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Europe-Asia Studies

ISSN: 0966-8136 (Print) 1465-3427 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ceas20

‘My Poor People, Where Are We Going?’: Grounded Theologies and National Identity in Kyrgyzstan

Vincent M. Artman

To cite this article: Vincent M. Artman (2019): ‘My Poor People, Where Are We Going?’: Grounded Theologies and National Identity in Kyrgyzstan, Europe-Asia Studies, DOI: 10.1080/09668136.2019.1656167

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/09668136.2019.1656167

Published online: 25 Sep 2019.

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‘My Poor People, Where Are We Going?’: Grounded Theologies and National Identity

in Kyrgyzstan

VINCENT M. ARTMAN

Abstract

Although Islam is described as a fundamental aspect of Kyrgyz national identity, its theological aspects are generally elided in nationalist discourse. However, as Islam becomes more prominent in Kyrgyz society, anxieties about ‘Arabisation’ and the weakening of national traditions permeate popular and political discourse. These anxieties operate simultaneously in the national and religious registers, suggesting the extent to which theological beliefs inform national identity, even in secular states. Examining a recent controversy over veiling in Kyrgyzstan, this article argues that theology is both linked to nationality and also a site of contestation over the terms of nationalism itself.

IN THE DECADES SINCE THE SOVIET COLLAPSE, SOCIAL, CULTURAL, economic and political landscapes across Eurasia have been dramatically refashioned. However, along with sometimes halting and geographically uneven integration into the global economy (Laruelle & Peyrouse 2013), the most transformative processes affecting this region have arguably been nation-building and the revival of religion in the public sphere. These developments, importantly, have not occurred in isolation from one another, and the numerous zones of interpenetration between religion, secularism, and ethnic and national identities have attracted substantial interest from scholars working on Central Asia (Laruelle 2007; Louw 2012; Thibault 2013; Montgomery 2016; McBrien 2017).

A recurrent theme in this literature has been a critique of the framing of nationalism and the nation-state as ‘the bearers of modernity par excellence’ (van Biljert 1999, p. 317) and the habit of dismissing religion as ‘traditional’ and ‘backwards’ (van der Veer & Lehmann 1999, p. 3). Such narratives feed into stereotypical depictions of Islam as antipathetic to the modern

© 2019 University of Glasgow

https://doi.org/10.1080/09668136.2019.1656167

I would like to acknowledge Dr Alisa Moldavanova, for her support and her invaluable feedback and suggestions; the anonymous reviewers whose comments helped to improve the article from its original version; Dr Alexander Diener; the University of Kansas Department of Geography and Atmospheric Science and the Wayne State Centre for Peace & Conflict Studies, where substantial portions of the research included in this article were conducted; IREX; and all of the people who participated in this research project. This work was supported by International Research and Exchanges Board: Grant Number Individual Advanced Research Opportunity.

EUROPE-ASIA STUDIES, 2019 https://doi.org/10.1080/09668136.2019.1656167

sovereign-territorial regime (Huntington 1997, p. 175); as Bassam Tibi has pointed out, ‘Western scholars argue that the idea of the nation-state was exported from Europe to the “abode of Islam”. Those who have adopted it are viewed as modernisers, whereas those who reject it are considered to be traditionalists’ (Tibi 1997, p. 10). By contrast, other scholars have sought to highlight the dynamic and often contradictory roles that Islam plays in the modern nation-state, as well as in the articulation and performance of national identity itself (Piscatori 1986; Hashmi 2002; Rasanayagam 2011). Indeed, there is growing recognition that the spheres of ‘the political’ and ‘the religious’ are not as alienated from one another as classical theories that link nationalism with secularisation would hold (Hobsbawm 1990; Gellner 2006).1 This is to say, putatively secular ideologies like nationalism are often bound up with notions of religious solidarity (van der Veer 1994), and collective memories of national origins are frequently rooted in religious stories, myths and symbols (DeWeese 1994; Smith 2003). Rather than an antagonism between religion and nationalism, we instead find that religion, national identity and the nation- state overlap in sometimes unexpected ways.

In Central Asia, for example, Islam has often been described as an inalienable part of the cultural patrimony of the titular nationalities (Haghayeghi 1994; Tazmini 2001; Hann & Pelkmans 2009; Rasanayagam 2011; Olcott 2014). At the same time, Islam has occasionally been characterised as playing an ‘instrumental’ role for Central Asian governments (Peyrouse 2007; Omelicheva 2016), insofar as they are seen as trying to invoke religious heritage to bolster their own legitimacy. However, while nationalist ideology has undeniably made use of religious symbols and rhetoric for political purposes (recall the late Uzbek president, Islam Karimov, taking his oath of office on the Qur’ān), the intensity and frequency of such mobilisations has been geographically uneven and has varied substantially over time. The Karimov government, for example, went from emphasising Islam to imposing harsh controls over the religious sphere in reaction to the perceived threat posed by radical groups such as Hizb ut-Tahrir and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (Rasanayagam 2006). Similarly, the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (Hizbi Nakhzati Islomii Tojikiston), long the only legal Islamic political party in Central Asia, was outlawed in 2016 and many of its members imprisoned.2 In Kyrgyzstan, meanwhile, Islam has never figured prominently in the state’s official ideology.

We must also be wary of too readily accepting the oft-repeated dictum that being Kyrgyz/ Uzbek/Kazakh/etc., means being a Muslim (Khalid 2007, p. 107; Omelicheva 2011, p. 246; Radford 2015, p. 55). This dictum explains neither how that relationship has been constructed and articulated, nor the emotional and spiritual resonance with which it has become imbued. Instead, it is necessary to examine how discourses surrounding national identity shape the ways in which people think about religion, and vice versa. How are these discourses embodied and performed? How do the connections between religion and national identity implicate the secular nation-state? This article seeks to address these questions by using controversies over the hijāb as a lens through which to examine how theological ideas and

1See Zubrzycki (2010) and Tse (2014) for a critique of this paradigm. 2‘Shuttered Tajik Islamic Party Branded As Terrorist Group’, 29 September 2015, Radio Free Europe/

Radio Liberty, available at: http://www.rferl.org/content/tajikistan-islamic-party-terrorist-organization/ 27277385.html, accessed 15 July 2016.

2 VINCENT M. ARTMAN

arguments can become interwoven with discourses surrounding national identity. What we find is that nationalist narratives, even in secular states like Kyrgyzstan, often contain religious arguments and are in fact grounded in particular theological formations. Furthermore, the debate over veiling practices suggests that the theology/nationality nexus is also a site for renegotiating the meaning of national tradition and its relationship with religion.

The majority of the data analysed in this article was collected over a five-month period, August–December 2014. Fieldwork consisted of participant observation as well as semi- structured interviews with government officials, representatives of the muftiyat,3

theologians, local scholars and ordinary Muslims. Subsequent data were obtained from publicly available primary documents, including religious literature, government documents and published interviews.

The article begins by looking at how the objectification of Muslim consciousness has transformed the nation-state into an arena for contestation between putatively ‘national’ and ‘foreign’ Islamic practices. It takes as an example an ongoing debate in Kyrgyz society over the propriety of veiling, a debate that came to a head with the appearance of a series of controversial billboards in Bishkek in the summer of 2016. As we will see, the billboards’ critique of veiling was couched in nationalist paranoia about cultural ‘Arabisation’, which is in turn connected with fears that conservative forms of Islam are poised to overwhelm the moderate and tolerant forms of Islam that are depicted as being traditional among Kyrgyz. The article then turns to an examination of this ‘traditional Kyrgyz Islam’, arguing that it effectively constitutes a semi-official ‘national theology’ that is supported by the state and promulgated by Kyrgyzstan’s religious authorities. Traditional Kyrgyz Islam, which is rooted in the Hanafi school of Islamic jurisprudence, is tied to discourses surrounding Kyrgyz national identity through appeals to genealogy, as well as the fact that it incorporates various customs and rituals associated with Kyrgyz ethnic traditions. As an objectified theology, it is contrasted with other forms of Islam, which are often depicted as being foreign or hostile to Kyrgyz culture. The final section of the article returns to the question of veiling, and examines how the hijāb has become a focal point in the renegotiation of Kyrgyz national identity itself, in some ways challenging, or at least revising, the ways in which the relationship between Islam and national identity has traditionally been conceived in Kyrgyzstan.

Religion, the nation-state and the objectification of Muslim consciousness

Despite the profound influence that the ‘secularisation paradigm’ has exerted on the social sciences (Tschannen 1991), it has become apparent that the ‘death of religion’, long regarded as ‘conventional wisdom in the social sciences during most of the twentieth

3The word muftiyat is derived from the term mufti, an Islamic legal expert. The Kyrgyz Muftiyat is currently headed by Mufti Maksat azhi Tokotmushev, who is assisted by a board of deputy muftis. Organisationally, the Kyrgyz Muftiyat is the descendant of a Soviet-era institution, the Dukhovnoe upravlenie Musul’man Srednei Azii i Kazakhstana, or the Spiritual Administration of the Muslims of Central Asia and Kazakhstan (SADUM), which administered Islamic religious affairs from its inception in 1943 until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. See Saroyan (1997a, 1997b) and Ro’i (2000).

‘MY POOR PEOPLE, WHERE ARE WE GOING?’ 3

century’ (Norris & Inglehart 2004, p. 3), has not come to pass. Across a literature that ranges from critical reassessments of the idea of secularisation (Hadden 1987; Swatos & Christiano 1999; Berger 2012), attempts to theorise a ‘post-secular’ order (Habermas 2008; Gorski et al. 2012) and explorations of religion vis-à-vis modernity (Casanova 1994; Asad 1999; Lambert 1999), scholars have taken note of the seemingly anomalous persistence of religious belief in a modern, industrialised and disenchanted world. Increasingly, the very notion of a ‘great divide’ (van der Veer 1994) between ‘traditional religion’ and ‘rational modernity’ appears antiquated: the faithful today are visible and assertive participants in social and (geo)political discourses throughout the world (Westerlund 1996; Eisenstadt 2000; Petito & Hatzopoulos 2003; Thomas 2005). Thus, as Cavanaugh and Scott remind us, ‘theological discourse has refused to stay where liberalism would prefer to put it. Theology is politically important, and those who engage in either theology or politics ignore this fact at their peril’ (Cavanaugh & Scott 2004, p. 1). It should be noted from the outset that the term ‘theology’, as employed in this article, does not (necessarily) refer to the systematic study of the nature of the Divine. Rather, the article draws upon Tse’s (2014, p. 202) conceptualisation of ‘grounded theologies’, which are defined as ‘performative practices of place-making informed by understandings of the transcendent’. According to Tse, grounded theologies:

remain theologies because they involve some view of the transcendent, including some that take a negative view toward its very existence or relevance to spatial practices; they are grounded insofar as they inform immanent processes of cultural place-making, the negotiation of social identities, and the formations of political boundaries, including in geographies where theological analyses do not seem relevant. (Tse 2014, p. 202)

Importantly for the present discussion, Tse makes clear that grounded theologies ‘are not abstract speculations, for they have concrete implications for how practitioners understand their own existence in ways that inform their place-making practices’ (Tse 2014, p. 208). The notion of ‘grounded theologies’, then, is a useful lens through which to make sense of the ways in which ‘the religious’ intersects with secular forces such as nationalism while freeing us from the epistemological baggage carried by the term ‘religion’ (Asad 1993).

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Islam has become an increasingly prominent factor in Kyrgyzstan’s social, cultural and political discourse. However, if Islam has assumed a role that was impossible under communism, then, as Hann and Pelkmans note, ‘the new religious marketplaces’ that emerged in the 1990s have nevertheless been shaped by the political imperatives of the governments in the region (Hann & Pelkmans 2009, p. 1518). Although this ‘framing’ has sometimes been described as the ‘instrumentalisation’ (Peyrouse 2007) or even ‘étatisation’ (Hann & Pelkmans 2009, p. 1519) of religion, it may be more helpful to understand it through the lens of what Eickelman and Piscatori refer to as the ‘objectification of Muslim consciousness’. This term refers to ‘the process by which basic questions come to the fore in the consciousness of large numbers of believers: “What is my religion?” “Why is it important to my life?” and “How do my beliefs guide my conduct?”’ (Eickelman & Piscatori 1996, p. 38). Objectification is an outcome of widespread literacy, mass education and the growing availability of multiple forms of mass media (increasingly including social media), which have changed the ways in which Muslims think about and discuss their own beliefs:

4 VINCENT M. ARTMAN

‘Like mass communications, mass education and publishing contribute to objectification by inculcating pervasive “habits of thought.” They do so by transforming religious beliefs into a conscious system, broadening the scope of religious authority, and redrawing the boundaries of the political community’ (Eickelman & Piscatori 1996, pp. 41–2).

What has emerged out of this process is a way of thinking about Islam as a self-contained system of beliefs and practices, one that can be readily described and compared against other belief systems—or, indeed, against other forms of Islam (Eickelman 1992). As we will see in this article, both the Kyrgyz state and the religious authorities have contributed to and leveraged the objectification of Muslim consciousness by defining what has often been referred to as ‘traditional Kyrgyz Islam’, arguably a sort of ‘national theology’ that is counterpoised with other forms of Islam. As the name suggests, traditional Kyrgyz Islam is explicitly connected with notions of Kyrgyz ethnic and national identity and is portrayed as being bound up with Kyrgyz history, genealogy and traditions. Meanwhile, other forms of Islam, particularly those espousing more conservative or rigidly textualist theologies, are depicted as at best culturally incongruous, and at worst as extremist and a threat to social cohesion and state survival.

An interesting example of this dynamic can be found in a controversy that erupted over a series of billboards that suddenly appeared around Bishkek in the summer of 2016. The billboards provoked heated debate because they openly criticised the more conservative veiling practices that have become increasingly conspicuous among many Muslim women in Kyrgyzstan. This critique, importantly, was framed in explicitly national terms: the implication was that such forms of veiling were associated with Arabs, Bengalis or Pakistanis—outsiders, in short—and were thus inappropriate for Kyrgyz women. While the ‘billboard controversy’ was ultimately short-lived, it nevertheless suggests the degree to which objectified theological assumptions, grounded at a variety of scales, from the individual body to the national community, have become embedded in normative conceptions of Kyrgyz national identity.

The hijāb and Kyrgyz national identity

In August 2016, the then president of Kyrgyzstan, Almazbek Atambaev, held a long press conference during which he addressed a variety of important topics, ranging from proposed constitutional reforms, the closure of the US military base at Manas Airport and the political pressure emanating from Turkey to close schools operated by the Gülen movement. The event’s most notable moments, however, transpired when the president began discussing the topic of veiling. Invoking the spectre of terrorism, Atambaev lamented the growing popularity of the hijāb among Kyrgyz women, linking it with religious extremism and even terrorism:

‘MY POOR PEOPLE, WHERE ARE WE GOING?’ 5

in Kyrgyzstan in the 1950s, women went about in mini-skirts, but it did not occur to one of them to put on a ‘martyrdom belt’ and blow someone up. You can go around if you like with a boot on your head, but do not blow anyone up. Because this is not religion.4

President Atambaev’s remarks added fuel to a controversy that had been smouldering in Kyrgyzstan since the appearance of several billboards along Bishkek’s major thoroughfares earlier that summer (see Figure 1). The billboards depicted three contrasting images: the leftmost panel showed a group of smiling Kyrgyz women wearing traditional national costumes; the middle picture portrayed women wearing white hijābs; and the final panel depicted a group of women fully covered by black chadors, with only their eyes visible. Beneath the pictures were the portentous words ‘My poor people, where are we going?’ (‘Kairan elim, kaida baratabyz?’) superimposed upon a red arrow that pointed ominously towards the black-clad women on the right (Nasritdinov & Esenamanova 2017). In the end, the billboards, though they only lasted a few weeks, laid bare the thorny issues surrounding secularism, Islam and national identity in Kyrgyz society.

Not surprisingly, Kyrgyzstan’s official Islamic authority, the Muftiyat, denounced the banners, calling them ‘divisive’ and ‘provocative’ for offending the sensibilities of pious Muslims (Shuvalov 2016).5 At the same time, however, many politicians and other public figures expressed their support for the anti-hijāb message; President Atambaev even endorsed the notion of placing similar billboards throughout the entire country.6 The popular television host Meerim Shatemirova argued that the billboards struck a blow for the principles of secularism and women’s rights: ‘If I’m being honest, I would have hung up the banners myself … . I want to live in a society that is based on the law of the Constitution, not upon religion!’.7 Curiously, a few days later, several new billboards appeared, emblazoned with the same slogan, but this time juxtaposing women in traditional Kyrgyz clothing with those in more revealing ‘Western’-style mini-skirts. They were quickly removed, and the whole affair came to an ignominious close (Nasritdinov & Esenamanova 2017).

Although a local controversy over a short-lived series of billboards defending Kyrgyz national costume against the Islamic headscarf may seem like a somewhat idiosyncratic affair, it is emblematic of the complex and ambiguous role that religion often plays in Kyrgyzstan’s putatively secular political sphere. Wearing the hijāb—or choosing not to— is ‘an embodied spatial practice through which women are inserted into relations of power in society’ (Secor 2005, p. 204), and as such is a political act irrespective of intent. Veiling, as both a symbol and as a grounded theological practice that engages practitioners

4‘Atambaev: Pust’ luchshe khodyat v mini-yubkakh, no nikogo ne vzryvayut’, ASIA-Plus, 2 August 2016, available at: https://news.tj/ru/node/228994, accessed 29 July 2019.

5‘DUMK: banner “Kayran elim, kayda baratabiz?” mozhet naverit’ edinstvu’, Sputnik, 13 July 2016, available at: http://ru.sputnik.kg/society/20160713/1027634490.html, accessed 28 November 2016.

6‘Kyrgyzstan: President Throws Weight Behind Anti-Veil Posters’, Eurasianet, 14 July 2016, available at: http://www.eurasianet.org/node/79661, accessed 16 September 2016; ‘Atambaev poruchil povesit’ bannery “pro parandzhu” po vsei strane’, Sputnik, 14 July 2016, available at: http://ru.sputnik.kg/society/20160714/ 1027672085.html, accessed 28 November, 2016.

7‘Snyat’ nel’zya ostavit’! 7 avtoritetnykh mnenii o skandal’nykh bannerakh’, Sputnik, 13 July 2016, available at: http://ru.sputnik.kg/opinion/20160713/1027636498.html, accessed 28 November 2016.

6 VINCENT M. ARTMAN

in the ‘contestations that continually shape everyday human geographies’ (Tse 2014, p. 205), therefore exists in dialogue with other social and ideological currents, including nationalism, secularism and prevailing religious norms. Thus, even though 96% of Kyrgyz report that they were ‘raised Muslim’ (Bell 2012), and while many Muslim women in Kyrgyzstan cover themselves in some fashion, wearing the hijāb remains a contested practice owing to its ambivalent status vis-à-vis Kyrgyz national tradition.

During the Soviet period, veiling was virtually non-existent, an outcome of the prevailing anti-religious atmosphere of the times, as well as of Soviet campaigns to ‘liberate’ women from what were portrayed as harmful and backwards customs (Northrop 2004). Indeed, ending the practice of veiling was linked with what was viewed as ‘one of the biggest triumphs of Soviet modernizing campaigns—women’s emancipation’ (McBrien 2017, p. 117). However, the disappearance of the atheist regime in 1991 resulted in a ‘deprivatisation’ of religion (Casanova 1994) in a place where many religious people simply practised their faith in private to avoid mistreatment by the state. Since independence, Islam has re-entered the public sphere as both a source of moral and spiritual authority and as a publicly embodied set of practices, even if many people lack a precise understanding of what constitutes Islam.

For many, an interest in rediscovering ‘authentic Islam’, which was felt to have been lost during the Soviet period (Simpson 2009; McBrien 2017), has encouraged, among other things, the adoption of self-consciously ‘Islamic’ styles of dress. Wearing the hijāb has thus become increasingly commonplace in Kyrgyzstan, even though activists are still fighting the stigma surrounding veiling, which has manifested in restrictions on wearing the hijāb in schools and in the workplace and other forms of discrimination (Shenkkan 2011; Nasritdinov

FIGURE 1. ANTI-VEILING BILLBOARD IN BISHKEK Source: ‘DUMK: Banner “Kairan elim, kaida baratabyz?” mozhem navredit’ edinstvu’, Sputnik, 13 July 2016,

available at: https://ru.sputnik.kg/society/20160713/1027634490.html, accessed 29 July 2019.

‘MY POOR PEOPLE, WHERE ARE WE GOING?’ 7

& Esenamanova 2017). Nevertheless, by the end of the 2000s, the sight of women wearing the hijāb, even in cosmopolitan Bishkek, no longer seemed as remarkable as it had in 1992.

But if the hijāb is no longer an uncommon sight, then it is not a practice that all Kyrgyz people are comfortable with. As Mohira Suyarkulova explains: ‘as women wearing various styles of hijāb and veils became more numerous and visible on the streets of Bishkek after independence, many citizens and authorities reacted with irritation, and often the discomfort with this new practice was expressed in ethnic terms’ (Suyarkulova 2016, p. 258). Particularly among older generations raised during the Soviet period (McBrien 2017; Nasritdinov & Esenamanova 2017), as well as among nationalists concerned with defending ‘authentic’ national traditions, the veil is interpreted as ‘fundamentally at odds with the Kyrgyz character’ (Murzakulova & Schoeberlein 2009, p. 1240).

Ethno-nationalist anxieties related to the hijāb can partly be seen as by-products of the Kyrgyz state’s efforts to articulate a coherent ‘national idea’. Such efforts have welded Kyrgyz cultural memory and its attendant myth-symbol complex (notably the Manas epic) with a teleological narrative of the modern Kyrgyz nation-state as the political-territorial culmination of the Kyrgyz nation’s historical destiny (Akaev 2003; Gullette 2008). This process has been accompanied by deliberate efforts to revive Kyrgyz epic poetry, nomadic customs,8 indigenous sports and musical styles, and distinctive national costumes. In an ideological environment like this, the politics and symbolism invested in national costume can become particularly intense (Suyarkulova 2016, p. 247); choosing to wear the hijāb may be interpreted as an affront to national identity. Consequently, the juxtaposition on the billboards of traditional Kyrgyz clothing with hijābs and chadors served as a potent reminder of the apparent erosion of Kyrgyz national culture.

With this in mind, the response of Tynchtykbek Chorotegin, the director of the Muras Foundation, which is dedicated to the study and preservation of Kyrgyz historical and cultural heritage, to the hijāb controversy and, more broadly, Islam’s role in Kyrgyz society, is particularly revealing:

We are not against Islam, and we respect the historical choices of our ancestors. But we are against mankurtism and the imposition on us of alien clothing, since [clothing is] an important part of the culture of every nation. … [People have] only just begun to openly support and develop their culture and wear clothes with Kyrgyz ornaments. So, at this moment there is a real threat of what is known as ‘Arabisation’. … But we are Kyrgyz Hanafis, who managed to preserve all our Muslim and non-Muslim traditions through hundreds of centuries. … We hope that our citizens, regardless of the depths of their religious beliefs, will understand correctly the meaning of the billboards [that read] ‘My poor people, where are we going?’ We have always had our own Kyrgyz headscarves, elecheks, embroidered kalpaks, and skullcaps. … Our grandmothers and great-grandmothers never wore black chadors or parandzhas. (Begalieva 2016)9

8Many people, for instance, will decamp to a jailoo, or high mountain pasture, to live in yurts during the summer.

9A chador is a garment that covers the entire body, apart from the face. A parandzha, like the burqa, covers the face and eyes.

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Chorotegin’s invocation of mankurtism in the context of his warnings about ‘Arabisation’ is particularly notable. Coined by the revered Kyrgyz author Chingiz Aitmatov, the term mankurt refers to a person who ‘did not know who he had been, whence and from what tribe he had come, did not know his name, could not remember his childhood, father, or mother—in short, he could not recognise himself as a human being’ (Aitmatov 1983, p. 126). The figure of the mankurt has been widely interpreted as a thinly veiled allegory for Russified Kyrgyz, who, in adopting the modern Soviet (or Russian or Western) way of life, had ‘forgotten who they were’. Chorotegin’s implication that veiling constitutes a form of ‘mankurtism’ that rejects ancestral traditions in favour of ‘Arabisation’ thus works as powerful nationalist appeal that is also grounded in particular theological traditions; that is, ‘Kyrgyz Hanafism’.

From whence does this implicit connection between ‘Kyrgyz Hanafism’ and Kyrgyz nationalism derive in the first place? As the next section describes, both the secular state and the religious authorities in Kyrgyzstan have objectified particular theological traditions and combined them with narratives about Kyrgyz history and national identity. The result has been the articulation of what has sometimes been referred to as ‘traditional Kyrgyz Islam’, which in many respects functions as a de facto national theology.

‘Traditional Kyrgyz Islam’ as a national theology

Since independence, the Kyrgyz state has worked to foster a cohesive nationalist ideology, though such efforts have been inconsistent and have shifted in response to changing political circumstances (Marat 2008; Laruelle 2012). Significantly, the idea that Islam constitutes an important part of the cultural and historical patrimony of the Kyrgyz nation has been a prominent, though ambiguously represented, feature of this project (Murzakulova & Schoeberlein 2009; Chotaev et al. 2015a, p. 4). Consequently, despite being cast as ‘an indispensable, central element of Kyrgyz identity’ (Hann & Pelkmans 2009, p. 1530), Islam’s ‘intrinsic qualities … as a faith [are] rarely mentioned in official rhetoric’ (Hann & Pelkmans 2009, p. 1528). Islam, moreover, has not played a major role in Kyrgyz nationalist rhetoric or ideology, which has often focused instead on romantic reconstructions of Kyrgyz history, genealogy and the Manas epic (Akaev 2003; Biard & Laruelle 2010; Gullette 2010).

However, the ambivalent place of Islam vis-à-vis Kyrgyz nationalism, which is as much a reflection of the Kyrgyz state’s commitment to secular values as it is an indication of the leadership’s lingering Soviet-conditioned scepticism about religion, does not mean that religion is irrelevant to how national identity is constructed. Indeed, the backlash against the hijāb suggests that nationalist anxieties regarding ‘Arabisation’ are overlaid with religious anxieties as well. ‘Traditional Kyrgyz Islam’, for example, is portrayed as having been the religion of the ancestors of the modern Kyrgyz people. In religious terms, it is grounded in the Hanafi tradition, and characterised as tolerant and pluralist, politically quietist and open to rational thought, scientific inquiry and cooperation with the government.

Theology and the secular state

One of the most important actors involved in the delineation of traditional Kyrgyz Islam is not a religious body, but the state. In particular, the Kyrgyz Respublikasynyn Prezidentine Karashtuu Din Ishteri Boyuncha Mamlekettik Komissiyasy, hereafter the State

‘MY POOR PEOPLE, WHERE ARE WE GOING?’ 9

Commission for Religious Affairs, which is tasked with registering and regulating religious organisations operating in Kyrgyzstan, plays a leading role in the formulation of government policy toward the religious sphere.10 Mirroring similar initiatives elsewhere in Central Asia (Epkenhans 2011; Rasanayagam 2011; Yemelianova 2014), the Kyrgyz government has defined ‘traditional Islam’ as being ‘closely interwoven’ with Kyrgyz national traditions. In fact, policies pertaining to religion are viewed as being central to the project of nation- building itself, effectively blurring the boundaries between the secular and the religious. Thus, according to the ‘Conception of State Policy in the Religious Sphere, 2014–2020’:

State policy concerning religion and religious organisations in the Kyrgyz Republic is aimed at the development and strengthening of Kyrgyz statehood, the preservation of state sovereignty and the unity of the nation. … While maintaining a neutral stance towards religious institutions, assuming certain religious, cultural and national particularities, the state will implement its policy by respecting traditional moral values, and will create conditions for the consolidation and development of the spiritual potential and cultural heritage of the people of Kyrgyzstan. (Emphasis added)11

Rather than amounting to the simple appropriation of religious discourse for raisons d’état, however, state interventions into the religious sphere have had quite real theological implications.

Traditional Kyrgyz Islam is explicitly grounded in the Hanafi juridical school. As one of the four Sunni madhabs,12 Hanafism constitutes a rich theological tradition associated with broader Islamic philosophical and legal currents. In Kyrgyzstan, Hanafism has been positioned as ‘traditional’, largely on account of its historical prevalence in Central Asia.13

More specifically, however, its legitimacy as a normative national theology is rooted in genealogy and Kyrgyz cultural memory. One report, entitled ‘State Policy in the Religious Sphere: Legislative Bases, Concept, and “Traditional Islam” in Kyrgyzstan’, notes that:

for every Muslim, the teachings followed by his ancestors [are considered to be] traditional, because in Kyrgyzstan all people who consider themselves to be Muslims, in addition to performing prayers and other religious rites in accordance with the teachings of Abu Hanafi, also follow the example and borrow from the experiences of their elders. (Chotaev et al. 2015a, p. 31)

10It is worth noting that, while the commission’s purview extends to all religious groups, a disproportionate focus has been placed on Islam. The reason for this, according to one analyst working at the commissions is that Islam is more politically important since most of the population are Muslim (Personal communication with Z. Tursunbekov, Bishkek, 2 December 2014).

11Kontseptsiya gosudarstvennoi politiki Kyrgyzskoi Respubliki v religioznoi sfere na 2014–2020 gody, 2014, available at: http://www.gov.kg/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Kontseptsiya-na-rus-prilozhenie-k- Ukazu-PKR.docx, accessed 16 November 2015.

12Madhabs are schools of Islamic jurisprudence. In Sunni Islam, the four main madhabs are the Hanbali, Shafi, Maliki and Hanafi schools.

13Kontseptsiya gosudarstvennoi politiki Kyrgyzskoi Respubliki v religioznoi sfere na 2014–2020 gody, 2014, available at: http://www.gov.kg/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Kontseptsiya-na-rus-prilozhenie-k- Ukazu-PKR.docx, accessed 16 November 2015.

10 VINCENT M. ARTMAN

Another official document describes the syncretic nature of traditional Kyrgyz Islam in similarly historicised terms:

After the birth of a male child into a family, along with a prayer he will receive a name and be circumcised; during marriage, rituals will be performed; when a person dies prayers will be read, and in order to receive the blessings of the ancestors the Qur’an is read, and so forth, and that is how the elements of the religion of Islam, combined with the way of life of our people, have become traditional religion. Therefore, the traditional character of Islam, which was adhered to by our ancestors, is considered the spiritual patrimony of the Kyrgyz, passed through the centuries from generation to generation. For the Muslims of Kyrgyzstan, the traditional values of Islam are the Hanafi madhab of the Maturidi school. (Chotaev et al. 2015b, p. 23)

As this passage suggests, within the broader Hanafi tradition, traditional Kyrgyz Islam is also marked by the kalam (theology) of Abu Mansur Muhammad al-Maturidi, a tenth-century theologian from Samarkand. Indeed, the ‘Conception of State Policy’ specifically calls for the ‘strengthening and development of a traditional and moderate form of Sunni Islam on the basis of the Hanafi religio-legal school and the Maturidi creed’.14 Maturidi theology is notable among other kalam schools in Sunni Islam, notably Ash‘arism, for emphasis on human reason, free will and scientific inquiry (Glassé 1989; Özervarli 2004). Maturidism thus affords believers:

a relatively large degree of freedom for rational speculation to act. The intellect is said to be capable of proving the existence of God from His creation and knowing what good and bad acts are. This greatly distinguishes al-Maturidi’s epistemology from that of [the influential Sunni theologian] al- Ash‘ari, who did not give human though a comparable type of autonomy and fundamentally restricted the priority of the intellect in favor of transmission [of knowledge from authoritative sources]. (Rudolph 2015, p. 232)

These ‘rationalist’ aspects of Maturidi thought have become a cornerstone of the normative national theology in Kyrgyzstan, while Imam Maturidi himself is held up as an exemplary Islamic intellectual, one whose ideas are still relevant:

[Imam Maturidi’s] main methods in the study and understanding of religion were rationalism, reason, and thinking. … He, relying on logic and kalam, which is one of the methods of decision-making in the Sharī‘a, sought … to widely disseminate religion in a multi-confessional society. … Imam Maturidi began his work with an analysis of socially significant phenomena: politics, religion, law (shariat), society, and social life. … [He] relied, first of all on the verses of the Qur’an and hadiths of the Sunna of the Prophet. At the same time, he continued his attention on the mind, evidence, theory, and logic. … Imam Maturidi believed that for the development of religious education, reason and morality are necessary as two important sources, not opposed to one another, but complementing each other. (Chotaev et al. 2015a, p. 25)

14Kontseptsiya gosudarstvennoi politiki Kyrgyzskoi Respubliki v religioznoi sfere na 2014–2020 gody, 2014, available at: http://www.gov.kg/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Kontseptsiya-na-rus-prilozhenie-k- Ukazu-PKR.docx, accessed 16 November 2015.

‘MY POOR PEOPLE, WHERE ARE WE GOING?’ 11

One analyst at the State Commission for Religious Affairs even explained connections between Maturidi perspectives on rational thought and free will in terms of the Kyrgyz people’s nomadic heritage: ‘Maturidism accorded with the nomadic way of life. Nomads were used to being free, to thinking freely, to expressing their opinions. Islam could not put us in a box’.15

Importantly, within the paradigm of ‘traditional Kyrgyz Islam’, Maturidi-Hanafism has also been imputed with rather contemporary concerns, including tolerance (for other religions and among different ethnic groups), respect for national traditions, as understood through the lens of modern ethno-nationalism, and an ideological predisposition for scientific inquiry and cooperation with the state (Chotaev et al. 2015a). Indeed, the Kyrgyz government has played a crucial role in fixing the boundaries of acceptable religious discourse in ways that are compatible with official perspectives on Kyrgyz nationalism. By emphasising the Kyrgyz nation’s historical affiliation with Hanafi Islam, portraying Islam’s natural entanglement with national traditions, and by appealing to genealogy, specific theological positions have been interwoven with broader discourses surrounding secularism and Kyrgyz national identity, even while religion itself is largely omitted from official nationalist ideology.

Religious education and national theology

Although the state is a key arbiter in Kyrgyzstan’s religious economy, it lacks the kind of religious authority possessed by the Kyrgyzstan Мusulmandaryndyn Din Bashkarmalygy (Muslim Spiritual Authority of Kyrgyzstan). This institution, often simply referred to as the Muftiyat, is composed of ulama (religious scholars), whose opinions carry religious authority. Importantly, while the Muftiyat is legally separate from the government, it is nevertheless a registered religious organisation, classified by the State Commission for Religious Affairs as a ‘public organisation uniting and regulating all Muslims, Muslim religious organisations, communities, mosques, educational institutions, funds, and other Islamic structures in the territory of the republic’ (Chotaev et al. 2015a, p. 31).16

Talal Asad has suggested that the concept of orthodoxy refers not to ‘a mere body of opinion but a distinctive relationship of power. Wherever Muslims have the power to regulate, uphold, require, or adjust correct practices, and to condemn, exclude, undermine, or replace incorrect ones, there is the domain of orthodoxy’ (Asad 1986, p. 15). As the preeminent Islamic religious authority in Kyrgyzstan, the Muftiyat wields precisely this sort of power. It does so through its control over the sermons delivered in mosques and the curricula taught in religious schools, the power to issue authoritative fatwas (religious

15Personal communication with Z. Tursunbekov, Bishkek, 2 December 2014. 16It is important to note that, while the Muftiyat is independent from the state and derives the majority of

funding from the Muslim community itself (Isci 2010), the government has not hesitated to intervene in its business. Despite its complex relationship with the state, however, the Muftiyat largely ‘enjoys independence and regulates its own affairs’ (Isci 2010, pp. 77–8). Moreover, while there have at times been tensions between the government and the Muftiyat, the Deputy Kazi of the Bishkek Central Mosque maintains that ‘there is no strict control [by the state]. There is no contradiction between the followers of Islam and those who are in power’ (Personal communication with Imam Almanbet, Bishkek, 11 November 2014).

12 VINCENT M. ARTMAN

opinions), as well as through its publication of religious literature and, not inconsequentially, its relationship with the state, all of which are used to inculcate the norms of traditional Kyrgyz Islam in the population.

This is not to suggest that the Muftiyat is a monolithic body: the religious authorities do attempt to accommodate, or even co-opt, the activities of reformist groups such as the Tablighi Jama’at, which is based on a belief system that conflicts in some respects with those of the religious authorities. Within the Muftiyat, there are also conflicting views on conservative streams of Islam, such as Salafism. As Mirsaiitov points out, ‘for some ulama, Salafism is simply a sect that has departed from traditional Islam’, while others, like Kadyr Malikov, a member of the Muftiyat’s Council of Ulama, argue that Salafism ‘poses a threat to the most traditional school of Islam, based on Abu Hanafi’ (Mirsaiitov 2013, pp. 49–51). Despite the Muftiyat’s internal diversity, however, the national theology to which it lends its religious authority remains based on a fairly circumscribed interpretation of what constitutes traditional Kyrgyz Islam.

For example, the Muftiyat tests imams for their command of Arabic and their knowledge of sharī‘a law.17 Such tests are not merely intended to ensure that imams possess sufficient knowledge and skills to properly do their jobs: they are carried out in conjunction with the security services and the State Commission for Religious Affairs, and their primary purpose is ‘to train imams to preach traditional norms of Islam’, to combat religious ‘ignorance’, and to prevent the spread of ‘radical extremism’.18 In other words, in addition to evaluating basic competencies, such appraisals are a means of signalling the normative religious conventions that imams are expected to adhere to and transmit.

The norms of traditional Kyrgyz Islam are also communicated through various forms of religious education. The Muftiyat pursues various initiatives, such as hosting Qur’ān readings and classes covering the ‘basics’ of Islam that are aimed at the general public and are intended to circulate and instil in believers sanctioned religious beliefs. The Muftiyat also oversees the operations of Islamic schools throughout Kyrgyzstan. In addition to providing limited funding to such schools,19 the Muftiyat effectively controls their curricula. Subjects typically include a three-year course in Arabic, the Qur’ān and sharī‘a law, as well as secular subjects. Taken as a whole, this course of study helps to ensure that the next generation of students will be habituated to the Muftiyat’s interpretation of orthodox Islam —that is, traditional Kyrgyz Islam.

The Muftiyat also publishes a wide range of religious literature. Some of these works include hadith collections, manuals of Qur’anic interpretation, treatises on the origins of the Sunni madhabs, and other serious theological writings. A significant proportion of this literature, however, is aimed instead at a broader, and perhaps less religiously sophisticated, audience. Many pamphlets and handbooks published in this popular genre

17‘Kyrgyzstan Testing Clerics’ Knowledge of Islam’, Eurasianet, 28 May 2015, available at: http://www. eurasianet.org/node/73636, accessed 16 November 2016.

18Personal communication with Z. Tursunbekov, Bishkek, 2 December 2014. 19The director of one madrasah located on the outskirts of Bishkek explains that the Muftiyat provides the

school with money based on enrolment, and periodically allocates funds for activities linked to Ramadan and holidays such as Kurman Ait, the Feast of Sacrifice. The director also noted, however, that most of the school’s funding was still derived from the community. Personal communication with M. Sulaymanov, Chong Aryk, 9 October 2014.

‘MY POOR PEOPLE, WHERE ARE WE GOING?’ 13

consist of compilations of catechisms, collections of important prayers, short booklets explaining how Islam relates to important family affairs (funerals, marriage, child-rearing), and even instructional manuals outlining how to properly perform namaz (prayer). Additionally, popular theologians such as Kadyr Malikov publish their own books. Some of these works address, in an accessible way, issues like the true meaning of jihād, the importance of ijtihād (independent reasoning), tolerance in a multi-confessional state, the differences between ‘official, traditional Islam’ and so-called ‘folk Islam’, and the relationship between religion and national tradition (Malikov 2014).

These sorts of publications may appear somewhat quotidian and unremarkable, and in many respects they are. However, their focus on rudimentary religious knowledge is precisely why they constitute such a crucial channel through which the national theology can be widely disseminated: their focus on basic questions of belief and practice serves to concretise objectified understandings of traditional Kyrgyz Islam in a way that is easily comprehensible by ordinary believers. At the same time, the doxa and practice of traditional Kyrgyz Islam is subtly politicised and contrasted against other, more putatively ‘radical’ theologies. Kadyr Malikov’s Kratkoe posobie po Islamu (A Short Handbook on Islam), for example, contains a chapter on ‘political organisations, movements, jamaats (groups), and parties’, but the chapter is largely devoted to explaining concepts such as jihād, terrorism and takfirism (accusations of unbelief), as well as condemning organisations like the Islamic State, Hizb ut-Tahrir and the Islamic Movement of Turkestan (Malikov 2014, pp. 100–35). The implication is that beliefs and practices associated with traditional, moderate Kyrgyz Islam naturally diverge from the extremist theological positions espoused by such groups.

In tandem with the state, Kyrgyzstan’s religious authorities play a crucial role in objectifying and propagating traditional Kyrgyz Islam as a national theology. Alongside the sermons delivered at Friday mosque and the various religious opinions delivered by the ulama, it is educational initiatives, ranging from curricula taught in Islamic schools to religious instruction in mosques and the publication of various forms of religious literature, that serve as the cornerstone of its efforts. Of course, while the Muftiyat is not publicly concerned with nationalism as such, the interplay between religion, national identity and the nation-state is nevertheless subtly embedded in the Maturidi-Hanafi theology it embodies. As we will see, however, traditional Kyrgyz Islam is not a static set of beliefs. In the next section, the article discusses how the dispute over veiling, which came to a head with the appearance of the controversial billboards, reveals the fissures in the national theology and makes clear how the meaning of being Kyrgyz and Muslim is constantly being contested.

Veiling and the renegotiation of traditional Kyrgyz Islam

Objectified notions about traditional Kyrgyz Islam are in many respects at the heart of anxieties about the imposition of non-Kyrgyz religious customs and their potential for undermining Kyrgyz national identity. Veiling has played a central role in these debates. On the one hand, the hijāb functions as a ‘universal’ marker of Islam, insofar as veiling is understood by Muslims and non-Muslims alike as being a sign of Islamic piety (Mahmood 2005; Fernando 2010; Gökarıksel & Secor 2012; McBrien 2017). At the same

14 VINCENT M. ARTMAN

time, attitudes towards veiling vary substantially among Muslims with different philosophies, beliefs and cultural backgrounds. These divergences, of course, frequently have an ethno- national dimension. As Kadyr Malikov explains:

We do not have a conflict between religion and national tradition … we have conflict between [different] national understandings [of Islam] … . For example, traditions [concerning] the hijāb are a big cultural problem … . First of all, the black colour is an Arabic [custom]. And [their] hijāb is worn over the [whole] body. Of course, this is not a problem [in general], but it is a [particular] form of wearing [the hijāb]. It is not Kyrgyz.20

Malikov’s perspective speaks to an objectified understanding of Islam, wherein fault lines over the hijāb emerge from the friction generated by the confrontation of incommensurate religious beliefs and practices shaped by different cultural contexts. The dissonance engendered by conservative modes of veiling thus stems from how ‘foreign’ modes of practising Islam introduce symbolic elements into the Kyrgyz religious economy that are recognised as universal while also being experienced by some as incongruous with the local customs that are said to characterise traditional Kyrgyz Islam.

As a pan-Islamic symbol, the hijāb is not viewed as objectionable in and of itself, although many secular-minded Kyrgyz and others may indeed see it as a worrisome sign of deepening social conservatism and religious influence in the public sphere. However, the association of certain forms of veiling with Arab, Pakistani or even Uzbek culture, which tend to be coded as ‘conservative’, ‘fundamentalist’ or ‘radical’ (Rashid 2001; ICG 2012; Tromble 2014), suggests that those forms of veiling are interpreted as an implicit challenge to dominant narratives about ‘authentic’ Kyrgyz religious traditions.

For many hijābis, then, the decision to wear the veil collides with social expectations and narratives surrounding national tradition. Ainura, for example, is a young hijābi who lives in Bishkek. She reports that, despite progress in recent years, the social stigma surrounding veiling remains palpable, particularly among older generations, for whom the hijāb is a sign of religious zealotry, or even extremism.21 Ainura went to school in a madrasa operated by the Tablighi Jama’at, a group that originated in South Asia and adheres to a conservative, textualist interpretation of Islam. Despite the fact that it is strictly apolitical and devoted primarily to da’wa (calling Muslims to the mosque), the group is banned as an extremist organisation in most of Central Asia and Russia; however, with the approval of the Muftiyat and the State Commission for Religious Affairs, it operates freely in Kyrgyzstan.

However, the Tablighi Jama’at has still attracted controversy. Its conservative views mean that it has been accused by some, including the State Commission for Religious Affairs, of ‘laying the ground for the development of radical extremist movements’.22 This assessment has been disputed by others, who note that the organisation does not involve itself in politics and may therefore give people who might otherwise join more politicised Islamist organisations, such as Hizb ut-Tahrir, an avenue to explore a textualist

20Personal communication with K. Malikov, Bishkek, 17 December 2014. 21A pseudonym. Personal communication with Ainura, Bishkek, 1 October 2014. 22Personal communication with Z. Tursunbekov, Bishkek, 2 December 2014.

‘MY POOR PEOPLE, WHERE ARE WE GOING?’ 15

interpretation of Islam in a politically disengaged way (Ismailbekova & Nasritdinov 2012, p. 181; Malikov 2013).

Tablighi Jama’at has come under fire from Kyrgyz nationalists as well. In the past, members of the group have been criticised for wearing loose-fitting pants and skirts, long beards and skullcaps, which some people view as alien to Kyrgyz culture. As one observer protested: ‘these are Pakistani clothes, these are not Kyrgyz clothes’ (quoted in Ismailbekova & Nasritdinov 2012, p. 189). Such complaints about dress styles, which invoke both religious and nationalist anxieties, mirror the fears about the hijāb being a vector for Arabisation and mankurtism. And while members of Tablighi Jama’at have altered their attire to better conform to Kyrgyz sensibilities, stereotypes, particularly those surrounding the hijāb, persist. According to Ainura:

People who lived in Soviet times do not understand our religion. They criticise us and say, ‘since you are Kyrgyz you should not wear the hijāb’. But youth have a good understanding about Islam. [Older people] claim that Kyrgyz women never covered themselves … . Some people say, ‘I am not a Muslim, I am a Kyrgyz’. But being a Kyrgyz means being a Muslim. A long time ago the Kyrgyz prayed to fire and to stones. But today we are Muslims.23

For Ainura, as for many other Muslim women, wearing the hijāb is a central aspect of the performance of Muslim subjectivity. She does not perceive any contradiction between donning a headscarf and being Kyrgyz. What this suggests is that veiling has become not just a focal point for debates about religion and national identity, but also a site of contestation over the terms of that debate.

Today, the notion that the hijāb can and should be reimagined as consistent with Kyrgyz national culture is being articulated daily by activists and ordinary women like Ainura, for whom the supposed contradiction between piety and nationality is largely irrelevant. Thus, when World Hijāb Day was celebrated in Bishkek in February 2017, posters for the event depicted a silhouetted hijābi, her headscarf fashioned from a map of the world—an image that in many respects symbolised the universality of the Muslim community. At the same time, however, the event’s slogan was ‘We are different, but we are united!’.24 This motto acknowledged the umma’s aspirational wholeness while simultaneously recognising its manifest national and cultural diversity.

The hijāb was thus subtly reimagined as part of Kyrgyz Islam; meanwhile, ‘traditional’ Kyrgyz styles are being reimagined as being part of the broader Islamic cultural heritage. During the event, the fashion designer Aizhan Akylbekova alluded to this duality, noting that wearing the veil was ‘not just a sign of obedience to Allah, but a tribute to the history and traditions of the Kyrgyz nation’.25 However, while Akylbekova was dressed in traditional Kyrgyz clothes including a traditional elechek headdress, many participants wore other, more concealing forms of the hijāb. Concerns about the ‘appropriateness’ of veiling

23Personal communication with Ainura, Bishkek, 1 October 2014. 24‘Mezhdunarodnyi Den’ Platka V Bishkeke’, Umma. Islamskii zhurnal, 2017, available at: http://

ummamag.kg/ru/news/752_mezhdunarodnyi_den_platka_v_bishkeke, accessed 2 February 2017. 25‘Vsemirnyi Den’ Platka Obedinil Bolee Trekhsot Zhenshin’, Umma. Islamskii zhurnal, 2017, available at:

http://ummamag.kg/ru/news/757_vsemirnyi_den_platka_obedinil_bolee_trehsot_zhenschin, accessed 14 April 2017.

16 VINCENT M. ARTMAN

vis-à-vis Kyrgyz national traditions, however, were essentially moot. For the participants of the World Hijāb Day events in Bishkek, wearing the hijāb—or the elechek—is part of a lived theology that integrates the universal and the particular, the religious and the national.

‘We are different, but we are united!’ can thus be read not only as a testament of Kyrgyzstan’s inclusion in the Islamic world, but also an appeal against the tendency to draw distinctions between the hijāb and ‘authentic’ Kyrgyz forms of veiling. The slogan also carried an implicit message of peace and inter-ethnic harmony. Photographs from the event depicted a multi-ethnic group of women, some of whom were not veiled at all. The women held signs bearing messages like ‘We are citizens of the same country!’, ‘Dispute and strife—this is not us!’ and ‘Contrary to stereotypes, we have peace and friendship!’.26

Veiling was thus portrayed as a means of uniting people from different backgrounds and cultures, thereby strengthening the country, not undermining unity. So, much like the anti- veiling billboards, the World Hijāb Day events in Bishkek operated on both the national and the religious registers simultaneously.

What all of this suggests is that veiling is a grounded theological practice that is gradually being reconciled, often uncomfortably, with normative understandings of what it means to be Kyrgyz; indeed, what it means to be a Kyrgyz Muslim. The cultural landscape of Kyrgyzstan is changing inexorably as a result. Scholars in the 1990s could write of the ‘cold breeze of scientific atheism’ blowing down Bishkek’s wide boulevards and call into question whether Kyrgyzstan ‘is a Muslim country or not’ (Gardaz 1999, p. 276). Today, Islam’s dynamic and evolving place in Kyrgyz society is inscribed on the urban landscape as a matter of everyday life: in the hijābis on the street and in the throngs of worshippers at mosques throughout the city on Friday afternoons, of course, but also in the vendors selling Islamic literature in the bazaars; in the Islamic banks springing up around the country; in the markets that advertise their selection of halal products; in the signs that point the way to a public namazkhana (prayer room); and in the amulets and rosaries that hang from the rear-view mirrors of Kyrgyzstan’s endlessly circulating marshrutki.

These quotidian images, however, are indicative of larger social, cultural and political shifts. Jürgen Habermas has pointed out that ‘the collective identity of a liberal community cannot remain unaffected by the fact of the political interaction between religious and non-religious parts of the population’ (Habermas 2011, p. 224). In other words, as Kyrgyz people’s relationship with, and understanding of, Islam evolves— guided, perhaps, by the normative discourses promoted by the state and the Muftiyat, but also by religious and popular media, da’wa and so forth—so too will ideas and arguments about how to articulate their identities at various scales, from the personal to the neighbourhood and the city, to the national, the international, or even in disembodied cyber spaces. The hijāb and the controversies about national identity that surround it constitute part of a broader, ceaseless negotiation of what it means to be Kyrgyz. Moreover, while ‘traditional Kyrgyz Islam’ is conceived of in objectified terms, it is not a static discourse. Rather, it is a theology that is constantly shifting in dialogue with social

26‘Mezhdunarodnyi Den’ Platka V Bishkeke’, Umma. Islamskii zhurnal, 2017, available at: http:// ummamag.kg/ru/news/752_mezhdunarodnyi_den_platka_v_bishkeke, accessed 2 February 2017.

‘MY POOR PEOPLE, WHERE ARE WE GOING?’ 17

currents, political pressures and the evolving perspectives of the faithful themselves. Far from occupying separate spheres, the secular and the sacred are inextricably bound together.

Conclusion

As Muhammad Qasim Zaman reminds us, ‘not long ago, contrasts between “tradition” and “modernity” were a convenient shorthand way of explaining what traditional societies had to get rid of in order to become part of the modern world’ (Zaman 2002, p. 3). In a world of secular nation-states, religion has usually been consigned to the realm of the ‘traditional’, and so the persistence of religious identities and worldviews has often been treated as anomalous and a threat to the normative nationalism that underpins the modern sovereign- territorial regime. Islam in particular is often held to be incompatible, or at least uneasy with, the nation-state. But, as Justin Tse noted, the term ‘religion’ is largely ‘a construction that in the modern era has demarcated an illusory line between matters of faith and secular spaces of the purely social and political’ (Tse 2014, p. 214). The notion of ‘tradition’ itself, moreover, is neither static nor uncontested (Zaman 2002, p. 3; Salvatore 2009). The inclusion of religious perspectives in democratic discourse not only highlights the relevance of religion to the formation of the modern nation-state, but in the process, it also renegotiates religion’s meaning and significance. Social, cultural and political battlegrounds such as national identity cannot help but be affected by the outcomes of such negotiations. The secular and the religious not only overlap, but are in fact crucial in constituting one another: if ‘we are the nation, and the nation is us’ (Hallaq 2013, p. 106), then who ‘we’ are, and thus ‘who’ the nation is, is constantly in a state of becoming.

In April 2017, the theologian Kadyr Malikov was selected to become a member of the Muftiyat’s Council of Ulama. When asked what issues the council should address, he responded that religious authorities needed to accomplish ‘the reform of Islamic education, the preparation among young cadres of an Islamic intelligentsia, [and] the development of theological and legal issues that take into account modern realities … [in order] to ensure that the norms of the shariat can successfully respond to the challenges of modern society’ (Bolotbekova 2017). Malikov, who is active on social media, hinted at what some of these modern challenges might be. In a post to his followers, he noted that one of the primary challenges facing young Kyrgyz Muslims today is how to answer such questions as: ‘Who am I? First a Muslim and then Kyrgyz? Or am I Kyrgyz first and then a Muslim?’.27 As the debates surrounding the hijāb suggest, these sorts of questions are far from settled. What is clear, however, is that many Kyrgyz Muslims are already articulating ways of not having to choose.

As a final note, it should be recognised that the argument presented in this article is not intended to suggest that traditional Kyrgyz Islam is hegemonic in either the religious or political spheres. Normative Hanafism exists in a broad field of grounded theologies that are embodied and performed daily by Christians, committed secularists, Tengrists and

27‘Segodnya my mozhem tochno skazat’’, Facebook, 4 January 2017, available at: https://www.facebook. com/permalink.php?story_fbid=1454650814547905&id=731591116853882, accessed 30 January 2017.

18 VINCENT M. ARTMAN

practitioners of kyrgyzchylyk [Kyrgyz-ness], among others. Even among Muslims in Kyrgyzstan, there exists substantial diversity—in ethnicity and historical experience, of course, but also between secular or ‘cultural’ Muslims (Rowe 2007), those who combine Islam and kyrgyzchylyk, and others. In each case, the relationship between religion and the national imaginary is multifaceted, resistant to easy categorisation and possessed of its own set of dynamics. Further research is necessary in order to more fully explain the configurations of theology, political ideology and daily practice that inform the ways in which these too shape the social and national life of the nation-state.

VINCENT M. ARTMAN, Visiting Assistant Professor, Havighurst Centre for Russian and Post- Soviet Studies, Miami University, 322 Harrison Hall, 349 E. High St., Oxford, OH, USA. Email: [email protected]

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