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

1 4 8Islam i n World Cult u r e sbecame sovereign states overnight. Not only are the regimes in control of publiclife, their attitude to Islam has changed only slightly from what it was in theSoviet period. In making the transition, they appealed to the idea of nationalidentities as they had developed in the Soviet period. As such, they may betermed “nationalizing regimes” (Brubaker 1996; see also Bohr 1998). Thisphenomenon repays greater attention.In Uzbekistan, President Islom Karimov has fashioned himself as the leaderof a state that promises to build a great Uzbekistan in the future. The sloganO’zbekiston, kelajagi buyuk davlat, “Uzbekistan, the great state of the future,” isubiquitously displayed in public spaces. Independent Uzbekistan continues agreat tradition of “Uzbek statehood” (O’zbek davlatchiligi), whose roots lie in themists of Central Asian antiquity, that was rudely interrupted by Russian andthen Soviet imperialism. The apogee of “Uzbek statehood” was reached underthe Turco-Mongol conqueror Temur (1336–1405), who has been turned intothe father of the nation. The Uzbek “state tradition” also produced a “goldenheritage” (oltin mero s ) that the regime celebrates (Adams 1999). Islam is a significantpart of this heritage, and the ruling elite has moved quickly to claim itsstake in the re-Islamization of the country. The regime celebrates the Islamiccultural heritage of the region and invokes the moral and ethical values stemmingfrom it. Sufism has been adopted as an example of the humanist traditionsof the Uzbek nation, just as old mosques are celebrated as “architecturalmonuments.” The h a j j is now officially sponsored, and President Karimov hashimself traveled to Mecca. Thus, the government has honored such figures asal-Bukhari, al-Maturidi, and al-Marghinani—as well as later Turkic figures suchas the poet Mir Alisher Navoiy and the prince-astronomer Mirzo Ulug’bek—with lavish celebrations.In Turkmenistan, the president (and former first secretary of the Tu r k-menistan branch of the Communist Party) Saparmurat Niyazov has sought tobase legitimacy in tradition in an altogether different way. Instead of celebratinga continuous tradition of statehood, the regime celebrates the tribal traditionsof the Turkmen people. Niyazov has taken for himself the title of “Türkmenbashï,”literally “the head Turkmen,” the chief of all Turkmen tribes.H o w e v e r, this traditionalizing move takes place in a state equipped with moderntechnologies of policing and surveillance; the cult of personality surroundingNiyazov is directly descended from that surrounding Stalin. In Niyazov’sscheme of things, Islam has a certain place as an aspect of Turkmen history, butsince Turkmen identity is supposed to predate Islam, that place is not central.In Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan (which provides a partial exception to therule of native Party elites claiming power effortlessly in 1991), too, the rh e t o r i cof the recovery of an interrupted national development exists, but in both nationsit is tempered by the political realities of needing to accommodate large,often-vocal Russian minorities (northern Kazakhstan has a Russian majority