ago— 

was closed by 2016. Students have been banned from studying Islam abroad since 2010. 

And according to the official statistics issued by the Committee on Religious Affairs, 

last year alone, in 2017, 1,938 mosques were closed in the country for not meeting with 

government regulations. In viewing this in some ways as being post-Soviet, the official 

statements said that these were turned into cultural centers, youth clubs—reflecting some 

of the policies that have been seen under the Soviet Union. So I think that the first difference is really the severity of this, which takes a higher level than in other countries, 

with the exception maybe of Turkmenistan. 

Second, as Dr. Collins mentioned in her opening statement, Tajikistan, until 2015, 

was the only country in the region with a legal faith-based party—i.e., the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan, that emerged in the south of the country in the 1970s, became 

an officially registered party right before the fall of the Soviet Union in 1990, and participated on the opposition side during the civil war. The party was legalized as part of the 

peace deal of 1997 and held a sort of symbolic two seats in the country’s 63-seat assembly. 

But particularly since 2010, the party came under pressure and ended up being declared 

a terrorist organization. And I can address during the Q&A the effects of that, but obviously the closure of the party which had—or claimed to have—at its height 50,000 members, was viewed many observers, including myself, as potentially detrimental to countering violent extremism in the country. 

Third, as Dr. Collins mentioned, Tajikistan within the region is the highest per capita 

exporter of foreign fighters. The latest figures from a few weeks ago from the security 

services—which, again, need to be taken with a pinch of salt as Dr. Nasrutdinov has 

said—are 1,900 fighters. That would be a significant portion from the 3,000–5,000 or 

4,000–6,000 fighters that are coming from the region. So, I think if Kyrgyzstan is maybe 

the best example of sort of model of state secularism in the region, Tajikistan is potentially the worst, maybe with Turkmenistan. 

So is counterextremism productive? I think my research, along with Dr. 

Nasrutdinov’s research and Dr. Collins’ research, has indicated that grievances do play 

a key role. And I think not only in the messaging that extremist groups have been portraying the governments of the region as an enemy of Islam by citing specific examples 

of their policies: closing mosques and preventing men from growing beards, policies 

against the hijab, et cetera. These have definitely been picked up by extremist organizations, and specific experiences of grievances does seem to be one of the only underlying 

conclusions for much of the research on extremist recruiting within the region; the other 

being the importance of social networks, both personal and online, in sort of drawing 

people into these extremist organizations. 

But I think another aspect in which state secularism in the region can be counterproductive is its sort of logic. Given that it’s highly authoritarian, it’s creating this false 

binary in many ways between a good, state-sponsored Islam that’s local, and a bad foreign 

extremist Islam, that should be repressed. Its very logic is authoritarian, and it really 

does stymie critical thinking amongst the citizenry. This is part of a broader politics of 

authoritarianism within the region. The main effect of this authoritarianism is to try and 

create docile citizens who are secular, apolitical, and as Dr. Nasrutdinov mentioned, not 

only apolitical, but also potentially even anti-political who view politics, particularly when 

mixed with religion, as being a particularly dangerous thing. The governments of the 

region point to the Arab Spring as an example of this. 

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And effectively, what’s being created are citizens—young people in particular, who 

form huge segments of society within the region—who lack critical thinking skills and 

lack a critical and deep understanding of religion. Some of the examples from my 

research, particularly amongst Tajik labor migrants in Russia in 2014 and 2015, which 

was the height of the recruitment drive by Islamic State and other terrorist organizations 

in Syria, indicated that it’s often these informal, community-based approaches that are 

much more effective in countering extremism than the heavy-handed approaches of the 

government. 

One example from a number from my sort of fieldwork, particularly in 2015, is 

Sadriddin. He came to Russia, I think, in 2013. He was a young labor migrant, had few 

opportunities in his home village in the south of Tajikistan, had a very limited knowledge 

of religion. He didn’t pray growing up; didn’t particularly take an interest in religion. But 

eventually in Moscow, he came under the influence of Islamic State recruiters who began 

to draw him into the fold, talking about the need for the religious obligation to conduct 

jihad. Eventually Abdulrahmon, who was one of my interlocutors in my research, invited 

him to dinner. 

Abdulrahmon was a Koran reader from the west of Tajikistan who studied in a 

madrasa in Pakistan and held an informal prayer group within the bazaar where he 

worked on the edge of Moscow. And he staged an intervention by pointing to specific 

examples within the Koran, the Hadith, that demonstrated that violence is only justified 

in very specific circumstances, and the contemporary circumstances we’re seeing now perhaps do not justify violence. And eventually, through this process of communal intervention, he was brought away from that path, and decided not to join an extremist group. 

So speaking to Nathaniel’s original question of pointing to policies and different ways 

things could be done differently, this focus on the community level and using communities 

as a tool not of authoritarian consolidation, as the presidents tend to use them, but as 

a tool in genuinely countering extremism, is something that would be very productive, 

along with trying to create citizens who can actually think critically about the simplistic 

messaging that they’re getting from these extremist organizations. 

Mr. HURD. Thank you. We’ll now move into a period of discussion. It’ll be a mixture 

of our panelists having the opportunity to respond to each other, to some of the points 

that have been made, some of the questions that have been raised. Everett and I will also 

have some questions for the panelists. And then we’ll open it up to the audience. We’ll 

start with those of you that are here in the room, and then we’ll move to our Facebook 

viewers. So those of you that are watching online can type your questions there. 

I’ll start with Dr. Collins, whether or not you have any sort of initial responses to 

some of the points that were raised by Dr. Nasrutdinov. 

Dr. COLLINS. Thank you. Thank you for your remarks, Dr. Nasrutdinov. I don’t think 

I fundamentally disagree with anything you said. As I mentioned at the beginning, I was 

speaking broadly about major trends and problems in the region. Kyrgyzstan is a tough 

case to characterize, I think because there’s a lot of regional variation within the country. 

So, the situation in the south of the country—in Osh, in Kara-Suu, in Jalal-Abad, 

Batken—is significantly worse than the situation in the north of the country. As you 

agree, the situation for ethnic Uzbeks is significantly worse along a number of dimensions, 

including ethnic repression and exclusion, and problems with the largely Kyrgyz police 

force and the ethnic Kyrgyz-dominated government in the south of the country, which the 

north of the country has problems controlling. 

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10 

The labor migrant phenomenon is largest in the south of the country. Remittances 

are highest for Osh and Jalal-Abad in the southern regions of the country, making that 

particular population the most vulnerable, whether they’re in Moscow, or St. Petersburg, 

or Kazakhstan, or Turkey, to the recruiting and calls and networks of ISIS and other radical groups. So, there are many reasons for the ethnic Uzbek population, including religious repression as well as economic and ethnic repression, that lead them, I think, to 

be more a more vulnerable population at the call of ISIS. 

I particularly highlight the religious phenomenon, the religious repression here in 

large part because the ethnic Uzbek population in the south, particularly followers of 

Rafiq Qori and Rashod Qori, are seen as Salafis. Salafis, while not banned and mistreated 

in the same way in Kyrgyzstan, are still not given the same sort of equal rights in 

Kyrgyzstan as mainstream Hanafi Islam. So, I think they face greater levels of persecution. And certainly, both the killing of Rafiq Qori and then the arrest and 10-year sentence of Rashod Qori have exacerbated the problem in the south of the country—ironically 

because Rashod Qori had actually openly spoken and has multiple videos out available 

on social media condemning ISIS. So he’s a Salafist on the one hand, but on the other 

hand he has very specifically called on this following not to join ISIS. 

Just a couple of other points—I think we all agree that the numbers, in terms of 

those who have actually gone to Syria as foreign fighters, are difficult to pin down. Certainly 1,300 is not a hard number—it’s the number that I draw from the Soufan Group. 

I think to some extent it’s corroborated by media reports by Radio Free Europe’s data. 

And they’ve found similar disparities in terms of ethnic Uzbeks versus ethnic Kyrgyz who 

have joined, also primarily from the south of the country, facing these broader issues of 

religious and political and economic injustice, like corruption. 

The one other element that I would mention that I think gives some credence to the 

numbers is that the largely ethnic Uzbek battalions that have been fighting, and continue 

to be located in Syria today, the Imam Bukhari Battalion and Tawhid wal Jihad Battalion, are led by ethnic Uzbeks, one from southern Kyrgyzstan originally. They put out 

prolific media-social media propaganda on various social media channels—whether it’s 

Telegram, or YouTube, or Turkish social media platforms. They use those platforms to 

disseminate their message, largely in the Uzbek language, and to some extent as well in 

Russian. This gives some credence to the fact that they’re drawing on those networks in 

particular, but I agree that the numbers are problematic, and we should not take the 

regime’s numbers without questioning them. 

Mr. HURD. Dr. Nasrutdinov, do you want to add anything? 

Dr. NASRUTDINOV. Well, I agree with Dr. Collins. And, again, I was not critical of 

the points that you were making. I was suggesting that we should take a bit more 

nuanced approach to this. The situation with the Uzbeks in the south of the country, as 

I said, right until now remains very, very problematic, and it is a major issue. But there 

are issues that the grievances of the Uzbeks might have developed due to this very difficult situation, which might be one of the major factors contributing to their vulnerability 

to radicalization. 

There is no equal sign, between the two. This still needs further and deeper exploration, because what we are doing right here, pointing a finger at the very specific ethnic 

group without really strong evidence and without deep discussion, can have consequences 

for the group itself. This is the only thing that I’ve been pointing out—that we have to 

take a little bit more care and consideration. That’s all. 

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11 

Thank you. 

Mr. HURD. Before I initiate our moderator questions, were there any other points that 

were raised by fellow panelists that any of you want to respond to? 

All right. I’ll start our line of questioning by focusing on the topic of secularism. And 

it’s something that several of you have already alluded to. In particular, government campaigns against or forcible removal of visible signs of piety—the hijab and beards—would 

be two evident examples of that. Debates about secularism, what it is, how it should be 

manifested in government policy, law, regulation, practice, is not something that’s unique 

to Central Asia, of course. We’re having debates and discussions about that in North 

America and in Western Europe. I immediately thought of the French amendment to its 

code of education back in 2004. The key line there was in public primary schools, middle 

schools, and high schools, the wearing of symbols or clothing by which students ostensibly 

manifest a religious affiliation is forbidden, which sounds more akin to what we’ve seen 

in some of the Central Asian countries. 

Two initial questions for all of you: Is there a kind of secularism that would be 

compliant with the international obligations that the Central Asian countries have made 

on religious freedom that might also match the Central Asian context? And second, as you 

look more globally, more broadly, are there models of secularism that you would commend 

to the consideration to the governments of Central Asia? 

Dr. LEMON. I guess I can take that one. No. I think the form of secularism we see 

in Central Asia is a more extreme version of laı ̈cite ́, as you say, the French form of secularism. It’s been called by Ahmet Kuru a sort of assertive secularism whereby the state 

sits above religion and the state has the right to intervene in religious affairs, including 

personal and private settings, as well as public settings. So that’s maybe a more extreme 

version than the sort of French model that talks about religious symbols in public places. 

So, it’s a more extreme version of that. 

I’m not an expert on different models of secularism outside of Central Asia, but I 

think some sort of model by which religion is afforded or religious freedom is tolerated— 

the actual words of the constitution come before the more restrictive religious laws that 

have been adopted within the countries, and that that takes precedent and people are able 

to practice religion freely in their own homes and in public places, would be a model that 

would be preferable. 

Mr. HURD. Dr. Collins? Dr. Nasrutdinov? 

Dr. COLLINS. I actually think that the model that Kyrgyzstan had more or less 

adopted prior to the 2008 religion law was actually working pretty well. There was an 

enormous amount of pluralism within the country. Salafis, Tablighi Jamaat, Shia, multiple different Christian groups participated publicly, and were able to freely worship. 

They were not facing the type of fear and restrictions and repression that they have subsequently, which was initiated by the Bakiyev regime, but has been continued despite the 

change in government after 2010, and arguably has actually worsened, particularly in the 

south of the country, as we were talking about. 

This has been, of course, in the context of the growth of ISIS, talk about counterterrorism measures, et cetera. But, as I suggested before, I think the adoption of a much 

harsher version of secularism modeled on laı ̈cite ́, but also modeled on Soviet ideas of 

atheism, in fact has exacerbated the problem with religious extremism within Kyrgyzstan. 

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If Kyrgyzstan were to go back 10 years, I think they actually had a relatively good model 

not just for Kyrgyzstan, but for the region more generally. 

Mr. PRICE. Dr. Nasrutdinov, I’d like to hear your thoughts on this as well. But if I 

can just add one other question that I’d appreciate your help clarifying is, what exactly— 

and you alluded to it a little bit, but I was wondering if you could delve into it a little 

bit more—what prompted that change in the policy from I think it was 2006–2008 and 

then afterwards? And then you also said that it flipped back and headed, again, in a little 

bit more of a positive direction after 2010. What accounts for those changes back and forwards in terms of the trajectory? 

Dr. NASRUTDINOV. Okay. I think when we talk about Central Asia and we talk about 

the states, we cannot talk about the states in isolation from the discussion of specific 

leaders of the countries. This is all about personalities, including what is happening in 

Uzbekistan. This slightly positive change that is developing, again, is a reflection of a 

change in the personality of the leadership. 

And, what has been happening in Kyrgyzstan in regard to religious freedom is 

exactly that in many ways. Askar Akayev, the first president, was very open-minded, 

democratic, and really didn’t care about religion at all, so this was not on his agenda. 

That’s why so many religious communities, both Muslim and Christian and other communities, were able to develop and flourish in such large numbers. 

Then Bakiyev’s regime really was the first regime that actually started repression by 

the government of religion. And the first law that Bakiyev introduced was the law on religious freedom, which in fact was actually in many ways limiting the freedoms of citizens. 

But again, we see that when Atambayev came to power, Roza Otunbayeva didn’t do much. 

When Atambayev came to power, in the first couple of years he was still trying to figure 

out what to do. One kind of positive thing that can be said about Atambayev was that 

he was open to the discussion with the expert community. He had the Security Council, 

and he created a number of groups of experts who had been working on these issues and 

have been advising him on these specific issues. 

Particularly as a result of this collaboration, there was this positive change that 

began evolving in 2013 and 2014. As I said, the formal State Committee on Religious 

Affairs director was removed and replaced, and the mufti was replaced, and the two 

started collaborating much better. And then what we see, while this positive change was 

still evolving, Atambayev was quite critical of the hijabs and Muslim attire, and he produced quite a lot of negative remarks in regard to religion. 

Now the new president, Sooronbay Jeenbekov, is believed to be himself a practicing 

Muslim who prays five times a day and generally supports Islamic communities in many 

ways. He has organized a number of interesting conferences and invited a number of 

interesting international experts and speakers to talk about these issues. At the moment 

we really are seeing very little pressure, and he’s also a distant relative of our present 

mufti, which is a big thing in Central Asia. So, at the moment, we see this positive 

change. 

One last thing I would like to mention besides these personality styles at the top 

level, is the important role played by civil society. For example, one of the main groups 

that lobbied and very actively promoted the right of girls to wear hijab in school is the 

group called Mutakalim. This is a female organization that fights for the right of Muslim 

women. I can suggest that whatever has been achieved in regard to this freedom—and 

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Kyrgyzstan today is the only country in Central Asia which allows girls to wear hijab to 

schools, right; no other country allows that—is not the product of the specific politicians 

or the president, or even the muftiate. It is the outcome of the many years of struggle 

that this feminist organization put into this. They took the minister of education to court 

a number of times. They have protested in front of the Ministry of Education. The civil 

society has contributed quite a lot to that kind of form of secularism, which is a bit distant 

from French laı ̈cite ́ but closer to a more American version of secularism. 

Mr. HURD. Underpinning a lot of what we’ve discussed already today is the fundamental question of meaning. So people, whether they’re in Central Asia or Western 

Europe or elsewhere, have big existential questions once they hit the age of reason. 

This intersects, I think, with two things. One, state control or branded Islam, where 

the imams are state funded, state trained, state approved, where the content of their sermons are in some cases literally provided by the governments. So what people are 

receiving when they go to the mosque is, as some of you already noted, effectively government propaganda. It doesn’t have a particularly strong religious character and doesn’t 

necessarily address these big existential questions that people have about themselves and 

about life. 

This also brings us to education, and all of you have touched on the lack of healthy, 

vibrant religious education in the countries of Central Asia. Broadly, what would healthy 

religious education look like in the Central Asian context? What would it look like at the 

private level? What should the government’s relationship be to it? 

And then a version of the question that I asked earlier: Are there models, including 

outside of Central Asia, where you think there are large Muslim communities and the 

religious education looks like the kind of thing that you would hope to be replicated, or 

at least considered, in Central Asia? 

And a third question is: Can you perhaps say a bit more about the lack of substance 

that people are receiving at school, that what they’re receiving at mosque in response to 

these big existential questions they have, which in turn makes them perhaps more vulnerable, more susceptible to the allure of what they might encounter from more extremist 

individuals or groups, particularly when they travel abroad for work to places like Russia? 

This is a question for all the panelists. 

Dr. LEMON. Three questions for each. I guess I’ll go with the first and the third. 

So, as I mentioned, before 2010 I think there were almost 3,000 Tajiks studying 

Islam abroad, and there are a number of madrasas operating in the country, and there 

still is an Islamic university I think with 2,000 places. There’s certainly much more 

demand for Islamic education than there is supply. There are still, from my understanding and from some reports, some sort of unofficial underground—although that’s a 

misleading term that dates back to the Soviet Union—there are still unofficial lessons, 

and, certainly in some villages within the country, the government views that as a potential security threat within Tajikistan. 

I think a model would be, obviously, providing more Islamic education, providing 

some—I know that in the past they introduced in high school, I guess middle school— 

some sort of theology and Islamic morality classes. That may be a good opportunity. But 

as I said, speaking to the third question, education within Central Asia in general, 

Tajikistan in particular, is about producing citizens who are not critical and will not resist 

or question authority and power. I think there’s a genuine view that Islam and Islamic 

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14 

morality poses a threat to regime security, so I think it’s trying to persuade the government that Islam isn’t necessarily anti-state and it’s not necessarily anti-status quo; and 

that they can loosen the reins on religion and promote religious education, and it doesn’t 

ipso facto mean that their power will be threatened. In fact, if they opened up to a more 

pluralist system like Kyrgyzstan has, it would reduce the pressure and reduce some of 

the injustice that’s existing within society, and maybe even allow Islamic civil society to 

develop and take on some of the roles that the state’s incapable of doing as we’ve seen 

sort of through processes like kashar in Kyrgyzstan and is already existing in Tajikistan. 

Dr. NASRUTDINOV. Yes, and in Kyrgyzstan the major problem faced by students of 

madrasas is the lack of certification and licensing. Because Kyrgyzstan is a secular 

country, the Ministry of Education refuses to give licenses to religious institutions. What 

we have as a result is that students usually go to madrasas after completing the ninth 

grade of school. Then, having completed the degree at the madrasa, they are not able to 

obtain a certificate of secondary education, and thus they cannot continue their education 

into the higher education institutions. This has been a problem for all madrasa graduates. 

And the madrasas themselves are open to collaboration: They want to introduce secular 

subjects into their curriculum just to get that secondary education certificate for their own 

graduates. 

Yet, the state is still kind of lagging behind on these issues and not really working 

properly. So far only one institution has been granted a license: the Islamic University 

of Kyrgyzstan, one of the eight higher education madrasas. There is one more pilot project 

that was introduced by the State Committee on Religious Affairs, and that is kind of a 

theology college on the basis of one of the universities, where students who obtain a 

degree in religion also obtain a certificate in secondary education. I think resolving this 

issue would help a lot the graduates of Islamic educational institutions to integrate better 

into life, and to have both professional careers and religious careers developed together, 

where they would not be isolated only to religious life. 

In regard to introducing religious subjects into secular schools, this also has been on 

agenda. This is already the second year that the Ministry of Education is piloting a project 

on introducing a subject called the history of world religion into the curriculum of regular 

secular schools. The results are yet to be evaluated and seen, but there is this initiative, 

and hopefully it will take proper ground. 

Dr. COLLINS. Thank you for pointing to that issue—religious education, as well as 

education more broadly, I think is an enormous challenge for the Central Asian states to 

deal with. In approximately a hundred focus groups that my Central Asian colleagues and 

I did across the region over the course of several years, the vast, vast majority of participants pointed to a desire for any religious education, better religious education, and religious education within the framework of an otherwise-secular school system. So, they’re 

not talking about a desire to send their children just to madrasas, something along the 

lines of what we’ve seen in Pakistan or Afghanistan emerge over the past several decades. 

They want their children to get basic theological instruction within the context of the 

school system. 

Given that there are no religious schools that also teach secular subjects for the most 

part across the region—again, Kyrgyzstan has a few minor exceptions, but across the 

region it’s something that’s broadly banned and seen as threatening to the governments 

of the region—I think that is a key area in which we can think about looking at models 

elsewhere. And I actually would propose the U.S. as a relatively good model in this 

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respect. Religious education, religious schools, religious institutions that run, own, and 

teach religion as a theology together with the whole range of secular subjects have been 

something that have been part of the religious and civil system in the United States since 

our founding. 

The Catholic school system, of which I’m a product, is actually a quite healthy 

example in this regard. And I think it would be very interesting to see Central Asians 

and directors of Central Asian schools come and have a dialog with teachers and administrators in the Catholic school system here to see how it works. Ninety percent of the 

school day goes toward secular subjects, but religion is also taught as a theology. 

And on that point, I just want to emphasize that what people are not looking for is 

for their kids to go to study Islam in the secular state-run, state-controlled school system 

as a science, as the study of atheism in the way that it was during the Soviet period, 

in the way that quite frankly still is across much of the region. To the extent that religion 

has been introduced in the school system, it’s been introduced in this very Soviet-style 

fashion. People want their kids to learn morality and they want them to learn their 

beliefs, but they want them to learn those beliefs within a sort of healthy, otherwise secular context. That’s what the vast majority of the population I think wants. 

Mr. HURD. I think just another example from the U.S. system—you mentioned the 

Catholic school system, but in addition there are families here in the United States that 

send their children to public schools, but then their own religious community has something set up to sort of supplement that. So, they’re certainly getting religious education 

at home, but they’re also getting it from a community entity that supplements whatever 

it is that they’re receiving in the public school system. 

Dr. COLLINS. And it’s not encumbered by all these restrictions that have been put 

in place across Central Asia in terms of how you have to get permission on who can teach, 

and whether or not teaching religion through the churches or through the mosques or in 

the home is actually legal or illegal. So, at the current moment across much of the region 

for one to teach—to send one to a grandparent or a neighbor or an atinga is actually 

extraordinarily risky when most of us would agree that that’s just sort of a normal, 

healthy part of the moral upbringing of a child. 

Mr. PRICE. I think all of you have talked about the post-Soviet legacy that heavily 

influences the state’s approach to religion. I was wondering what you make of the 

generational shift that seems to be impacting all post-Soviet republics these days of a 

generation of kids who are now adults who have grown up without any living memory 

of the Soviet Union. Is that impacting attitudes toward religion at the popular level? And 

will that have an impact on the way that government and administration relates to those 

issues? 

Dr. LEMON. As an anecdote, I was at a wedding in 2013 in the Vanj mountainous 

district in Tajikistan, and there were separate tables between the young guys, many of 

whom were labor migrants. They were back from the summer, and they would not touch 

alcohol, and they were on one table. Then there were the sort of bad young guys, as they 

labeled them, who sat next to them, and they were all drinking. And then there was the 

sort of old Soviet generation sitting on the third table, and they were, again, drinking. 

And I think that certainly that’s an anecdote, but we are seeing especially among the 

younger generation an increasing interest in religion. I think that’s, in the case of 

Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan in particular, mediated through these processes of going to 

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Russia, where ironically, religion is more free and they are able to meet practicing Muslims from a broader community, and they’re able to with fewer risks either register for 

official religious training in Russia or convene informal prayer groups, a number of which 

I attended in Moscow in 2014 and 2015. 

I think there is this societal Islamization. From the view of the governments this is 

inherently political, and it’s linked to a political radicalization and seen as a threat. But 

I think there is a genuine demand amongst the population, as shown through Dr. Collins’ 

surveys in religious education, in morality. And that is in part mediated by this move 

from a Soviet to a post-Soviet system. 

Dr. NASRUTDINOV. I totally agree with Dr. Lemon. For many purposes of convenience, 

I tend to oversimplify matters by categorizing this sort of debate into difference between 

several generations. And again, I think this is like oversimplification, but still it’s easier 

to perceive a larger picture this way. 

I distinguish the older Soviet generation—this would be the generation of my grandfathers who were born before the Soviet Union or in the early Soviet years when religion 

was still free, right—they were the ones who, like my grandfather, went to madrasa, 

learned to read and write in Arabic, memorized a portion of Koran, before the things going 

bad in 1920s and 1930s and religion became prohibited. So the elderly community were 

among the first ones who in the 1990s, as soon as religious freedom returned, went back 

to their religious practices. For example, my grandfather became a mullah, imam for the 

Tatar community in the south in Kyrgyzstan. 

And then the second generation, I call them the Soviet generation. This is the generation of my parents. These are the ones who were born, brought up, raised, and matured 

into this Soviet atheist, anti-religious propaganda. They were already in their 40s and 50s 

when the Soviet Union broke up, and having spent their entire life believing that religion 

is a prejudice and a fairy tale—something which is but a negative—they were among the 

ones who had the most difficult time returning to religion, or going to religion. This is 

the generation that is really missing in churches and in the mosque nowadays. 

And then the third generation—this is what I refer to myself—is a transitional 

generation. We went to school in the Soviet time, but then we’re still young enough and 

still open to ideas when the Soviet Union broke up—I was 17. And many in my generation 

came to religion via a detour of the bad 1990s with the drugs and alcohol addiction, 

criminal engagement, et cetera. So for many of representative of my generation, those who 

survived 1990s, right, they—for them religion was a salvation from all these difficult and 

bad habits. 

And then you have the independent generation. These are the kids who grew up in 

the 1990s or late 1980s, so the ones who were not brainwashed with the Soviet propaganda at all. So for them religion was really their choice. The parents did not impose it 

on them, but it was one of many choices in regard to this new kind of forms of identities 

that suddenly became available after the breakup of the Soviet Union. For them, they see 

religion as a choice and they respect it as a choice of others. 

And then you have the new Millennials—my children. For my children I try to teach 

them and I try to raise them with the sort of religious perspective on life. 

It’s kind of a cycle that goes back in some ways is the observations. That’s my 

perspective. 

CSCE18-11 with DISTILLER

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Mr. PRICE. Dr. Collins, maybe you could also address from the bureaucratic standpoint how entrenched these practices are from the Soviet Union’s legacy and whether 

they’re subject to change with kind of generational evolution. 

Dr. COLLINS. Yes, thank you. 

Well, it’s an interesting question. Nathaniel and I were having a conversation earlier 

about some comments that are still made by the older generation who tend to still dominate amongst government elites and within the bureaucracy. This mentality of Soviet 

atheism and fear and suspicion of religion, I think, still pervades those who are in positions of power. And that, I think, continues to influence policies such as Tajikistan’s sort 

of public campaign against the hijab. You see a milder version of this taking place in 

Kyrgyzstan, where government elites seem to feel the need to speak out against the Arab 

version of the hijab invading our country versus the sort of traditional Islam and the 

traditional way that Kyrgyz women are supposed to dress. These statements coming from 

government elites, I think, reflect that very Soviet sort of bureaucratic atheist understanding and suspicion of what religion is actually all about. 

As both the previous speakers have said, there is this growing gap between the elites 

and the youth, particularly those who were born in the post-Soviet era. Something that’s 

not always taken into account in much of what is written about Islam in the region, is 

that we now have an entire generation who was born after the Soviet Union collapsed. 

So we’ve seen significant generational turnover in terms of youth’s views about Islam, 

about politics, and about corruption. It’s the younger generation who’ve grown up entirely 

in a system where the educational system is pervaded by corruption, and I think that’s 

across the region—one of the issues where there isn’t a whole lot of variation. That pervades how they view the world. I think, not for everybody, certainly, but for quite a 

number of people, it causes them to see Islam in some way as a solution to a lot of their 

problems, as a solution to injustice, and as a solution to political/economic corruption and 

repression of many sorts. 

Another point which I would emphasize that Dr. Nasrutdinov mentioned earlier is 

the access to social media. This is, again, more so the case in Kyrgyzstan than in some 

of the other republics, where access to social media is higher. But youth, since they can’t 

receive religious education or there’s not enough access to sort of normal religious education, they’re going online. This is happening across the region. It’s happening in Russia. 

It’s happening in Azerbaijan. So, to get their questions about Islam answered, they get 

online and they listen to various forms from the moderate to the extreme that are posted 

online in their languages—in Russian and Kyrgyz and predominantly in Uzbek. And this 

is affecting how they’re viewing the world, how they’re viewing their social and political 

problems, and how they’re coming to view—at least a certain percentage of them—religion 

as a solution to that. 

Again, I don’t think the youth perspective that religion should be part of the public 

space and civil society is not something that should be seen necessarily as threatening. 

It can evolve in a healthy and pluralist way, as it had in Kyrgyzstan prior to the Bakiyev 

administration and their adoption of a new law on religion. But unfortunately, by government elites it is still seen as something that’s very threatening that needs to be controlled 

and repressed. 

Mr. HURD. Thank you. 

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Everett and I have many more questions and I sure could be here all day with a 

fruitful conversation with our panelists, but we want to make sure that we give our 

audience members an opportunity to ask questions. I have a colleague here with a mic. 

If you could tell us your name and affiliation, if you have one, and then please ask your 

question. Thank you. 

QUESTIONER. Thanks. I’m Alex Tiersky, also of the U.S. Helsinki Commission. 

As the policy advisor with responsibility for counterterrorism, I want to tell you how 

instructive I found this discussion. I’ve really learned a tremendous amount from your 

presentations and the discussion. Thank you very much. 

I have two questions. The first actually derives from the set of questions that my colleague Everett just asked you about the Soviet legacy that we’ve talked about for a while. 

What we haven’t talked about is any kind of active Russian engagement with the elites 

in Central Asia. Obviously, the Soviet legacy is one thing, but the Kremlin seeks to take 

a mantle on counterterrorism internationally, and I imagine that’s the case in Central 

Asia as well. I’d love to hear from you a few thoughts on the Kremlin’s perspective on 

sharing what we might call worst practices in the regards of this conversation. 

The second question I would like to ask is, you’ve made it quite clear that from the 

expert perspective that the governmental view or the governmental repression of the free 

practice of Islam and the free practice of religion in Central Asia is counterproductive 

from a counterextremism perspective. But what none of you have said is whether the 

governments believe that they are doing something that is being effective or not; in other 

words, if they think they’re winning and pushing extremism beyond their borders, it 

makes it much more difficult for us to convince them to take a different approach. 

Thank you. 

Dr. LEMON. Well, on Russia, obviously, there’s a shared understanding of this 

problem, I think we can say, between the security services in particular. And they’re the 

ones, really, who are often driving the more interventionist policies, certainly within the 

Tajik case, along with the Ministry of Internal Affairs and, obviously, Committee on Religious Affairs and other institutions. I think there’s a shared understanding of this 

problem: there’s a good and a bad Islam, and Islam is something that needs to be regulated because it, like other parts of civil society, poses a threat to regime security. 

But I think there’s also a practical dimension to this, and this operates both multilaterally and bilaterally, formally and informally. Through things like the RATS—the 

Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure—or through the SCO [Shanghai Cooperation 

Organisation], which is based in Tashkent. There’s a CIS [commonwealth of independent 

states] counterterrorism center, and they share lists. They’re like a sort of Interpol-lite 

in that they have lists of wanted extremists and extremist groups, and they participate 

in extraditions both formally and informally of accused extremists, many of whom are 

opposition members residing within different republics within the region. I think there’s 

certainly cooperation there. 

And the second question was on counterextremism as being counterproductive? 

QUESTIONER. Whether the regimes believe that it is. 

Dr. LEMON. Oh, whether the regimes believe it. Well, in my research I find it very 

difficult to have meetings, and I had some very early on in 2010 with some people from 

certain structures within the Tajik Government on this issue. I think it’s difficult to glean 

intentions here. We all want to say that there’s nefarious intent. It’s difficult to say and 

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19 

disprove whether these people genuinely believe what they’re doing or not. I think, from 

my conversations with various Tajik officials through the years, there is a genuine belief 

that Islam does pose a threat and that the steps they’re taking—whilst they may not be 

ideal—are the best way to sort of keep a lid on the problem. 

Dr. NASRUTDINOV. Perhaps I could answer the two questions together on the example 

of Kyrgyzstan. 

All the repressive politics, particularly in regard to banning specific religious groups, 

have started with Russia. Russia has been thoroughly open until the late 2000s, and it 

was in 2008 when they started banning basically all groups. There are only four versions 

of religion that remain: Orthodox Christianity, traditional Islam, Buddhism, and Judaism. 

Everything else was to be banned. 

Besides banning, one illustrative example is the banning of Tablighi Jamaat, the 

Southeast Asian group. Russia was the first one to ban it. Then it made the recommendations to the CSTO—Collective Security Treaty Organization—to ban them as well. 

And the first one to follow was Tajikistan. It banned them in 2009. Immediately on 

that year 60 members of the movement were arrested, and since then the persecution has 

started. 

Kazakhstan kept thinking until 2013. And after the events in Atyrau in 2011 they 

decided to ban it as well. 

Kyrgyzstan today remains the only country where Tablighi Jamaat is still legal. It’s 

still withstanding the pressures from the other members of the CSTO, including Russia. 

Particularly illustrative are the remarks of our former President Almazbek Atambayev 

suggesting that we are keeping everything under control and at the moment, we see a 

more of a positive influence of the group rather than the negative; that’s why we keep 

it legal. 

Same can be said about the Turkish groups, such as Nurcular and Hizmet. There is 

quite a lot of pressure from the Turkish Government to ban them after the coup attempt 

in Turkey. And yet, Almazbek Atambayev also said that we are keeping everything under 

control, and to the degree we believe that these group has more positive influence for us. 

So it’s hard for me to tell for the governments of neighboring countries, but at least 

in Kyrgyzstan the government is kind of listening. For example, on the questions of 

Tablighi Jamaat, they have taken serious consultations with international experts 

including Alexey Malashenko, for example, and many local community experts—whereas 

in neighboring countries it’s more authoritative decisionmaking as to just banning everything. 

One more influence that comes from Russia is through propaganda and media. Again, 

there is a specific age group, like the Soviet generation, like my parents—like my father, 

who retired 2 years ago. And since then he’s been hooked on Russian TV and Russian 

propaganda completely. So this is the group that is brainwashed by this continuous Russian media and Russian propaganda, and a lot of that anti-religious sentiment also comes 

via that channel. 

Dr. COLLINS. I would certainly agree with all that’s been said so far, so I won’t add 

too much to that. 

I would note that I’ve had conversations with members of the State Committee on 

Religious Affairs in Kyrgyzstan for about 10 years about Tablighi Jamaat, and they constantly feel as though they should ban it. They haven’t quite done it yet. They’ve resisted 

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20 

the pressure from Russia and across the region to brand this religious community as a 

terrorist and extremist organization, thankfully, so far. 

Jehovah’s Witnesses are another example. The repression started in Russia, and you 

subsequently see the adoption of similar policies toward the Jehovah’s Witnesses across 

the region. So Russia, I think, is a particularly nefarious influence within the sphere of 

religious affairs across the region. 

Do the governments believe they’re winning? It’s difficult to say. I strongly suspect, 

though, that given the changes that we are starting to see within the Uzbek regime, that 

there are at least some significant players as well as many of the younger generation who 

are starting to come up through the ranks within the Uzbek Government who were in 

graduate school with me in the 1990s. And they increasingly, I think, believe that the 

repressive policies of President Karimov’s regime were, in fact, counterproductive. And it 

will be interesting to see whether or not the changes in Uzbekistan have any sort of ripple 

effect across the region. 

Mr. PRICE. I think that’s very interesting because anecdotally I’ve certainly heard 

from some Uzbek interlocutors that they feel that these examples that people point to of 

Uzbek nationals who have committed acts of terror abroad have been radicalized while 

abroad in Russia and think that they were not radicalized within Uzbekistan, and they 

take that talking point to kind of underscore the efficacy of their domestic policies. But 

I don’t know how to square that with what we’ve discussed today. 

Mr. HURD. Yes, please. 

QUESTIONER. Catherine Cosman, formerly Helsinki Commission a hundred years ago 

and more recently U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. 

My questions also have to do with Russia. I would not say that the policies of Russia 

toward freedom of religion are all that much better than that of the Central Asian countries, sadly, especially after 2014 and that series of laws that they passed, and the types 

of Russian Orthodox radicals—I think is a fair way of characterizing them—who are, 

many of them women, in important positions of power, including, unfortunately, the Ministry of Education. But that’s another question. I think Russia has a very important influence on many levels in what’s going on in Central Asia. 

Also, vis-a`-vis migrants, of course, the overall picture of their treatment is pretty bad, 

but I have heard that in some cities in some areas in Siberia, and oddly enough in 

Chechnya, there are some Uzbek migrants who are imam khatibs, so in other words in 

influential positions. One of Kadyrov’s chief advisors on religion apparently is an Uzbek. 

Whether that’s something to be proud of is another question. 

Also, because I think it’s important to ask, which religious figure or Muslim-related 

religious figure in Russia is admired by the millions of Central Asian migrants? And I’ve 

heard, unfortunately, that it is Kadyrov who is the most-admired figure. I hope I’m wrong 

and I hope you can contradict me on that. 

So, in short, the picture about freedom of religion in Russia is very complicated. I 

would end my little disquisition with saying that we should also look at the international 

instruments for a good definition of freedom of religion; i.e., the U.N. and the OSCE. I 

think that should be mentioned, especially at a setting like this. 

Thank you. 

Mr. HURD. Do any of the panelists want to respond? 

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21 

Dr. LEMON. No, when I said that Russia is better, I didn’t mean in terms of the legal 

framework, which I agree is just as bad. I think for certain Central Asian migrant communities that I spent time with, perhaps because they were away from home communities 

where surveillance networks are very extensive—mostly informal through local mahallas 

and informants and family members even—that they felt that the state wasn’t quite as 

interested, perhaps, in them, and sort of as pervasive in its sort of surveillance networks. 

But I certainly wouldn’t say that Russia should be upheld as a beacon of religious 

freedom. That would not be the case. 

In terms of who the Tajik migrants who I spent time with admire, he’s not an Islamic 

leader, but Putin himself is obviously revered amongst many of the migrant community 

as the archetypal strongman. I think Kadyrov—there’s a lot of sympathy amongst the 

migrants who I know toward him as being, again, an effective leader who’s brought stability to Chechnya. 

I think within my experience within Moscow there’s certainly a tension between the 

mosques and the muftiate, which is Tatar-led, although there are some North Caucasians 

in the administration, and the Central Asian migrant communities. I know a lot of people 

were turned away or no longer enjoyed attending or wanted to attend the very few 

mosques in Moscow because often parts of the service were in Tatar and they didn’t 

understand. Some of it was in Russian. But they preferred often to have their own 

informal prayer groups, as opposed to going to the official institutions that they viewed 

as being less welcoming to them. 

Dr. NASRUTDINOV. In regard to Kyrgyz practicing Muslim population, I think the religious authority is constructed along ethnic lines, significantly. So the most popular and 

famous religious scholars are all ethnic Kyrgyz. The most well-known scholar is Chubak 

Ajy Jalilov, who is a former mufti, and he is followed by Abduskhonar Matev, who is a 

former rector of the Kyrgyz Islamic University. The two are very active inside Kyrgyzstan. 

They are very active with lectures in their own mosques and in other mosques, and 

produce a lot of visual materials on CDs and online. They are also very popular among 

Kyrgyz migrants in Russia, and they regularly travel. The muftiate organizes trips for 

them, and you have gatherings in City Crocus Hall in Moscow where it brings together 

up to 6,000 Kyrgyz labor migrants just to listen to the two. 

Surprisingly, another interesting figure who is popular in Kyrgyzstan is Shamil 

Alyautdinov, who is a Tatar modern Islamic scholar from Russia. He’s been coming to 

Kyrgyzstan with lectures almost every year, he and his wife. She is also quite popular 

among the female community particularly. They gather large crowds, and have a fairly 

strong fellowship in the country. 

Dr. COLLINS. Yes, I certainly agree. The situation with Russia is very complicated, 

and we’re talking about millions of migrants who are living there. They’re broken into different ethnic communities. They live in different cities of Russia. Some of them have 

greater access to internet than others. And even within Central Asia itself, it’s interesting 

that so many people express both popular views of Russia, in large part based on the Russian media that they have access to, and correspondingly very negative views of the 

United States, increasingly so, over the past 10 to 20 years. 

At the same time, they also have expressed in both focus groups as well as my survey 

research, a desire to introduce various elements of Sharia into the legal system, or to have 

some sort of Muslim democracy, or to model their system on Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, which they see as pure and less corrupt and a good Islamic form of life. 

CSCE18-11 with DISTILLER

22 

So those views often seem very contradictory: how can one admire Putin and at the 

same time want a government based on what they see as the Arab model, which, of 

course, many people have not had any particular experience with? So it is certainly something very sort of difficult to pin down. 

I agree with the comments that the other panelists have made. I just want to address 

your question as well, Everett, about the Uzbek Government’s talking points. I think 

those are the talking points across the region as well, that to date we’ve kept the lid on 

extremism within our country by the policies that we’ve had in place over the past decade 

to two to three decades. 

I’m not sure that these governments are quite as naı ̈ve as all that. Certainly there’re 

some people who firmly believe in repression. But I do think that there are others—and 

again, it’s probably the younger generation—who are attuned to what’s being disseminated in social media, whether it’s Gulmurod Khalimov’s video where he defects from the 

OMON [Special Purpose Police Unit] in Tajikistan and says that one of the reasons of 

his defection is because of the abuse and torture of Muslims and religious repression in 

Tajikistan. That’s central to the reason that he left Tajikistan and joined ISIS. 

Following his departure, you start to see the numbers of Tajiks peaking as fighters 

in Syria. Certainly, dozens and dozens and dozens of videos that are put out by other primarily ethnic Uzbek, or mixed ethnically, but led by ethnic Uzbeks in Syria also continually harp on that same message. It’s not all about Syria. It’s about both Syria as well 

as the religious repression and the situation for Muslims at home. 

So, it’s hard for me to believe that the Central Asian elites are completely naı ̈ve to 

the problems that have been created by religious repression at home. I would hope that 

that is underlying some of the changes and push for reform within Uzbekistan today. 

Tajikistan might be another matter. I’m not sure that they’re convinced yet. 

Mr. HURD. Do we have any more questions from the audience? 

QUESTIONER. Jeff Bell, National Endowment for Democracy. 

I was very interested to hear Professor Nasrutdinov talk about the role civil society 

has played in encouraging better attitudes toward religious freedom in Kyrgyzstan. And 

I would just be curious to hear if the panel could talk about perhaps what both religious 

and secular civil society could be doing better or is doing well in all the countries. 

I understand, of course in Tajikistan there’s very little leeway to do much. But it 

would still be interesting to hear. 

Thank you. 

Dr. NASRUTDINOV. Well, I think the question was addressed mostly to my colleagues, 

like whether this is happening also in other countries. 

Dr. LEMON. It was also to you about what civil society has done. 

Dr. NASRUTDINOV. Oh, civil society. I’ll give you specific examples. 

For example, one of the leaders of this group, Mutakalim, the leader is Jamal 

Frontbek-Kyzy. What she did is that she, at the beginning, she established her organization specifically with the agenda of hijabs in schools and workplaces in mind. It took her 

2 years to get it registered, through a lot of hurdles particularly even from the muftiate, 

which were making obstacles for her. Yet they succeeded. 

Since they’ve registered, they’ve been taking school directors, ministers of education, 

to court regularly, and they’ve provided legal assistance and continuously supported these 

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23 

cases. Over a number of years, this has accumulated. Eventually, there’s this big story 

where a minister of education did ban hijabs completely in school. They took him to court. 

They won the case. His ban was removed. He himself was fired. It was 2 days ago that 

the law was introduced that allows girls to wear not a hijab, but kind of a veil. 

Another interesting case was when Jamal was invited to attend a U.N. meeting in 

Turkey. And when she was passing by customs at the Manas Airport in Bishkek, the customs officers asked her to remove hijab because on the ID, she was without hijab, and 

said you can remove it, pass it, and then put it back. And she said, no, I’m not removing 

it. So they wouldn’t let her pass the customs until when she said okay, you’re free not 

to let me pass, but I will make it such an international scandal, so you will be sorry about 

it. 

Eventually they did let her in. What she did, as soon as she came back, was she 

started collecting signatures, because in order to change the law you need to have 300,000 

signatures. She collected 300,000 signatures in the country. She initiated the law. Everybody signed except for one. This was a minister of international affairs—he categorically 

refused to do that. 

So she waited. And it was 2008, I think, when we had SCO meeting—Shanghai 

Cooperation Organization meeting—in Bishkek, where the leaders of all these SCO countries were supposed to come. She made a call for all Muslim women to come out and block 

the main road from the airport to the city. This would be such a big scandal that everyone 

became really, really concerned. The Ministry of International Affairs wrote to her, saying, 

Okay, I will sign the paper; just call the meeting off. And she said, no, until I see the 

paper with the signature, I don’t call it off. She receives the permission with his signature 

in the last moment, and she calls the protest off. 

This is how they’ve struggled—it didn’t come nicely. It didn’t come easily. These are 

just a couple of examples. 

Dr. LEMON. As you say, in Tajikistan the space for civil-society engagement in religious policy debating secularism is limited. In the mid–2000s, the OSCE actually sponsored this sort of religious-secular dialog at the time when the opposition was still legal. 

This was an ongoing series of conferences organized in Dushanbe, but also in Germany, 

between religious authorities, members of the government, members of the opposition, and 

scholars, and those sort of debates around policy actually took place then. That was a different time. 

Sort of moving back toward that would be certainly something that would be welcomed. But I think, under the current circumstances, the government would be reluctant. 

And, the only sort of civil-society events and programs was obviously focused on CVE and 

violent extremism. Even though, as we’ve mentioned, in terms of the radicalization 

process, perhaps secularism is more to blame than religion in terms of many of the 

recruits not being particularly religious before being recruited. That seems to be one of 

civil society’s only in to this issue, but it’s obviously from a negative perspective. 

Dr. COLLINS. I’ll just add that two countries where Christian-based groups were actually quite active in civil society until more recent restrictions have gone into effect are 

Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. And there you saw, over the course of the 1990s and 2000s, 

the proliferation, especially in Kazakhstan, of groups with a Christian basis to them, 

affiliated with churches or sometimes independent of churches, that did a whole range of 

basic civic activities, including set-up centers for individuals with drug addictions or 

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24 

alcohol addictions, for homeless women. These dealt with that whole range of what we 

would consider faith-based organizations and those sorts of activities until many of them 

started to fear new government restrictions on proselytism and on children participating 

in religious organizations or activities. 

There’s now, I think, quite a bit of fear, particularly on the part of minority Christian 

groups, particularly Protestants—Baptists, evangelicals and others—in Kazakhstan, and 

to some extent in Kyrgyzstan as well, that by engaging in those sorts of activities, by 

having children present, for example, at youth camps or summer camps, that they will 

be banned by the state or sort of come under really quite crippling fines from the state. 

In one case in Kazakhstan, I believe it was a year or two ago, there were Christian 

women who were simply providing sort of hospice services. But they had Bibles present 

at the scene, and they were charged with proselytism and then were given crippling fines. 

So I think there’s a failure on the part of the governments to realize that religious 

organizations, whether Christian or Muslim, can engage in a healthy range of civic 

activity that society as well as the state would actually benefit from. 

Dr. NASRUTDINOV. Let me just quickly add the clarification that the law that she 

initiated, Jamal Frontbek-Kyzy, was on allowing women to take photos for passport with 

a hijab. That was now supported. 

Mr. HURD. Thank you for the questions and thank you for the interesting responses. 

Everett and I will ask one question apiece and then we’ll wrap things up. 

My question is particularly for Dr. Collins and Dr. Nasrutdinov. We’ve talked about 

some of the differences between Kyrgyzstan and the rest of the region. But I’m wondering 

if, in the areas of law, policy and regulation, whether one of the primary differences is 

that of a lack of full implementation, as opposed to the actual substance of the law and 

the policy and regulation. For example, in the area of registration, all religious groups and 

religious schools are required to register with the State Committee on Religious Affairs. 

There are a number of groups that continue to have problems gaining registration— 

the Ahmadiyyas, Jehovah’s Witnesses, et cetera. I’m wondering whether or not you think, 

at least at the level of sort of law in particular, it’s more a matter of the government just 

making a decision to not as fully and comprehensively apply the law as in some other 

countries, as opposed to the law itself. 

Dr. NASRUTDINOV. Well, in case of Kyrgyzstan, the latest amendment to the law on 

religious freedom was in regard to proselytization in public spaces, which is, I think, now 

almost supported and passed through the parliament, which bans proselytization or any 

kind of religious propaganda outside in the street, at houses, and in public places. What 

is interesting is that in the informal discussions that we had with the State Committee 

on Religious Affairs, we as an expert community always were against this kind of amendment, and we battled. We have discussed this with the state committee on a number of 

forums. 

One of the informal kind of justifications that the members of the committee gave 

is that this is really a law that’s supposed to work against conversion. They see conversion 

from Islam to Christianity as one of the major issues, and they see these leading to kind 

of social conflicts evolving at the level of the village, community, and even families. This 

is how they perceive the conversion from Islam to Christianity. 

Therefore, they suggested this law is mostly targeting specifically groups like Jehovah’s Witnesses, who knock the doors and proselytize actively on staircases. But while 

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suggesting that this is against Christian groups, it is also affecting Muslim groups such 

as Tablighi Jamaat, who also knocks the doors. Therefore I said, well, if they simply invite 

people to the mosque, then this is okay? If they do not proselytize and if they do not 

preach at the door, this is fine? 

So, it’s a policy that is targeting everyone, but specifically addressing the Christian 

community. In some ways there is this bias: it is not open, and it is not specifically explicitly stated. Yet it is there, right? And as it has been mentioned, particularly in regard 

to registration, there are now nearly 400 organizations which are registered—Christian 

organizations—with the state committee. Yet Mormons, for example, struggle. They still 

did not register themselves. 

Numbers are important. The law works in such a way that to register an organization, you have to have a certain number of followers in a particular settlement. That is 

very difficult to have somewhere in the village in Kyrgyzstan, in the remote area. This 

way, the government creates these artificial obstacles for the communities to register and 

be legal and function properly. 

Dr. COLLINS. Thank you. 

I would add to that that in some cases, Kyrgyzstan’s law on religion, which is actually quite harsh including the more recent amendments and restrictions on proselytism, 

don’t necessarily distinguish it from the rest of the region. 

On the other hand, Kyrgyzstan historically is sort of laissez faire in actually implementing the law. Often this works to the benefit of believers. So, for example, you pointed 

to another issue, which is registration. Registration of religious communities is not easy 

in Kyrgyzstan, and the law seems to be designed to prevent particularly new religious 

groups, whether Christians or sort of non-mainstream Muslims, from actually registering 

their churches or their mosques. 

On the other hand, implementation is often quite weak. So you see house churches 

existing across the country where people gather and worship in private within sort of 

small churches that exist behind the walls of particular houses on small streets. It’s 

incredibly hard to find them, which speaks to the fact that they’re doing so in fear, even 

though they can exist. There are really sort of two sides to the coin. The legal framework 

is not very good. The implementation is generally quite bad. But people still exist and 

believe in practice in a certain amount of fear, because they know that the situation could 

become harsher. 

I think the same is true with the case of the Hizb ut-Tahrir Party, which was banned 

as extremist. The legislation is not terribly different from the legislation on extremist 

organizations elsewhere in the region, and yet the implementation is typically much softer 

in Kyrgyzstan. It’s gotten worse, I think, under President Bakiyev and since, but Hizb 

ut-Tahrir members are typically arrested. Perhaps they’re fined, briefly detained, and 

then released, as opposed to thousands of them being arrested and given 15- to 18- to 20- 

year prison sentences, the way they are in other countries in the region. 

Mr. HURD. Dr. Nasrutdinov, I especially appreciated your comment about the government sort of seeing itself as an arbiter of harmony and that part of its responsibility was 

to prevent discord. It was very striking in the meetings that we had with government officials in Uzbekistan—there was a very similar theme. There didn’t seem to be, or at least 

we didn’t hear, a recognition and acknowledgement that in a multi-religious country, 

where people have strong views about theology, the nature of reality, morality, et cetera, 

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26 

there are going to be disagreements and disputes. This is just a normal thing that comes 

with a multi-religious country, but that there isn’t this sort of inevitability that it will 

result in violent conflict, and that nonviolent conflict is actually not something to be afraid 

of; but anyway, appreciated those comments. 

Mr. PRICE. I wanted to ask about another caution that we heard during our trip and 

that many of you have alluded to, and that is about the specter of political Islam. I was 

wondering to what extent you all see this as a present or a prospective threat that the 

regimes of the region perceive. Are there currently political Islamic movements that are 

popular and salient within societies? Or is this just a concern about if there were an 

opening, that there would be an easy coalescing around Islamic themes in terms of political opposition? 

Dr. LEMON. I guess you need to understand sort of what they mean by political Islam. 

Do they mean sort of officially registered Islamic parties, or do they mean sort of the influence of Islam within politics? I think they take quite a broad definition of political Islam 

that sort of any ways in which religion can have an effect on politics, be it sort of formal 

or informal, is potentially a threat to their security. 

Obviously, within the Tajik case, they had an Islamic party till 2015, and gradually 

conflated the Islamic Renaissance Party with groups like ISIS, said they were a conveyor 

belt to extremism, merged the two categories together, and eventually blamed the 

organization for a coup and banned it. 

Now, constitutional amendments 2 years ago, in fact, now prohibit the re-establishment of religious party in Tajikistan. So, at least under the current administration, it’s 

difficult to envisage the re-emergence of the faith-based party. I think that would be probably the case across the whole region, maybe with the possible exception of Kyrgyzstan, 

and that’s maybe again viewed through the lens of regime security. And if there were to 

be an Islamic party, then it would be a potential threat, although you could maybe envisage the setting up of a pseudo-party, as we’ve seen in other parts of the region where 

each parliament is filled with parties, but they’re all effectively sort of constructed by the 

regime. So, we may see in the future the construction of an Islamic party, but it may be 

sort of in non-oppositional terms. 

Dr. NASRUTDINOV. I think it’s important to look at the specific influences and groups 

that’s popular in the country. In Kyrgyzstan, the most popular group is the Tablighi 

Jamaat, and it’s by nature apolitical. It’s one of the reasons why it is legal and popular 

in many other parts of the world, including the United States. Non-engagement with politics is one of the core principles—a kind of a pacifist attitude where you just accept the 

government. It is the belief that through your own religious practice that you change the 

world, not through direct engagement with the politics. 

The Turkish groups see engagement in politics also in a slightly kind of long-term 

perspective. A number of representatives of Fethullah Gu ̈len movement who work in 

Turkish [inaudible] schools in Kyrgyzstan stated in their interviews that they see their 

graduates as the future elite of the country because it is not cheap to study in such 

schools. Therefore, it’s mostly higher/middle-class-income communities who can afford 

them. Thus, these are the ones who will be the future bureaucrats, the future state officials, the future kind of businessmen of the country, and they will have this kind of more 

pro-Turkey, pan-Turkic vision. 

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27 

The Salafi groups that we have are also predominantly moderate, classical, and also 

apolitical Salafis. Yet there are a number of more active political groups, but few of them 

are banned, but also in numbers they’re not as popular as just kind of moderate Salafis. 

Here they also claim not to be engaged in politics. 

The way they see the religion interfering into the politics is through the practices of 

people who are already politicians. And we have a number of parliament deputies, such 

as Tersimbai Bekirulou [ph], for example, who regularly made kind of pro-religious public 

statements in parliament and lobbied certain laws, such as allowing two wives and legalizing second marriages, et cetera. 

Finally, we see kind of the engagement with the politics is through just generally 

wider appreciation of a more religious approach to politics. As I’ve mentioned, one-third 

of our respondents stated that they would support a candidate with stronger religious 

views. Another third suggested that they would support the introduction of Sharia law. 

One of them might not even understand what Sharia law means, but this whole sentiment 

is there. More and more young people believe that religion should be a part of politics. 

But again, this is not a part of any specific group or ideology that is being presented. 

Dr. COLLINS. I’ll just add that, yes, I agree in general that governments do exaggerate 

the threat of political Islam, which they tend to equate with radicalism, violent extremism, across the region. It’s a convenient way of labeling all potential political opposition 

and maintaining very strict control over the country. 

Political Islam of any stripe is extremely weak in all of the countries. Certainly in 

Tajikistan, where it was most vibrant with the Islamic Renaissance Party, since that 

party was banned, it’s virtually nonexistent, at least openly, there as well. 

I would also add that I think, again, the repression has led to the growth of extremism. And it’s this conjunction of repression, otherwise extremely difficult political economic conditions, pervaded by corruption, and the exposure, whether it’s in Russia, as 

being a labor migrant, or through the internet to these social-media videos that are 

spreading, disseminating the message that political Islam of some stripe is the solution 

to your problems. 

So, I think there is a growth in sympathy for—or attraction to—these ideas of radicalism, whether as ISIS or some other variant of that. The numbers certainly are small. 

I don’t think they’re in any way a threat to the Central Asian regimes themselves. But 

small numbers, even several thousands, going to Syria or to Afghanistan or a handful of 

individuals coming back and waging attacks like we saw in Tajikistan in July, or in 

Moscow or in Istanbul or New York, are still a problem that I think that we should be 

concerned about. At the moment, I think they’re primarily likely to stay within Afghanistan or Syria and not return home, in large part because the security services at home 

are so restrictive. 

The third point I would add is that I do think that there has been, with this 

generational change, a growing sympathy for ideas of sort of soft political Islam, or sort 

of the normal public presence of religion, Islam in particular, in public political life, 

whether that’s through support for having some form of a religious party, as we saw was 

just banned in Tajikistan. I think that sentiment is broader. It exists in Uzbekistan and 

Kyrgyzstan as well for adopting some ideas of Sharia, again, with not necessarily knowing 

what Sharia means, but equating Sharia with justice and with a lack of corruption and 

cleaning up the corruption in the country. 

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I did surveys in Kyrgyzstan and Azerbaijan, as well as the focus groups across the 

region, and that was sort of a persistent theme. And mine were probably a few years 

before yours, Dr. Nasrutdinov, but I think at the time we found close to 20, 25 percent, 

depending on the question, of support for certain ideas of Sharia being implemented 

within the political system; not necessarily calling for an Islamic state, certainly not 

calling for a caliphate, but calling for the most part, for a sort of broader, healthier role 

for religion, Islam in particular, within society. 

Mr. HURD. Thank you. 

Thanks to our panelists for a very rich and educative discussion. 

Thanks to our audience members, those of you here in person and those of you 

watching online; as well as thanks to some of our colleagues behind the scenes who make 

events like this possible, in particular our hearing and other events coordinator, Jordan; 

Stacy, our communications director; and Alexa, our intern. 

Thanks very much, and have a good evening. [Applause.] 

[Whereupon, at 5:01 p.m., the briefing ended.] 

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A P P E N D I X 

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liS 

OsLo, NoRWAY 

Forum 181 www.forum18.org 114 December 2018 

Central Asia: Freedom of religion or belief violations affect all, but 

particularly Muslims 

Four of the five states of Central Asia (Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan 

and Tajikistan), as well as Azerbaijan, impose severe restrictions to prevent 

people of all religious affiliation or none from exercising their rights to freedom 

of religion or belief. All religious communities are under state control. Exercise 

of freedom of religion or belief without state permission is banned. Who can 

meet for worship and where require state permission. The government 

imposes prior compulsory censorship of all printed or imported religious 

literature. 

But while non-Islamic communities face control from outside (including 

possible surveillance, threats, raids, fines, confiscations and jailings), Islamic 

communities additionally face control from inside. This appears to have two 

related motivations: Islam has by far the most adherents in these countries, 

and regimes are afraid of Islam as a faith with the potential to mobilise the 

population. 

These states have effectively subsumed the only permitted Islamic bodies into 

the apparatus of the state. The regimes control all clergy appointments, 

especially at senior levels, and remove clerics as they see fit. Some of them 

even dictate the sermons that imams are allowed to preach in the mosques 

they do permit to exist. 

The existence of state religions does not in itself necessarily represent a 

violation of individuals' rights to freedom of religion or belief (some European 

states have them). However, it is a violation of the Central Asian states' 

constitutional claims of separation of religion from the state. Moreover, the 

1 
30 

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Muslim Boards were given no choice as to whether they wanted to be 

subsumed into the state structures. 

Indeed, the enforced dragooning of all Muslims into one state-backed and 

state-controlled Muslim Board and the ban on any exercise of freedom of 

religion by those who choose to act outside this narrow framework and 

punishments on them represent a clear violation of these regimes' 

international human rights obligations as members of the United Nations and 

the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (and, in the case of 

Azerbaijan, the Council of Europe). 

The dragooning of Muslims into one state-backed and state-controlled 

structure- and the state-imposed monopoly such structures have- are not 

enshrined in any published laws. 

Kazakhstan, for example, has just one registered Islamic organisation in the 

whole country: the Muslim Board (which represents only Hanafi Sunni Islam). 

All mosques have to belong to it and have no autonomous legal existence. 

Other faiths are allowed more than one organisation. Although it is not written 

in any published law, no other Islamic organisation is allowed to exist. Given 

the ban on religious communities without state registration, this has effectively 

banned all exercise of freedom of religion or belief by people of other Islamic 

communities or groups, including Sunni Muslims of other schools, Ahmadi 

Muslims, Shia Muslims, lsmaili Muslims, Muslims who like to study the works 

of the Turkish 20th century theologian Said Nursi, followers of the Tabligh 

Jamaat Muslim missionary group, or those who want to have a mosque linked 

to their ethnicity and language (Chechen, Tatar, Uighur, Dungan, Azerbaijani, 

Russian). The government also interferes theologically, openly declaring that 

those who follow non-Muslim Board Islam must be brought back into 

adherence to Hanafi Sunni Islam loyal to the Board. 

While many of the Central Asian regimes and Azerbaijan have jailed members 

of other religious communities for exercising freedom of religion or belief 

(mainly Protestant Christians or Jehovah's Witnesses), the vast majority of such 

prisoners of conscience are Muslims, who generally get far longer jail terms. 

This makes many Muslims highly fearful of speaking out about the violations of 

freedom of religion or belief they suffer. 

For more information, see Forum 18's reports on freedom of religion or belief- including 

religious freedom surveys of individual countries- on the website: http://www.foruml8.org 

2 
31 

Counter-extremism, power and authoritarian governance in

Tajikistan

Edward Lemona and Hélène Thibaultb

a

Harriman Institute, Columbia University, New York, USA; bDepartment of Political Science and International

Relations, Nazarbayev University, Astana, Kazakhstan

ABSTRACT

Counter-extremism has become an important tool for the

authoritarian government of Tajikistan to consolidate its position.

In this article, we argue that counter-extremism is not purely

about destructive acts, such as banning groups or arresting

individuals: it is productive, too. Using a Foucauldian

understanding of disciplinary power and biopower, we argue that

counter-extremism in Tajikistan is an attempt to produce secular,

docile citizen subjects who are resistant to extremist ideas. Using

ethnography and discourse analysis, we focus on the way in

which these practices are gendered, targeting the bodies of those

deemed ‘dangerous’. Counter-extremism, we argue, is exercised

not only by the state but also by citizens, who monitor

themselves and others for signs of radicalization. Although some

support state secularism, most merely accept it. A smaller group

resist practices that target certain forms of religious belief and

practice. We explore these everyday forms of resistance against

disciplinary power and biopower.

KEYWORDS

Tajikistan; counterextremism; gender; Islam;

resistance; security; Foucault;

secularism

In the summer of 2011, one of the authors was hosting two of her interviewees for dinner

at her apartment in the city of Khujand when a policeman knocked at the door. He had

visited the building before and knew the author. Normally, the author wore ‘Western’

clothes. But, to accommodate her guests’ strict religious views, she was wearing a more

conservative dress and a ‘traditional’ headscarf, or rumol. The policeman was astounded

by the scene. After entering, he proceeded to argue with one of the guests over something

the guest had written in Arabic in his passport. Even though the tone was slightly aggressive, the dispute was resolved quickly and the policeman left. Later that night, the policeman came back unexpectedly to talk with the researcher and question her about her

guests. Who were they? Why was she dressed like that? Had they tried to convert her?

He was very suspicious of ‘such fanatics’: ‘I was surprised to see you with them, because

we have terrorists here, you know. We don’t like these people. Our girls dress in

modern clothes, you know.’

Clearly, the change in her clothing and ‘suspicious’ guests were alarming to him. Concerned about the influence of these ‘radicals,’ he felt compelled to intervene. The policeman’s actions and thinking correspond to the hegemonic Tajik state rhetoric on the

© 2017 Southseries Inc

CONTACT Edward Lemon ejl2714@columbia.edu

CENTRAL ASIAN SURVEY, 2018

VOL. 37, NO. 1, 137–159

https://doi.org/10.1080/02634937.2017.1336155

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dangers of radical Islam, where visual signs are used as an indicator of extremist beliefs.

Whether acting on orders or based on his personal concern, the policeman’s comments

reflect the government’s division between ‘bad’, foreign, extremist Islam, represented

by the guests, and ‘good’, secularized, moderate Islam, represented by ‘Western’

fashion. But crude as such a method of labelling ‘extremists’ may be, it has a real

impact on the lives of strict believers.1

Since Tajikistan became independent in 1991, the authorities have become increasingly

concerned with the intensification of religious practices among the population. State

involvement in religious affairs has grown since the introduction of a restrictive new

Law on Freedom of Conscience and Religious Associations in 2009, with the government

restricting access to religious education, controlling the number of operational mosques,

co-opting the clergy and censoring religious literature (Epkenhans 2009, 2011). The government has conflated societal Islamization with political radicalization. The spectre of

‘extremism’ has aided the regime in legitimating its rule and provided the discursive

environment for state consolidation through the removal of opponents.2 For example,

the government used accusations of ‘extremism’ to outlaw Central Asia’s only legal

faith-based political party, the Islamic Revival Party of Tajikistan (IRPT), in September

2015 (Epkenhans 2015).3 Paradoxically, while the government staunchly defends the

secular state against Islamic practices that it deems ‘extremist’ it also promotes Islam as

an essential part of Tajik heritage and national identity (Laruelle 2007; Blakkisrud and

Nozimova 2010).

In this article, through discourse analysis and insights from four years of ethnographic

fieldwork in the country, we argue that state religious policies have come to focus not

only on bureaucratic control of religious communities and individuals but also on how

Tajiks should lead their lives. Countering extremism is not merely destructive, it is productive, too. The Tajik government is trying to create political subjects who are loyal,

and practise secularized forms of religion, and are therefore unlikely to join radical

Islamic groups in the first place. In other words, counter-extremism has become biopolitical, focused on the regulation and promotion of certain forms of secular, apolitical life.

Applying the thinking of Michel Foucault, we examine the interplay between two forms

of power that are deployed as part of this productive aspect of counter-extremism: biopower and disciplinary power. Where disciplinary power regulates the potentially ‘bad’

practices of strict believers, biopower promotes certain ‘good’ ways of living to replace

these practices. Biopower and disciplinary power are therefore interdependent,

forming ‘two poles around which the organisation of power over life was deployed’ (Foucault 1981, 139).

We examine the underlying discourses and practices that take life as their object, and

how political subjects react to these. We emphasize the gendered aspects of the management of life, in terms of expected behaviour and clothing style. We suggest that discourses

place emphasis on how ‘good’ Tajik men would not join extremist groups and not be

overly pious. Women, according to the state, should be secular and virtuous and play

an affirmative role in the upbringing of secular future citizens (Roche 2016). Although

some have accepted the government management of life, attempts to shape political subjects have provoked resistance to forms of power that seek to regulate and control religious life. In this article, we use ethnography to uncover the dynamics of everyday

support, acquiescence and resistance.

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Rather than looking at whether state responses are effective or not, we focus on how

counter-extremism operates in Tajikistan and how this affects believers. In doing so, we

build on the work of anthropologists who have examined the practice of Islam in

Central Asia (McBrien 2006; Louw 2011; Rasanayagam 2011; Montgomery 2016), how

state control over religion affects the choice to wear a hijab (Miles 2015; Nozimova

2016) and seek religious education (Stephan 2010), and how ‘strict believers’ have continued to practice their faith in spite of state secularism (Thibault forthcoming).

Security, if it is mentioned at all, remains peripheral to the above-mentioned analyses.

By examining the securitization of certain forms of religion, and the impact this has on

believers, we are building on an emergent ‘everyday’ turn in security studies (Bubandt

2005; Aas, Gundhaus, and Lomell 2009; Gillespie and O’Loughlin 2009; Goldstein 2010;

Huysmans and Guillaume 2013; Jarvis and Lister 2013; Vaughan-Williams and Stevens

2016).4 This approach explores ‘the lived realities of practical security measures, including

the diverse ways in which programmes, strategies and techniques for governing security

are experienced, taken up, resisted, and even augmented by different individuals and

groups within society’ (Crawford and Hutchinson 2015, 2). Moving beyond development

organizations who have argued that women can, and should, be harnessed in the fight

against terrorism, we critically engaged with the ways authoritarian Tajikistan has appropriated notions of gender in its counter-extremist efforts (CHRGJ 2011; Aldritch 2012;

CGCC 2012).5

This article is based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted by the authors over four

years, between 2010 and 2013, in Sughd, Dushanbe, Vanj and the Rasht Valley in Tajikistan,

and in 2014 and 2015 in Moscow.6 While maintaining that state discourses and policies

have resolute political intentions that have noticeable impact on the life of the citizens

of Tajikistan, the state in Tajikistan is not omnipresent and omnipotent. We recognize

that religious policies are implemented unevenly. On the one hand, state officials do

not always have the means, or the will, to implement policies. Many publicly dissuade

overt shows of piety, while encouraging their own family members to adopt Islamic lifestyles. Rather than treating the state as a unitary actor with clearly identified boundaries

separating it from the population, we examine how the state is performed, imagined

and invoked in everyday encounters. As such, ‘post-communist states are a “bricolage,”

built on existing formal structures inherited from the Soviet past, but also informal

ones’ (Beyer, Rasanayagam, and Reeves 2013, 6).

We also remain cognizant of the limitations of our study. Our position as white, agnostic, male and female researchers had an impact on our access to informants and therefore

the data generated. While we conducted research in four different regions in Tajikistan, we

cannot generalize about the situation in the whole country; it differs from region to region,

village to village. Finally, for various reasons we have been unable to return to Tajikistan

since 2013. Although we have maintained contact with some of our informants, we are

aware that the situation has changed since the banning of the Islamic Renaissance

Party in 2015.

The article is organized as follows. We begin by exploring Foucault’s conception of disciplinary power and biopower. After this, we analyse state discourse and policies that regulate religious life. We then outline the agencies and actors who implement state religious

policies. In the final section, we highlight three types of popular response to securitization:

support, acquiescence and resistance.

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Foucault’s analytics of power

Power lies at the centre of counter-extremism in Tajikistan. In theorizing counter-extremism, we draw on the thinking of Michel Foucault. Countering extremism involves repressing ‘bad’ forms of life, and promoting ‘good’, loyal forms of life that support the regime.

For Foucault, ‘power comes from below; that is, there is no binary and all-encompassing

opposition between rulers and ruled at the root of power relations, and serving as a

general matrix’ (Foucault 1981, 94). In other words, power is not something that rulers

possess and wield over their subjects; power is exercised at every level of society.

Power is decentralized and dispersed. Most importantly, for Foucault, power is not

always destructive. It is not only about exercising the right to take life; it can be productive,

too. Foucault was concerned with uncovering how practices of power produce political

subjects. Power, for Foucault, ‘makes individuals’, creating political subjects and using

their bodies with the maximum efficiency to serve society (Foucault 1991, 170).

Foucault theorized three different, but overlapping, forms of power: sovereign power,

disciplinary power and biopower (Foucault 1981; Dean 2010). Sovereign power concerns

the ‘safety of the Prince and his territory’, which is secured through the right to take life

(Foucault 2003, 65). Sovereign power limits, bans and prevents certain behaviours, claiming a monopoly on violence. It is a destructive form of power. But Foucault did not limit his

analysis to this more traditionally conceived notion of power. He also developed the idea

of disciplinary power. Disciplinary power is based on the socially constructed division

between ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’. Those who are abnormal – the homosexual, the

vagrant, the extremist – are subject to disciplinary measures to help them to conform.

Where disciplinary power is about forcing deviants to conform, biopower promotes the

life of the population, making life live (Foucault 1981). Biopower is ‘part of a new type of

governing for which life is a reservoir that must be tapped into rather than subjected to

legal or disciplinary strictures’ (Wallenstein 2013, 17). It is a form of power which

focuses on administering, developing, fostering and securing life.7 Biopower is not

purely enforced from the top down. Instead, it is a ‘pastoral’ form of power. Elites

promote certain forms of life, but it is up to subjects themselves to adopt practices

which conform with this vision.

Disciplinary power and biopower remain interlinked with the notion of security. In the

final lecture of his 1975–76 lecture series at the Collège de France, Society Must be

Defended, Foucault highlighted how securing life involves purging it of undesirables. As

Michael Dillon and Andrew Neal (2008, 8) argue in the introduction to Foucault on Politics,

Security and War, ‘sorting life requires waging war on behalf of life against life forces that

are inimical to life’. This is the central paradox of security: in attempting to achieve security,

actors must use violence and thus make others insecure. But this process does not go

unchallenged; there is always the possibility of resisting attempts to secure life.

Power is not totalizing. Foucault (1995, 12) himself stated, ‘if there were no possibility of

resistance – of violent resistance, of escape, of ruse, of strategies that reverse the situation,

there would be no relations of power’. Foucault, then, does offer space for resistance in his

analysis of power. Resistance to disciplinary power and biopower takes a number of forms.

It involves continuing deviant lifestyles and turning life ‘back against the system that was

bent on controlling it’ (Foucault 1981, 144). Rather than being transformative and counterhegemonic, resistance is often localized and anti-hegemonic.

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Regulating religion in Tajikistan: from the Soviet to the post-Soviet

In keeping with our Foucauldian approach, we argue that religious policy did not emerge

from nowhere; to understand state policies towards religion in Tajikistan it is important to

acknowledge their Soviet genealogy (Khalid 2003). In particular, the state’s conception of

religion as something detrimental to the unity of the society and an anti-modern phenomenon that threatens the nation’s progress has its origins in Soviet thinking. Seventy years

of Soviet social engineering also had a profound impact on the way citizens and officials

practice and think about religion in Tajikistan. During the Soviet Union, religion was not

entirely forbidden but it was constantly denigrated and ridiculed, and possibilities for

the expression of religiousness remained extremely limited. For the Communist Party, religion had to be fought on both philosophical and political grounds. Marxist-Leninist theory

clearly stated that religion was an instrument for the capitalist ruling class to enslave subordinates (Pospielovsky 1987). With the advent of socialist modernity, scientific knowledge

would eventually provide answers and replace religious dogma. To counter the influence

of religion, the Soviet authorities banned private religious education, closed mosques and

churches, and arrested or harassed members of the clergy (Keller 2001; Khalid 2007). Interestingly, one of the ways to undermine religion itself as well as the clergy was through the

emancipation of women, who were considered victims of two forms of oppression: from

the family and from society. In Central Asia, their ‘emancipation’ was notably achieved

through brutal interventions such as the forced unveiling of women in the 1920s and

1930s (Northrop 2004; Kamp 2006; Kassymbekova 2016). At times, propaganda also

accused women, especially old ones, of perpetuating religious superstitions (Gaidurova

1969). Women could be both innocent and guilty but remained central to the fight

against religion.

Unable to eliminate religion entirely, the Communist Party created a state-sanctioned

religious infrastructure through which it could closely monitor and control religious

believers. In 1944, the Soviet government established the Central Asian Muslim Spiritual

Directorate, known by the acronym SADUM (Rus.: Dukhovnoye Upravleniye Musul’man

Sredney Azii I Kazakhstana), to oversee religious affairs in the region. SADUM appointed

imams, censored religious texts and engaged in public diplomacy with other Muslimmajority states (Mullojanov 2001; Dudoignon 2011). Soviet religious policy was not

purely destructive; it was productive, too. To an extent unseen in any other empire,

the Soviet Union aimed to transform the lives of its citizens, to create a New Soviet

Person. It aimed ‘to make socialism no longer a matter of doctrine but rather a form of

life’ (Prozorov 2016, 4). Drawing on Foucault, a number of scholars have argued that

this attempt to create a positive form of socialist life was biopolitical (Kotkin 1995; Kharkhordin 1999; Collier 2011; Prozorov 2016). Soviet rule transformed religion into a cultural

identity marker. Being ‘Muslim’ in Soviet Central Asia became a way to differentiate Slavs

from non-Slavs rather than denoting whether someone actually practiced Islam (Khalid

2003).

Despite abandoning communist ideology in 1991, Tajik political circles remain influenced by Soviet understandings of the place of religion in society. As Adeeb Khalid

(2003) remarks: ‘Central Asia remains post-Soviet in so far as the way life is managed

and regulated by elites remains informed by Soviet ways of thinking and doing’ (see

also Adams 2010). This notion of path-dependency is clearly palpable in state rhetoric,

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institutions and practices. Even though Islam is celebrated as one important element of

Tajik culture, the sentiment of distrust towards certain forms of religion persists. Like

the Soviet authorities, the Tajik government labels strict religious believers ‘Wahhabis’

and ‘Salafis’, even if very few people can actually give informed opinions on the differences

between those two Islamic movements (Atkin 1995; McBrien 2006; Rasanayagam 2011).

Patronizing state discourses and assertive policies are used to define and impose

proper behaviour in line with an idealized conception of a secular society. And just as

in Soviet times, women’s clothing remains a symbol of allegiance to the state. But

rather than being a sign of emancipation, clothing has come to signify an individual’s

patriotism.

Policing piety in Tajikistan

The exercise of state power in Tajikistan rests on discourses that frame life in certain ways.

As Foucault (1981, 143) argues, ‘knowledge-power’ becomes an ‘agent of transformation

of human life’. State-led counter-extremism in Tajikistan involves disciplining ‘bad’

Muslims and exercises of biopower which promote ‘good’, secularized forms of Islamic

identity. Officials repeatedly call on citizens to beware of ‘alien’ (begona) cultures and

refrain from ‘foreigner-worshipping’ (begonaparasti). Speaking in Kulob in 2015,

Emomali Rahmon (2015a) stated:

Women should set an example by fighting against the negative impact of alien phenomena

and foreigner-worshipping [begonaparasti]. ... I would like to warn you that vanity, foreignerworshipping and superstition [zohirparasti, begonaparasti va khurofot] have terrible consequences for society and the state of the ancient Tajik nation, as these threaten security and

stability [amniyatu suboti], hinder development [peshi rohi rushdi] and cause trouble [boisi

badvahti].

Publicly, officials frame ‘foreign’ forms of Islam, imported from the Middle East, as

dangerous.

In this section, we draw attention to three aspects of state religious policy where biopower and disciplinary power intersect: health, naming, and visual appearance. Naming

remains a political issue in Tajikistan. In 2007, for example, President Rahmon removed

the Russian suffix -ov from his last name, encouraging citizens to do the same and register newborn babies’ names without the Russian suffix (Najibullah 2007). Although the

campaign started as an attempt to promote Tajik culture and emancipate the Tajik

people from Russian influence, more lately it has become linked to security. The 2011

Law on Parental Responsibility called on parents to give their children names which

fit ‘national values’. In 2016, lawmakers went a step further, amending the country’s

Civil Registration law to forbid parents to give their children names that are considered

too Arabic, such as Mullah, Khalifa, Shaikh, Amir, and Sufi.8 The State Committee for

Language and Terminology at the Academy of Sciences published a list of 4000 appropriate names (RFE/RL 2016). The speaker of the lower house, Shukurjon Zuhurov,

stressed that the list is not mandatory, but called on parents to pick names that are

‘compatible with Tajik culture’. The name list is simultaneously about disciplining

alien Islamic practices, and about promoting the state’s vision of the ideal Tajik national

culture. It thus straddles the boundary between disciplinary power and the promotion of

certain forms of life through biopower.

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Clothing features prominently in state discourses on religion (Miles 2015; Ibanez-Tirado

2016; Nozimova 2016). Officials frame signs of piety, such as beards and hijabs, as potential

indicators of radicalization. Not only are these clothes alien to the culture and seen as a

sign of extremism; some officials continue to think, as the Soviet authorities did, that religion itself is backwards. Men have become the target of disciplinary sanctions for wearing

beards that make them look too ‘Islamic’. Reports of mass shaving have become more and

more frequent over the years. In 2010, the police detained nearly 30 bearded Dushanbe

residents on the basis that their official identification documents did not match their

current appearance (Asia Plus 2011). In 2010, the Chairman of the Committee for Religious

Affairs (CRA) denied that men with beards were being harassed by the authorities. Interestingly, he added that growing a beard represented an Islamic tradition and therefore

they had no right to forbid it (Hasanova 2010). Although officials have repeatedly

denied that a campaign against beards is underway, and no law banning beards exists,

in early 2016 the police in Khatlon announced that they had shaved nearly 13,000 men

in the last year in their efforts to counter radicalism (Al-Jazeera 2016). When qori Abdulrahmon, a 27-year-old migrant labourer and Quran reader working in Moscow, travelled back

to Tajikistan in February 2015, he was detained by police. His beard formed the subject of a

lengthy exchange with his interrogators: ‘Are you a vovchik [slang for Islamic extremist]?9

... Real Tajik men do not grow beards. They are alien [begona] to our culture and a sign

that someone is on the path to extremism.’

The policemen who shaved Abdulrahmon’s beard ascribed the hegemonic narrative,

framing his visual appearance as simultaneously alien to Tajik culture and dangerous. Simplistic as the logic of equating beards with extremism may be, it nonetheless continues to

pervade the thinking of some representatives of the Tajik state.

This campaign against the public expression of religiosity has not been limited to men.

President Rahmon has associated the hijab with extremist ideas. In a speech delivered on

Women’s Day in 2016, he condemned women who wore foreign clothing, saying that they

were propagating ‘alien’ (begona) extremist ideas in the country (Rahmon 2016). Several

high-profile figures have publicly criticized women’s clothing for being either too

‘Islamic’ or ‘European’. For Hussein Shokirov, head of religious associations at the CRA,

for example, the full-face veil, or niqab, is ‘opposed by the entire civilised world’. Although

he conceded that veils which show a woman’s face do not pose any problems, he stated

that ‘all the studies conducted in the world today show that basically all women who wear

the niqab are members of extremist organisations’ (Tursunzoda 2016).

Women who display visual indicators of their religion have also been targeted. The first

decree to prohibit women from wearing hijabs in educational institutions was adopted in

2007 by the minister of education, Abdujabbor Rakhmonov. While prohibiting the hijab,

the decree encouraged young women to dress ‘in accordance with their status and

national traditions’, and avoid clothes that are ‘provocative’, for instance tight jeans and

miniskirts (Peck 2007). Later, in 2010, Rakhmonov publicly lashed out against women

who wore hijabs and called them ‘monkeys’ (Asia Plus 2015). Eshoni Saidjon, the imamkhatib of a mosque in Khatlon and deputy at the fatwa-issuing Council of Ulemo, stated

in 2014 that the hijab ‘is not a Tajik item [tojikon nest] and is taken from the culture of

other nations, especially Arab, so wearing it does not correspond to Tajik women’s

dignity’ (Radio Ozodi 2014). In 2015, the mayors of Dushanbe and Khujand acted

against the import of ‘foreign clothing’ (Yuldashev 2015).

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Instead , officials promote ‘national’ dress (kurtai tojiki) such as a colourful long twopiece ensemble and the rumol, a headscarf worn above the ears by Tajik women, or the

toqi, an embroided hat (Miles 2015). In his speech on Women’s Day in 2016, President

Rahmon claimed that ethnographic studies have proven that since ancient times, Tajik

women have worn beautiful colourful clothes, not black ones. But the historical evidence

refutes this claim. Before the advent of Soviet rule, women were more likely to wear a

paranja, a full-body horse-hair veil (Northrop 2004). What the authorities refer to as traditional clothing is in fact a Soviet creation that was reified as ‘traditionally’ Tajik after

the Soviet unveiling campaigns. This invention of tradition involves a distortion of

history to fit the nationalist, secular programme that the government promotes (Thibault

2014, forthcoming). Not only is it suggested, it is required for state employees and students to wear ‘national’ dress or a Western-style suit (Ibanez-Tirado 2016, 25). The

mayor of Khujand even organized a series of meetings with women to instruct them

how to dress in accordance with national traditions (Fayzullayev 2015).

Policing piety, then, is simultaneously about suppressing alien, backwards and dangerous behaviour, and promoting ‘appropriate’ forms of life and ‘national’ values, such as

stability (suboti), national reconciliation (vahdati milli) and peace (sulh). Rahmon repeatedly

stresses the need to promote ‘healthy [solim] and moral [akhloqi] lifestyles [tarsi hayoti]’.

Government officials argue that the maintenance of a secular society constitutes a

bulwark against extremism. Indeed, in 51 speeches between 2008 and 2015 Rahmon

repeated the mantra ‘democratic, secular, constitutional’ (davlati demokrativu huquqbunyod va dunyavi) 55 times. Addressing the nation in 2015, Rahmon (2015b) argued that:

Existing experience in the modern world today has proved once again that the choice of the

secular state is the correct [durust] and far-sighted [durbinona] choice, and this idea has

become one of the main prerequisites for a peaceful life [hayoti osoishtai].

According to this state narrative, secularism is a prerequisite for citizens’ living long, happy

lives and for society to progress. Rahmon frequently states that citizens should be ‘patriotic’ (vatanparasti) and ‘secular.’ But how does the state go about constructing these secular

subjects who are resilient to extremist messages? Leading academic Khudoberdi Kholiqnazar argues that effective counter-terrorism rests on educational activities (Ruziyev

2015). Through the building of schools, libraries and youth clubs, the state should

promote and build a secular (dunyavi) national culture. Addressing young people in

Kulob, President Rahmon (2015a) told them to ‘study science, culture and professional

skills, so that you live a life worthy [sazovori] of this nation [vatan]’. Educational activities

train young people in the ‘spirit of patriotism’ (rirhiyai vatandirsti) and commitment to

national values, such as reconciliation, peace and stability.

State interventions to promote secular national values are not restricted to schools.

Indeed, the state intervenes to manage the health, hygiene and life rituals of the population (Roche 2016). With the introduction of the Family Code of the Republic of Tajikistan (1998), the government outlawed forced marriage, payment of a bride price

(kalym), polygamy, and under-aged marriage. These bans remain unevenly enforced.

In 2016, it became mandatory for couples to undergo a medical examination before

marrying. Justified as a way to reduce the risk of disabled children, the tests have

been used to ascertain whether the bride is a virgin (BBC 2014). Through these practices

the state comes to define, shape and police ‘tradition’ in Tajikistan, promoting secular

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values over Islamic ones. Interestingly, the government transforms the virginity test from

something that was based on religious tradition into something that is justified by a

secular, medical logic.

Managing religious life in Tajikistan

As in Soviet times, state agencies continue to tightly regulate religious practices. Although

a diverse range of agencies, such as the Ministry of Education and the State Committee on

National Security, are involved in implementing state religious policies, the Council of

Ulemo and Committee for Religious Affairs are the principal agencies responsible for devising religious policy. The CRA is an administrative body that approves the nomination of

imams and the erection of mosques, prepares a list of approved topics for Friday

sermons, and issues permits to citizens who wish to organize private religious classes.

Where the CRA enforces religious policies, the Council of Ulemo issues decrees on legitimate religious practices. The council issued a religious ruling, or fatwa, in 2004 prohibiting

women from praying in mosques. In 2009, the council issued a decree that beards should

not exceed the length of a fist (NewsRu 2012). The council also recommended that women

wear Islamic clothes that conform to ‘national culture’, rather than those of Iran, Turkey, or

other Arabic countries (FerganaNews 2010). The authorities do not deny the control

exerted by these institutions, and the president himself has repeatedly stressed the importance of regulation as a necessary measure to protect Islam against deviances: ‘The state in

the framework of existing legislation has the authority to oversee the activities of religious

organizations to protect the peace, stability, noble birth and cultural values of the people

in the country’ (Rahmon 2007).

While the CRA and the Council of Ulemo manage religion through the official, statesanctioned clergy, they are not the only agents through which state secular policies

manage life. For Foucault, power is not just exercised by elites. While elites guide citizens

as to how to behave, individuals reproduce power relations themselves through acts of

self-regulation. The government hopes that its counter-extremism efforts will be

enacted through local communities in Tajikistan. Speaking at the end of Ramadan in

2015, Emomali Rahmon stated:

Indeed, it is important that our compatriots [hamvatanoni], and in particular teenagers and

young people [javonon], especially in the context of the modern world’s most sensitive

dangers [nooromu hassosi], have the ability to separate truth [haqro] from falsehood.

They must always be vigilant [zirak boshand], take the right path of life [rohi durusti zindagiro], study science to try to educate themselves, and refrain from any harmful [ziyonovar]

acts.

Through education and indoctrination via the state media, the government aims to

produce citizens who monitor others, and themselves, for the signs of radicalization.

These ‘model’ citizens act as defenders of national culture.

As Sophie Roche (2016) has demonstrated, the notion of motherhood plays a central

role in the state’s attempt to define national culture. The government has also attempted

to mobilize women’s maternal qualities and patriotism in the fight against terrorism. In his

speech on the occasion of Women’s Day in March 2015, Rahmon talked at length about

the sanctity of women, and how mothers foster the future builders of the Tajik state

and society. On Mother’s Day in 2016, Rahmon (2016) stated that as the world is becoming

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more complicated and plagued with terrorism, parents play an important role in the prevention of extremism:

Given these dangers [khatarnok], parents and women need to take greater responsibility

[mas’uliyati], remaining shrewd [ziraki] and vigilant [hushyori], constantly monitoring and

being involved in their upbringing. Especially, dear mothers, with love [muhabatti] and

encouragement [nasihat] you can protect young people from terrorist and extremist

groups, by giving them lessons in the proper [sabaqi] way to live [hayoti].

For Rahmon, women have a special role and responsibility in countering extremism. They

must simultaneously discourage and monitor ‘dangerous’ behaviour, while promoting

‘proper’ ways to live. Women’s bodies are simultaneously the site of counter-terrorism,

and the agent through which counter-extremism can be realized. Indeed, as we argue

in the next section, both communities and state agencies are responsible for countering

extremism in Tajikistan.

As the discussion above indicates, state religious policy is not homogeneous. A range of

actors claiming to act on behalf of the ‘state’ claim legitimacy from it, perform it in different

ways, and pursue their own agendas through the ‘state’. As a result, policies are unevenly

enforced and highly personalized. A number of anthropologists have pointed to the way

community members in Central Asia use accusations of extremism to defame members of

their community with whom they have personal or business rivalries (McBrien 2006; Pelkmans and McBrien 2008; Mostowlansky 2017). In other cases, it is merely a fear of that

which is unknown to them (McBrien 2006). In Uzbekistan, for example, Johann Rasanayagam (2006, 115) has examined how community members used the label ‘Wahhabi’ ‘to

direct the attention of law enforcement bodies to any religious activities that are unfamiliar’. A similar dynamic exists in Tajikistan. Abdulrahmon said that he knew one of the officers who shaved his beard. The man had tried to marry his daughter off to Abdulrahmon’s

cousin, but Abdulrahmon’s family did not approve of the match. Abdulrahmon thinks he

was singled out by the officer as a form of revenge. Others have been targeted by law

enforcement officers who are attempting to extort money from them.

Where traders continued to sell religious literature in the bazaar in Vanj in 2013, bribing

local police to maintain that opportunity, in other areas of the country this was not the

case. The experience of Iskandar, a man in his early forties in Khujand with whom one

of the researchers spent a lot of time, is revealing. Iskandar was a devout-looking

Muslim who got into trouble with the authorities on more than one occasion because

of his beliefs. In 2010, he was detained for almost a whole day after being accused of celebrating a religious marriage, or nikoh, for his acquaintances. Iskandar reported that he

had not been physically hurt during his detention, but that police officers had ‘beaten

him with words.’ In 2010, he and his wife were pressured to close the tiny religious literature store they were operating at Khujand’s Panjshanbe bazaar. After many stalls were

closed down by the authorities, new ones were reopened in a central location at the

bazaar few weeks later. This reorganization was obviously meant to purge undesirable

elements and allow the government to more closely monitor the sale of religious literature. Iskandar’s case illustrates how assertively secular state policies have an impact on

the everyday life of pious Muslims in Tajikistan. Counter-extremism in Tajikistan, then, is

invoked, enacted and shapes the lives of almost every citizen of the country. In the next

section, we explore how citizens have reacted to state religious policies.

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Responses to Tajik counter-extremism

The way people support, acquiescence or resist state religious policies varies widely. For

instance, support can entail active engagement or tacit support. Acquiescence implies

that someone accepts the system without resisting it, although they may or may not

support it. Resistance ranges from private criticism to acts of open defiance. Resisting

involves a certain level of risk; dissent has become less and less tolerated over the last

few years. None of these responses are mutually exclusive; subjects can simultaneously

resist aspects of state policy while acquiescing to others.

Support

The idea that Tajik society should be secular finds resonance in a certain portion of the

population who agree that conservative religious views are antithetical to Tajik culture.

A number of citizens are genuinely wary of mounting religious belief, which they see as

a threat to the natural, secular order. For them, the threat posed by radical Islam makes

extraordinary measures by the government necessary. Dilshod, a foreign-educated

white-collar worker from Dushanbe in his mid-thirties, expressed support for the government’s restrictions on Islamic practices. Although he believed that it constituted a

violation of human rights, he thought it was still justified. When comparing the situation in the US, where radical anti-systemic and anti-state discourses are tolerated,

he argued that the situation is very different in Tajikistan, where the state is not

strong enough to contain radical elements if they eventually, and most likely, gather

more support.

Indeed, the valorization of order and stability seen in state discourses does seem to find

support among members of the population. Marhabbo, an ethnic Pamiri from Dushanbe,

runs a Moscow-based NGO supporting migrants’ rights. She staunchly defends Tajikistan’s

‘national Islam’ (Rus.: natsionalnii Islam), arguing that it prevents conflicts. For Marhabbo,

religion is a potentially destabilizing force that requires disciplining. Marhabbo believes

that autocracies, not democracies, are the best political system for guaranteeing stability:

In some countries, like the UK, women go around with their faces covered [motions to her face,

indicating a slit across her eyes]. But I am not democrat. If the result of democracy is the

murder [Rus.: ubistvo] of people, I cannot agree with it. Religion needs to be controlled.

Marhabbo associates religious tolerance with instability, arguing that a ‘strong [Rus.: zhostkii] secular system’ is the best way for a government to provide security for its citizens. This

reverence for authoritarian stability is based on perceptions of the alternative: anarchy and

instability. Authoritarian secular policies are therefore seen as a necessary measure, justified by the vulnerability of the Tajik state to extremist forces. While some support the

Tajik government’s secular policies, others accept and negotiate them. Again, many

people relate to state policies not through the impact they have had, but through ideas

of what the situation would be like if they were absent.

As mentioned earlier, counter-terrorism in Tajikistan operates through communities,

with teachers, bazaar directors and other citizens exercising disciplinary power and biopower. Some have taken action to openly support Tajikistan’s counter-extremism policy.

The state-sanctioned youth movement, Avangard, for example, has held a series of demonstrations in favour of the government.10 Its leaders openly take responsibility for

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implementing counter-extremism in their communities: ‘Young people are trying to keep

the peace, stability and independence [of our country], and mobilize people to work in this

direction. We will not allow any foreign power [nerui khoriji] to undermine the independence of our state’ (Khovar 2016).

Although the movement appears to be a manifestation of state efforts to counter extremism through communities, it remains relatively marginal. The most common local

response to state religious policy is acquiescence.

Acquiescence

Not everyone takes an active stance in opposition to or in support of state religious policies. The vast majority of Tajiks take a more ambivalent position. As Husband (2000, 150)

argues, ‘far more citizens everywhere practice accommodation than ever take up activism’.

A number of ethnographic studies have demonstrated how actors invoke and perform this

acquiescence. In her ethnography of the state in Turkey, Yael Navaro-Yashin (2002, 171)

describes the ‘mundane cynicism’ with which public employees sustain the state, acting

as though it is a ‘wholesome entity’ despite knowing it is a manipulative series of social

relations. Anderson (2013), in his study of businessmen in Aleppo, show how even

those who have had their assets seized by the state do not take up opposition to it,

instead placing themselves as objects of scorn within the ‘tragedy’ of Syrian politics.

Our observations in Tajikistan support the notion that most citizens acquiesce to state religious policies. Memories of the Soviet campaign against religion and the trauma of the

subsequent civil war continue to shape attitudes towards secularism. Abdujabbor, born

in 1964 in Nurobod, fought with the opposition during the civil war and now drives a

taxi in Gharm. Sipping tea in the havli (courtyard) of his home, he recounted his own

experience of the war:

We experimented with democracy in 1992. And look where that got us. Thousands died. The

country was destroyed. My brother was killed in the war. He fought on the side of the mujahedeen [the United Tajik Opposition]. He was a respected fighter with Mullo Quyomuddin’s

group. I was in the same group. He was killed fighting the government in 1994 in Komsomolobod. I had my leg blown off.

For someone whose brother was killed by government forces to now support the government appears puzzling. But as Abdujabbor explains, his experiences fighting made him

place greater value on leading a peaceful life: ‘We [Tajiks] are tired of war [az jang

monda shudaand]. I fought the government, yes. But I support Rahmon. He is a rock

[sangin]. He provides peace [sulh]. We value that above all else.’

Turning to state religious policy, Abdujabbor also qualifies the government’s repressive

policy by comparing it to the Soviet Union: ‘I am Muslim. I pray. I keep the fast. I grew up in

the Soviet Union. Namaz [prayer] was banned. Times are better. Now I can pray. I am free

to live my life in peace.’

Abdujabbor has experienced a great deal of trauma, and the memory of this makes him

accept the status quo. While some people look to the past to justify the present, others

look to other countries, concluding that the situation in Tajikistan is better.

An underlying paternalistic understanding of how politics works in Tajikistan continues

to pervade society. The leader is often perceived as a wise father who makes the right

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decisions. Abdujabbor’s comments on the importance of a strong male figurehead are an

example of this assumption. As Morgan Liu (2003, 232) writes, there is ‘a tendency to

believe that as ordinary people, they are not able to fully understand issues of government, much less voice consequential opinions or press for effective changes about

them’. Rather than being an innate part of non-Western culture, this paternalism is socially

constructed and promoted by the regime. For instance, a resident of the Gonchi region

was supportive of the government and thought that the president was protecting

freedom of religion. While he was aware of the restrictions, he did not think they were

necessarily bad:

If they would forbid our girls to wear hijab at school, then I would allow my daughter to go

without her scarf, but only at school. We should follow the laws, because if they adopted

this law, it means that it was needed. They know better.

By indicating that ‘they’ know better, he embodies the acceptance of the status quo as

being ‘natural’ and ‘appropriate’. He trusts the government by virtue of its position in

power, believing that if a policy is adopted then there must be a utilitarian motive

behind it.

Not everyone accepts the status quo due to ideological reasons; some follow the rules

for practical reasons, to make their lives easier. Once again, the hijab issue provides a good

example of a response between acceptance and support. The researchers witnessed many

cases of young women who would wear a hijab on the way to school and swap it for a

rumol at the gate. These girls were ready to make a compromise on their faith because

they did not want to be deprived of their right to education. Indeed, many strict believers

have avoided confrontation with the government by leaving the country for places where

they can practise more freely, such as Russia, the Gulf states and Turkey. Many Tajiks, for

example, have avoided the ban on studying Islam in foreign madrassas by registering at

the Islamic universities in Moscow and Kazan, entering the country on the visa waiver

programme.11

But not everyone appreciates the paternalistic tone of state discourses and practices.

For instance, the 2011 Law on Parental Responsibility, which intervenes in the sphere of

parenting, was sometimes met with criticism.12 In an interview with a member of the

IRPT in Khujand, one man in his early thirties joked that ‘people in power are proud to

say that we have 3000 years of tradition yet they think that we don’t know how to properly

raise our children’.

State discourses and policies promote the idea that the government knows best, dissuading people from critical thinking and promoting an apolitical culture. Nonetheless,

the government has not been successful in creating docile citizens.

Resistance

Resistance to counter-extremism is expressed both publicly and privately. It is expressed

by individuals and groups in a range of positions in society, from human rights activists

and journalists to opposition politicians, pious Muslims and violent extremists. Yet it

remains anti-hegemonic; there is no united vision of why the situation in unjust and

what can be done to address it.13

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A number of arguments have been made against the government’s counter-extremist

policies. First, human rights activists have forwarded legal arguments as to how shaving

beards, restricting prayers and forcing women to de-veil violates individual religious freedoms as provided in the Constitution and other legislation. These arguments are based on

a clear notion of what is right and what is wrong. Second, some have gone further and

forwarded philosophical arguments that question the government’s creation of a simplistic

binary between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ Islam, arguing that the reality is much more incoherent

and complex. Third, accommodational Islamists and confrontational Islamists have forwarded theological arguments, arguing that policing the signs of piety runs counter to

the teachings of Islam. These arguments are not mutually exclusive. Many have combined

elements of all three in their critiques of state secularism. One term frequently used to

describe these repressive practices is ‘secular extremism’ (Rus.: svetskii ekstremizm) or

‘radical secularism’ (rodikalhoi dunyavi). In an interview with independent news agency

Asia Plus in March 2014, religious leader Hoji Akbar Turajonzoda elaborated on his

position:14

Islam in our country is under pressure from the so-called ‘secular’ radicalism [Rus.: svetskii radikalizm]. And it’s not just empty words [Rus.: pustiye slova]. Just remember all the policies and

decisions by the authorities in recent years, aimed at harming believers. What kind of radicalisation can we talk about when only five percent of people go to the mosque?

Yes, we are advocates of an Islamic society, where everyone can freely perform their religious

needs, but we do not intend to forcibly impose its values and ideas of others. Let it be the free

choice of each person.

Turajonzoda combines theological arguments related to the gradual spread of the

Islamic faith with the liberal notion that individuals should be able to freely choose to

worship or not. Similarly, the IRPT downplayed the Islamic character of the issue and

framed it in terms of human rights. Muhiddin Kabiri stated: ‘For us, the hijab issue is

about human rights. It’s about freedom of choice, which is guaranteed by our constitution.

The Education Ministry or any other bodies have no right to ban the hijab anywhere’ (Najibullah 2009).15

Farrukh, an IRPT deputy in Moscow, agrees that the issue is a spiritual rather than an

issue of human rights:

The management [idora] of religion in Tajikistan comes from the government. The government decides what you can and cannot do. But it is not the business of the government.

That is a job for Allah. They [the government] are doing non-understandable [ne fahmidan]

acts, forcing men to shave, filming prostitutes in hijabs. People see that those who pay prostitutes to wear hijabs are against us [bar ziddi mo].

Farrukh’s comments raise a question that remains central to the politics of secularism and

religion in Tajikistan. Who has the authority to regulate religion? Though the government

argues that it has this right, accommodational and confrontational Islamists have argued

that only God has this authority. Eshoni Nurridinjon, a popular preacher and the younger

brother of Hoji Akbar Turajonzoda, made a sermon criticizing the Committee on Religious

Affairs and the Council of Ulemo. He declared:

A beard was worn by Mohammed, peace be upon him. ... . And I say to the Ministry of Internal

Affairs, only God [khudo] can decide who wears a beard. ... They say that terrorists wear

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beards. But Mohammed was not a terrorist! I am not, praise be to God, a terrorist. The Committee on Religious Affairs has renounced [bezor] [Islam]. (YouTube 2015)

Nurridinjon argues that styling oneself as a Muslim is a matter of personal, spiritual preference. He contends that only God, not the government, has the authority to dictate the

rules of morality. Religious texts are not just words on a page, they are examples of the

constitutive power of discourse and how it shapes social practices.

Continuing Islamic bodily practices is an example of what Foucault terms ‘techniques of

the self’, practices through which subjects constitute themselves within and through

systems of power. Though these practices cannot be separated from power and often

reproduce domination, they can also be used to resist domination. They can be used to

achieve what Amy Allen (2011, 44) terms ‘autonomy’, or ‘the twin capacities to reflect critically upon the power-knowledge relations that have constituted one’s subjectivity and to

engage in practices of self-transformation’. Individuals can modify their subjectivity as a

means to resist the subjectifying forces of power through alternative modes of selfmaking. The continuance of securitized bodily practices, such as wearing a beard, fits

into this category. Indeed, many pious Muslims continue ‘bad’ Islamic practices, arguing

that they are merely expressing their faith. Abdulrahmon stated that he would regrow

his beard after it was forcibly shaved by the police:

I will grow my beard again. Am I displaying my opposition [muqobil] to the government?

Maybe. But I am also following the teaching [sunnah] of the Prophet, peace be upon him.

The Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, his beard was thick. For

me, it is a matter of living according to my faith [din].

For Abdulrahmon, wearing a beard is not just a way of expressing devotion, it is an

obligation stated in the Quran. He does not consider his actions as a form of resistance,

but as continuing to be Muslim despite state secularism. Similarly, one strict believer,

who works as an administrator in a governmental agency, had a three-year-old daughter

who wore a veil. This in itself is quite unusual in Tajikistan, as well as other Muslim

countries, where girls start covering their head when they reach puberty. The father

claimed that they would move to another country if his daughter could not go to

school with her hijab on. For him, to obey this rule would be to betray his religion.

One of his colleagues, who worked in his department at the agency, lost her job

after she refused to take off the hijab at work. Her desire to stay true to her faith

was stronger than her interest in conforming to the state’s secular policies and remaining employed.

Referring to their lives, many informants used the Tajik word toqat. An adjective

denoting ‘patience,’ ‘endurance’ or ‘perseverance’, the word roughly equates to the

Russian terpet’, to endure, put up with, or suffer, which Tajiks also use. Toqat denotes

a life lived with honour and dignity in the face of adversity. For pious Muslims, their

Islamic faith is a source of this endurance. Islam offers a spiritual and moral sanctuary

for those who adhere to it. First, it places transcendence over immanence, allowing

the believer to focus on the hereafter. Second, internally, it allows believers to focus

on an inner struggle within themselves. Third, externally, it provides a moral guide

for living in and coping with the secular world. Abdulrahmon expressed how religion

gives him a sense of identity and forms a way to cope with the assertive secular policies

of the government:

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No person is united [muttahid]. We all have a mixture of feelings and impulses. A struggle

[jihad] takes place within us of good versus evil. I choose to live my life as a Muslim. A religious

society is a healthy society. Islam guides us in our daily life. But the regime misrepresents religion as dangerous and backwards. Our fight against injustice in Tajikistan is also jihad.

We have a saying: Little by little will become a lot, drop by drop [qarta qarta] will become a

downpour. We must not become obsessed with the present, but think to the future. If we are

patient [toqat], then over time things will change [taghiir] for the better. We cannot expect

revolutionary [inqilobi] change. People do not change their ways of thinking [fikr] quickly.

Change must be gradual [ohista].

As Abdulrahmon indicates, resisting exercises of biopower and disciplinary power in

Tajikistan involves reclaiming the very notion of life against which the government

actions are targeted. Countering extremism, and resisting counter-extremism, involve a

struggle over how people should lead their lives. By being patient and focusing on

living life morally, many strict believers come to terms with state secularism, while

quietly resisting it at the same time.

But quiet resistance did not meet with universal approval among strict believers. One

Khujandi man in his mid-thirties told one of the researchers how much he felt pressured to

act and dress in a way that conforms to the secular ideals promoted by the authorities:

Those who sit on the throne, those in ties, they don’t care about Islam. I don’t like the president, I hate him even. What have I done to this government? Nothing! And they still bother

me, they deprive me from my rights to be Muslim. They want us to be a certain type of

Muslim – half-Muslim. But I don’t want to be the kind of Muslim they want me to be.

The man felt threatened because of his beliefs, but he did not see the point of trying to

raise this concern through legal means. His exasperation reached the point that he

made barely concealed threats in retaliation for policies that he perceived as an affront

to Islam and believers: ‘You know if a dog wants to die, it will walk by a mosque, piss

on it, and leave. If people saw, and the dog comes back, they will kill it.’

This man was not part of any violent organizations nor particularly prone to violence.

Like many of his countrymen, he ended up working in Russia as a migratory labourer.

Yet, what this testimony reveals is a sense that one day, state oppression of devout

Muslims will produce a backlash against the state (symbolized by the dog). Islamic militancy has gained almost no support in Tajikistan. Even with the crackdown on Islam, violence remains unlikely. But state secularism does create insecurity for many thousands of

Tajik strict believers.

Conclusion

Countering extremism in Tajikistan is not just about banning groups, closing mosques and

arresting alleged ‘extremists’. While we have highlighted how the government disciplines

‘bad’ forms of religious expression, we have also demonstrated that there is a more productive side to counter-extremism in which the government promotes certain ways of

living ‘appropriately’. Ultimately, the government is seeking to shape self-regulating

secular citizens who will not question the regime. While the regime publicly securitizes

certain religious practices, on the ground state religious policy remains unevenly enforced

and highly personalized.

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Individuals who appear to be pious are viewed by many state officials as a threat to

stability whose lives contradict the secular values promoted by the state. Their bodies

and appearance are closely monitored and if necessary forcibly disciplined to conform

to national secular ideals. Practices targeting women combine both disciplinary power

and biopower; the state attempts to break down religious women, and then ‘remake’

them to fit the ‘national culture’. For the government, women can be both a threat and

a solution to the issue of Islamic radicalism. Women appear threatening if they wear

Islamic clothes. Yet, their purportedly ‘natural’ maternal qualities are also promoted by

the state as a means to counter terrorism by raising children and protecting them from

extremist ideas.

Indeed the state’s attempts to build docile secular subjects can never be fully realized.

While most at least accept this exercise of power as being better than other potential scenarios, some resist state secularism. Some resist using the language of human rights. Others

use religious belief and expression to resist biopower and disciplinary power. While constituting a potential threat to the government, religion also forms a way for Tajiks to cope

with the harshness of their existence. By living a religious life, they resist government

attempts to mould them into secular citizen-subjects. As Abdulrahmon concluded:

The security services have threatened me. And they have tried to make life difficult for me. But

I am still here! I live. I work. I have my opinions. And they [the government] will not be able to

take those away from me. So long as I endure through it all, I will win.

Where secularism offers security to the state, the way it is enforced creates insecurity for

many strict believers. Often, analysts set Islam, particularly forms of religion that operate in

parallel, in opposition to the state in Central Asia (Heathershaw and Montgomery 2016).

Such analysis is based on the assumption that by virtue of their faith strict believers are

opposed to the secular state. But as our examples have shown, this is not the case.

While a small minority do want to replace the state by a theocracy, many are simply

trying to find ways to cope with state secularism and reclaim life from state exercises of

disciplinary power and biopower.

Where a large number of studies now exist that examine the ‘religious revival’ in Central

Asia from the perspective of those who are becoming more religious, less attention has

been paid to the persistence of a ‘secular imaginary’ (Asad 2003; Mahmood 2005).

Those who are not interested in religion and who maintain ‘secular’ lifestyles have

remained under-examined. This article has examined how counter-extremism in Tajikistan

attempts to construct secular apolitical subjects. Ibanez-Tirado (2016) has examined how

people in Tajikistan fashion identities for themselves by wearing Chinese lycra and gold

teeth. Pelkmans and McBrien (2008) have examined how those who do not claim to be

religious have negotiated the ‘religious marketplace’ in Kyrgyzstan. A number of other academics have begun to explore these questions. Future research could go further. What we

need is an anthropology of the secular, which examines how subjects embody, enact and

perform secular lifestyles.

Notes

1. Hélène Thibault (2014, 7) defines ‘strict believers’ as those ‘who embrace a rigorous Islamic

lifestyle and live according to Sharia’, or at least aspects of it.

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2. Like other governments in the region, the government of Tajikistan has adopted an amorphous definition of terrorism (Horsman 2005). The Law on the Fight against Extremism,

adopted in 2003, lists 11 activities that constitute ‘extremism’. These include ‘forcibly

[majburi] changing the constitutional order’, ‘usurping [ghasb] power’, ‘insulting the

national dignity [sha’ni milli)]’ and unsanctioned rallies. By adopting such a fluid definition,

the government can label all manner of forms of resistance and oppositional politics

‘extremism’.

3. In 2015 alone, the Tajik authorities imprisoned approximately 200 opposition activists

(Edwards and Khudoydodova 2016).

4. Following Rita Felski (1999, 15), we define the everyday as ‘the essential, taken-forgranted continuum of mundane activities that frames our forays into more esoteric or

exotic worlds’.

5. The UN Secretary-General’s Plan of Action on Preventing Violent Extremism (2016), for

example, places importance on achieving gender equality in order to counter-extremism.

6. Our material was collected interactions with individuals offering a wide range of positions on

Islam and security. We conducted fieldwork in both Tajikistan and Russia, but our questions

pertained to the research subjects’ experiences in Tajikistan. The names of all participants

have been changed.

7. In defining biopower as the form of power that regulates life, we adopt the broader definition

offered by Prozorov (2016).

8. In early 2016, officials suggested banning Russian names as well, replacing suffixes -ov, -ev,

-ova and -eva with Tajik endings such as -zoda, -zod, -on, -yon, -ien, -yor, -niyo or -far. After

the Russian government expressed its opposition to this, they quickly backed down.

9. Vovchik derives from the Russian word for Wahabbi (vakhabist) and the diminutive chik.

10. Formed in August 2015 by students interested in resisting ‘extremism’, Avangard has targeted

foreign governments that are harbouring members of the opposition. Members have picketed

the Germany embassy (November 2015), US embassy (December 2015), EU delegation (February 2016) and Turkish embassy (February 2016).

11. Author interview with the rector of the Russian Islamic University, New York, April 2017.

12. Many articles of the law intervene in the sphere of parenting. The law stipulates that parents

should forbid children to use cellphones at school, wear jewellery, or go out to cafes at night

(until they are 20) (Mushfig 2011).

13. Anti-hegemonic resistance involves actions that ‘contest and deconstruct the status quo from

diverse positionings without putting a single project in its place’ (Cooper 1995, 137).

14. Hoji Akbar Turajonzoda comes from a prominent clerical family. He was appointed Qazi Kalon

(Supreme Islamic Judge) of the Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic in 1988. He sided with the United

Tajik Opposition during the civil war and became deputy prime minister in 1999 as part of the

peace deal. Although he retired from the position in 2005, he remains an influential figure in

the religious and political life in the country; see Gretsky (1994).

15. Muhiddin Kabiri became the leader of the Islamic Revival Party of Tajikistan, the country’s main

opposition party, in 2006, after the death of the party’s first leader, Said Abdullo Nuri. Accused

of corruption, he has lived in exile since 2015.

Acknowledgements

We presented versions of this paper at the Central Eurasian Studies Society and Association for the

Study of Nationalities annual conventions, receiving valuable feedback from participants. We have

also benefitted from constructive comments from Joseph MacKay, Yana Gorokhovskaia, Rune Steenberg, Yasmin Chao and the two anonymous reviewers at Central Asian Survey.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

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