2000 wards

Midterm Exam ITS 365

This is the midterm exam for ITS 365. You will have until 04/04 to finish it. You will not need to refer to any sources except the readings that have been assigned for this class. You will only need to refer to readings from Week 1-7 (up through the Soviet period), so don’t worry about the Islamic Revival readings for now.

Please answer the THREE of the following questions as completely as possible. Each answer should be no less than 500 words. Submit your midterms on Canvas as a MICROSOFT WORD DOCUMENT.

Please make sure all work is your own. Short quotes from the readings are acceptable (though not required), but long quotes are prohibited. The answers must be YOUR words.

 

1. Please describe the “religious landscape” in Central Asia prior to the advent of Russian imperialism. What was Islam like among the nomads? How did nomadic Islam differ from Islam in Transoxania (the settled areas of Central Asia)? What sorts of changes occurred as a result of the Russian conquest? How can these changes be understood as “modern?”

2. Please describe the Jadid movement. How did the Jadidst approach to Islam differ from what preceded it? In what ways can we understand the Jadids as “modern?” What are the pitfalls of over-emphasizing the Jadids in the history of Central Asian Islam?

3. Discuss how the imposition of Soviet power in the 1920s and 30s undermined the foundations of Islamic society in Central Asia. How did this differ from what happened after the Tsarist Russian conquest? In what ways was the Soviet “assault” on Islam successful, and in which ways did it arguably fail?

4. Write about Islam during the period of “mature socialism” in the Soviet Union. How did this period differ from the earlier Soviet period (immediately after the Civil War and during the era of collectivization)? What were the unique aspects of Soviet Islam at this time? What did it mean to be a Soviet Central Asian Muslim?