Casting light on Islamism in Central Asia... Photograph of an Almaty mosque by Flickr user Mutantfrog (CC-usage).

Editor’s note: H.B. Paksoy (D. Phil., Oxford University) explores the question of Islam’s future in Central Asia with hard stats and analysis.  This post is based upon a lecture he gave to the Texas Tech University for its Special Collections Library Presentation Series on 21 February 2002.  Please contact the author if you would like to read the original version.

We hear a lot these days about fundamentalism in Central Asia.  Let’s ask: what does it mean to be “fundamentalist” and who is more eager for Central Asians to become them?  In this part of my blog series on the subject I’m going to explore a lot of statistics below; in the second part, I explore some of the consequences of these numbers.

The numbers

In 1990, Texas had 35,0481 operating churches, clustered in 219 denominations; 58.6 % of the total population maintaining church membership; 335,389 pastors in parishes; 537,379 total clergy. This country has 203 seminaries with 52,025 students enrolled. One sect alone operating 8,913 schools, not counting other denominational parochial schools. These figures do not include resources devoted to overseas evangelical and missionary activities. This political entity has 3.5 million square miles of territory and 145,383,738 out of a total population of 248 million are church members. The political entity in question, of course, is the United States.

There are no comparable statistics for Central Asia, which has a land mass akin to that of the entire continental U.S., but with a population of approximately 80 million clustered in several irrigated patches separated by uninhabitable expanses.  For students of the region or of Islam the next statistics are well-known:

The conversation of the Gods

From the late 1930s until 1990 there were only two seminaries in Central Asia, with a student body not more than several dozen students in attendance.  The total number of operating mosques, according to varying Soviet statistics, numbered around one hundred.  The holy book Koran was published less than half a dozen times until 1984 in limited quantities.

The entire clergy was under the total control of the state. The bureaucratic apparatus of the center selected the seminary students for training and the graduating clergy were then assigned by the state apparatus to practice religion who paid them monthly.  All official clergy reported to one of the four Moslem Spiritual Boards.

In Central Asia, the US type of evangelical television or radio stations are not normal. In the earlier periods, such as between the 12th and 16th centuries, the medium of choice to spread the religion (as well as to legitimize a new ruler) was literature, especially poetry.  During this period, the region was as often an exporter of religion as a recipient of it.

However, during the past two centuries, the balance tipped and Central Asia became a target of proselytization.  In an earlier post series I spoke of the “conversation of the Gods” between native Tengriism and imported Islam and Christianity; we should now add the anti-god, Communism.

The Islamification of Central Asia was a complex phenomenon that included as much emigration of souls in as immigration of ideas. Central Asian slave-soldiers, for instance, played a decisive role in the forging of the global Islamic community that we know today.

The sources of these efforts to variously Islamicize, Christianize, or atheistize Central Asians are diverse, and now continuing with renewed vigor.  With regards to the two religions, at this point, it may be useful to remind ourselves of a fundamental difference between Christianity and Islam — hierarchy.

Christianity generally operates within a set administrative church apparatus. The Christian sects typically have a hierarchy, with a church pastor answering to a bishop of his denomination as well as the congregation. The bishop, in turn, answers to a higher level cleric, and so on.  And, some of the denominations maintain a world-wide spiritual leader, with a suitable supporting state apparatus.

None of this can be said to be happening in Islam. For example, a prayer leader only answers to his congregation. This is because Islam believes that there ought not be any type of mediation between a soul and God (a thought, by the way, that fueled the Christian Reformation in the 16th century).

With regards to Communism, again, in its original form, Islam did not make a distinction between the spiritual and the profane worlds; religion and statecraft are of one fabric. That is, when the mosques are not under the control of the political state, be it the 8th century Caliphates or the 21st century sovereign states.

Conversely, when the Soviet Union took over, it totally commanded religion and placed it firmly under state control. Nothing religious, regardless of sect, could take place without the knowledge or permission of the security organs.  Their purpose was actually the elimination of religion and hence to make the population more pliable to the demands of the state.

With the fall of Communism, the conversation of the Gods has quickly turned back to the topic of religion.  And, one God in particular, Allah, is making his point very loudly.  Next week I will discuss Islamism.