Religion in Uzbekistan

According to WIN-Gallup International's 2012 Global Index of religiosity and atheism 79% of the respondents from Uzbekistan who took part in the survey considered themselves religious person another 18% stated they were either not religious or convinced atheists, 3% had checked no response box. ^[1]

Islam is by far the majority religion in Uzbekistan with a 96.3% Muslim population, in 2009.^[3]

Soviet era

State atheism was an official policy in the Soviet Union and other Marxist–Leninist states. The Soviet Union used the term gosateizm, a syllabic abbreviation of "state" (gosudarstvo) and "atheism" (ateizm), to refer to a policy of expropriation of religious property, publication of information against religion and the official promotion of anti-religious materials in the education system. By the late 1980s, the Soviets had succeeded in curtailing religion in Uzbekistan by removing its outward manifestations: closing mosques and madrasas; banning religious text and literature; outlawing non-state-sanctioned religious leaders and congregations.^[4]

Since Independence

Uzbekistan remains a secular country and Article 61 of its constitution states that religious organizations and associations shall be separated from the state and equal before law. The state shall not interfere in the activity of religious associations.^[5] In the early 1990s with the end of Soviet power large groups of Islamic missionaries, mostly from Saudi Arabia and Turkey, came to Uzbekistan to propagate Sufi and Wahhabi interpretations of Islam. In 1992, in the town of Namangan, a group of radical islamists educated at Islamic universities in Saudi Arabia took control of a government building and demanded that president Karimov declare an Islamic state in Uzbekistan and introduce shari‛a as the only legal system. The regime, however, prevailed, and eventually struck down hard on the islamic militant groups, leaders of which later fled to Afghanistan and Pakistan and were later killed in fights against coalition forces. In 1992 and 1993 around 50 missionaries from Saudi Arabia were expelled from the country. The Sufi missionaries too were forced to end their activities in the country.^[6]

Islam

An image of a statue of Tamerlane in the Uzbek currency.

There are more Sunnite than Shi'ite Muslims among the residents. Islam was brought to ancestors of modern Uzbeks during the 8th century when the Arabs entered Central Asia. Islam initially took hold in the southern portions of Turkestan and thereafter gradually spread northward.^[7] In the 14th-century, Tamerlane constructed many religious structures, including the Bibi-Khanym Mosque. He also constructed one of his finest buildings at the tomb of Ahmed Yesevi, an influential Turkic Sufi saint who spread Sufi Islam among the nomads. Islam also spread amongst the Uzbeks with the conversion of Uzbeg Khan. Converted to Islam by Ibn Abdul Hamid, a Bukharan sayyid and sheikh of the Yasavi order, Uzbeg promoted Islam amongst the Golden Horde and fostered Muslim missionary work to expand across Central Asia. In the long run, Islam enabled the khan to eliminate interfactional struggles in the Horde and to stabilize state institutions.

During the Soviet era, Moscow greatly distorted the understanding of Islam among Uzbekistan's population and created competing Islamic ideologies among the Central Asians themselves. The government sponsored official anti-religious campaigns and severe crackdowns on any hint of an Islamic movement or network outside of the control of the state. Moreover, many Muslims were subjected to intense Russification. Many mosques were closed and during Joseph Stalin's reign, many Muslims were victims of mass deportation. In Uzbekistan the end of Soviet power did not bring an upsurge of Islamic fundamentalism, as many had predicted, but rather a gradual reacquaintance with the precepts of the faith. Currently, according to a Pew Research Center report, Uzbekistan's population is 96.3% Muslim.^[8]

Christianity

Most of the Christians in Uzbekistan are ethnic Russians who practice Orthodox Christianity. There are also communities of Roman Catholics, mostly ethnic Poles.

Zoroastrianism

The ancient pre-Islamic religion of Uzbekistan-Zoroastrianism survives today and is followed by 7,400 people in Uzbekistan.^[9]

Judaism

The number of Jews in Uzbekistan is upwardly corrected to 5,000 in 2007, which presents 0.2% of the total population.^[10] Only a small minority of Bukharan Jews have remained in Uzbekistan.

Atheism

According to WIN-Gallup International's 2012 Global Index of religiosity and atheism 2% of the respondents who took part in the survey were convinced atheists. ^[11]

References