Islam in World Cultures: Comparative Perspectives - Islamic Books ...

1 5 6Islam i n World Cult u r e sthe population, Islam continues to be synonymous with custom and tradition,but now custom and tradition belong to nations imagined as “objective” ethnicentities. Post-Soviet national identities are powerful and compelling to mostcitizens. Discourses of the nations are also tied to discourses of modernity andprogress, which in Central Asia tend to overshadow the rhetorical field of Islam.Islam thus becomes, for most people in Central Asia, an aspect of theirnational heritage—a dearly important one, but not the defining one. Islam-asnational-heritagerenders ritual observance less important. Nevertheless, as Ihope to have shown, “religious minimalism” and the lack of knowledge of thetextual sources of Islamic authority should not be taken to mean that CentralAsians do not think of themselves as Muslims or that they are “only superf i-cially Islamized.” Rather, we have in Central Asia a different (spatially and temporallyspecific) way of being Muslim, the result of radical social and culturalchange in a Muslim society of long standing.Notes1 . The academic study of Islam, a fairly circumscribed field, provided one form ofaccess to religious texts. Soviet Orientalism usually shunned religious topics, leavingthe study of Islam to experts in the fields of “scientific atheism” and “atheistic propaganda.”Nevertheless, there were examples of believing Muslims working in Soviet academiaand teaching Islam privately at home; see Fathi 1997, 36–37.2 . We still know little about the way these networks operated, but for a preliminaryaccount of the career of Sharaf Rashidov, see Vaisman 1995.3 . As Muriel Atkin noted, the complaints of these officials were a constant in thelate Soviet period (1989, 57–58).4 . The survey was based on questionnaires filled out by 2,000 respondents inUzbekistan and Kazakhstan. I find the size and the nature of the sample to be problematic,but I see little reason to doubt the validity of the statement being made here.See also Ilkhamov 2001.ReferencesA b d u v a k h i t o v, Abdujabbar A. 1994. “The Jadid Movement and Its Impact onC o n t e m p o r a ry Central Asia.” In Central Asia: Its Strategic Importance and FutureP ro s p e c t s , edited by Hafiz Malik, 65–75. New York: St. Martin’s .Adams, Laura L. 1999. “Celebrating Independence: Arts, Institutions, and Identity inUzbekistan.” PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley.A r z y b o v, Konstantin. 2001. “Turkmen President’s Prophet Motive.” R e p o rting on CentralA s i a , no. 55. http://www. i w p r. n e t / i n d e x . p l ? a r c h i v e / r c a / r c a _ 2 0 0 1 0 6 _ 5 5 _ 3 _ e n g . t x t .Atkin, Muriel. 1989. The Subtlest Battle: Islam in Soviet Ta j i k i s t a n . Philadelphia: ForeignPolicy Research Institute.