Islam In Central Asia And The Caucasus Since The Fall Of The Soviet Union

With the end of the Soviet Union in 1991, a major turning point in all former Soviet republics, Central Asian and Caucasian countries began to reflect on their history and identities. As a consequence of their opening up to the global exchange of ideas, various strains of Islam and trends in Islamic thought have nourished the Islamic revival that had already started in the context of glasnost and perestroika--from Turkey, Iran, the Arabian Peninsula, and from the Indian subcontinent; the four regions with strong ties to Central Asian and Caucasian Islam in the years before Soviet occupation. Bayram Balci seeks to analyse how these new Islamic influences have reached local societies and how they have interacted with pre-existing religious belief and practice. Combining exceptional erudition with rare first-hand research, Balci's book provides a sophisticated account of both the internal dynamics and external influences in the evolution of Islam in the region.

Leading Western, Russian, and Central Asian scholars address the two circumstances that continue to affect the Muslim states of the former Soviet Union: The enduring impact of the Soviet experience on ethno-social and political life; and the prospects for the recovery of their own identities now that the Soviet system has collapsed.

Russia occupies a unique position in the Muslim world. Unlike any other non-Islamic state, it has ruled Muslim populations for over five hundred years. Though Russia today is plagued by its unrelenting war in Chechnya, Russia’s approach toward Islam once yielded stability. In stark contrast to the popular “clash of civilizations” theory that sees Islam inevitably in conflict with the West, Robert D. Crews reveals the remarkable ways in which Russia constructed an empire with broad Muslim support. In the eighteenth century, Catherine the Great inaugurated a policy of religious toleration that made Islam an essential pillar of Orthodox Russia. For ensuing generations, tsars and their police forces supported official Muslim authorities willing to submit to imperial directions in exchange for defense against brands of Islam they deemed heretical and destabilizing. As a result, Russian officials assumed the powerful but often awkward role of arbitrator in disputes between Muslims. And just as the state became a presence in the local mosque, Muslims became inextricably integrated into the empire and shaped tsarist will in Muslim communities stretching from the Volga River to Central Asia. For Prophet and Tsar draws on police and court records, and Muslim petitions, denunciations, and clerical writings—not accessible prior to 1991—to unearth the fascinating relationship between an empire and its subjects. As America and Western Europe debate how best to secure the allegiances of their Muslim populations, Crews offers a unique and critical historical vantage point.

The former Muslim republics of the USSR are struggling to strike a balance between the legacy of the Soviet regime and the revival of their own, traditional culture. This volume examines the religion, economy and demography of the areas as well as both internal and external relations.

This is the first comprehensive and comparative examination of Islamic radicalisation in the Muslim regions of the former Soviet Union since the end of Communism. Since the 1990s, the ex-Soviet Muslim Volga-Urals, Caucasus and Central Asia have been among the most volatile and dynamic zones of Islamic radicalisation in the Islamic East. Although partially driven by a wider Islamic resurgence which began in the late 1970s in the Middle East, the book argues that radicalisation is a post-Soviet phenomenon triggered by the collapse of Communism, and the break-up of the de facto unitary Soviet empire. The book considers the considerable differences in perceptions and manifestations of radical Islam in the republics, as well as the level of its doctrinal and political impact. It demonstrates how the particular histories of the regions’ Muslim peoples - especially the length and depth of their Islamisation - have influenced the nature and scope of their radicalisation. Other significant factors include the mobilising power of the global jihadist network, and most significantly the level of social and economic hardship. Based on extensive empirical research including interviews with leading members of the political and religious elite, the Islamist opposition as well as ordinary muslims, the book reveals how unofficial radical Islam has turned into a potent ideology of social mobilisation. It identifies the different dynamics at work and how these relate to each other, assesses the level of foreign involvement and evaluates the implications of the rise of Islamic radicalism for particular post-Soviet states, post-Soviet Eurasia and the wider international community.

This richly detailed study traces the shared history of Russia and Islam in expanding compass - from the Tatar civilization within the Russian heartland, to the conquered territories of the Caucasus and Central Asia, to the larger geopolitical and security context of contemporary Russia on the civilizational divide. The study's distinctive analytical drive stresses political and geopolitical relationships over time and into the very complicated present. Rich with insight, the book is also an incomparable source of factual information about Russia's Muslim populations, religious institutions, political organizations, and ideological movements.

Central Asia was the sole Muslim region of the former Russian Empire that lacked a centralized Islamic organization, or muftiate. When Soviet leader Joseph Stalin created such a body for the region as part of his religious reforms during World War II, he acknowledged that the Muslim faith could enjoy some legal protection under Communist rule. From a skeletal and disorganized body run by one family of Islamic scholars out of a modest house in Tashkent's old city, this muftiate acquired great political importance in the eyes of Soviet policymakers and equally significant symbolic significance for many Muslims. Relying on recently declassified Central Asian archival sources, most of them never seen before by historians, Eren Tasar argues that Islam did not merely "survive" the decades from World War II until the Soviet collapse in 1991, but actively shaped the political and social context of Soviet Central Asia. Muslim figures, institutions, and practices evolved in response to the social and political reality of Communist rule. Through an analysis that spans all aspects of Islam under Soviet rule-from debates about religion inside the Communist Party, to the muftiate's efforts to acquire control over mosques across Central Asia, changes in Islamic practices and dogma, and overseas propaganda targeting the Islamic World-Soviet and Muslim offers a radical new reading of Islam's resilience and evolution under atheism.

A study of the history of Soviet Central Asia and the demographic, political, economic and cultural weight of the Muslims that reside there. This book examines current trends in this area which is one of Russia's most turbulent and misunderstood minority regions.