Red alert: Threat of radical islamists in Kyrgyzstan
Kyrgyzstan, Politics and Society9 Comments
By zz77 under cc license
There is a red alert in Kyrgyzstan. Police patrolling the streets of Bishkek, citizens are asked to be attentive and inform police about any suspicious activity. These measures were taken after the shootings between police and armed terrorists. Police declared that the armed people were radical Islamic militants.
Religion was prohibited in the Soviet Union and Kyrgyzstan was no exception. 70 years of spiritual vacuum created a high demand for a religion in the new independent republic. As a result there was a tremendous inflow of different religious movements and organizations into the country. Small Christian sects along Catholics, traditional Islamic movements along with radical organizations spread among population. Till this day Kyrgyz government ignored the issue of religion due lack of institutional capacities and political will. 
Recent events proved that the radical islamist organizations are gaining power in the country. Four policemen were killed in fights with terrorists near Bishkek .
Marat Imankulov, first deputy of the State Committee of National Security, noted that this group was established in 2008 and had about 20 members. According to Mr. Imankulov the terrorist group was planning a number of terror acts against police and Western visitors. Allegedly the suspects have close ties with partners from the UAE, Qatar, Russia and the United States. Kyrgyz police informed that the arrested men belong to radical Islamic movement of Salafist jihadism.
These events triggered a wide debate among government officials and society. On 21st of January more than 50 imams were fired or quit. According to the official information the attestation of imams is part of governments efforts to fight religious extremism.
However it is obvious that Islam is gaining political power in the country. On Fridays mosques are full of people and an observer can see that there are many young people even teenagers among them. Some experts are worried that there are more mosques and medreses are built than schools.
Islamic banking was implemented few years ago. Ministry of Economic Regulation has so called Halal Industry Unit.
Politicians could not resist the opportunity to win some votes either. Kyrgyz politicians can be seen attending Friday’s prayer but some even go further. Mr. Tursunbai Bakir uulu, member of parliament, was first to use his religious views as an election platform. He openly demonstrates that he is devoted muslim and follows Sharia.
Mr. Kanibek Osmonaliev, member of parliament and member of Committee on Education, Culture, Information and Religious Policy, in his interview declared that Kyrgyz police used claims on religious extremism to justify its own actions. Mr. Osmonaliev doubted that arrested people were salafists.
Meanwhile Kyrgyz Parliament is to discuss amendments to the existing Law on Religious Freedom. Designers of the amendments believe that new law will help to fight religious extremism in Kyrgyzstan. A bystander would notice that the law amendments are to be discussed after the bloody murders and terror attacks allegedly by the extremist group.
Kyrgyzstan was never country with deep Islamic values. It was always melted together with its nomadic traditions which are much more liberal. The reason of such hike could be also attributed to poverty and disappointment in democratic way of governance.
RSS Feeds
Podcasts
“Red alert: Threat of radical islamists in Kyrgyzstan”
Yet another one. Read: a ruminated pretext to get more Western money for fighting terror and to have an alibi to crackdown on the Uzbek minority.
“Some experts are worried that there are more mosques and medreses are built than schools.”
Well yes, they conveniently forget that the overall education system is completely impoverished and corrupted and that many secular schools are nests of criminality.
“Kyrgyzstan was never country with deep Islamic values. It was always melted together with its nomadic traditions which are much more liberal. The reason of such hike could be also attributed to poverty and disappointment in democratic way of governance.”
Yes, this is standard refrain: ‘Kyrgyz were never really Muslims because they were nomads’. But I don’t think that it still sticks. Maybe the return of Islam -which, btw, is going faster among ethnic Kyrgyz lately than among other groups – has more to do with i) a redefinition of identity – the Kyrgyz are no longer nomads, less and less rural and many ‘nomadic traditions’ have become corrupted or dysfunctional and ii) a reaction against the disastrous neo-liberal westernisation policies that were pushed through by NGOs, IFIs, UNDP etc… and their Kyrgyz accomplices during the ’90s.
You know, certain Kyrgyz who claim that ‘Arab Islam does not fits in our Kyrgyz traditions’ live according to everything but those traditions.
Reply
Bai Ülgen Reply:
February 24th, 2011 at 12:35 pm
@Turgai, Islam is the export of US – against nationalism. This is exactly what they did with Iran thirty years ago. Turkey is moving slowly towards Islam, Egypt is already Islamic. And now, it’s Central Asia’s turn: the last defender of a Secular State in Islamic world.
We Turkmens, Kyrgyzes, and Kazakhs have our own history and culture, we have our own Tengri. IMHO, it’s because there’s not a common educational scheme for Central Asian (Turkic) identity; people don’t know their rich humanistic history, so they claim Islam (a completely political religion, history of which is full of blood – untold) as part of themselves, in seek for a “missing” part in their identity.
Reply
Turgai Reply:
February 24th, 2011 at 5:23 pm
@Bai Ülgen, “Islam is the export of US”. You seem to be a smart person. You don’t believe that yourself, don’t you? And you know, I am skeptical about the whole discourse about ‘our own culture’. Obviously, the ‘own culture’ did not prevented the complete sell-out of the country to international financial institutions and foreign NGOs.
Reply
Bai Ülgen Reply:
February 24th, 2011 at 5:36 pm
@Turgai, Islam is the export of US. For this, you don’t have to say “I’m a smart person”. Who are Al Qaeda? They were Mujaheedins, supported by all means by US against USSR. Who is behind the current government of Iran, you think? Who brought the Islamic regime in Iran to power? Or who is changing Turkey from a secular state towards a Islamic one? It’s just Central Asia’s turn.
Anyhow, you’re mixing two things: humanistic values (our non-Islamic background) are different from country’s economical and political history. Central Asia’s current situation is because of political history. You find the same culture among Tatars and other Siberian Turkic people living in Russia, and also among Turkmens & Kazaks in Iran: we have this “own culture”, we always had our non-Islamic background, but neither Russian Tatars nor Iranian Turkmens have a situation like Central Asia.
Turgai Reply:
February 24th, 2011 at 6:04 pm
Bai Ülgen, that certain groups and institutions in the US are behind the Iranian *opposition* both that in exile, in the Green Movement or by ethnic separatist groups in Iran is a fact. That the US (or the UK) are behind the Iranian regime a mere fallacy. The Iranian revolutionaries came to power through their own strenght and dynamics, without any support from the USSR (who initially hoped to highjack the revolution) or anyone else, and if the Iranian revolution happened with such wide popular participation it is because there was social ground for it.
And maybe you’re right that the US and several European countries played a role in the Iranian revolution in the sense that they supported the unpopular and decadent monarchy and thus created ground for upheaval.
I knew that you would bring up the US support for the Afghan Mujahedin and the Arab volunteers who came to support them. Yes, that happened as it often happened in the reality of the Cold War back then. Now in Afghanistan, they face the consequences in the form of the former Mujahedin and Communist commanders turned warlords turned officials in the puppet regime.
As for Islam: it was already there in Khorassan and Turkestan long before the US even came into being. So how can it be a ‘US export product’? :)
This being said, you’re right that historically, there is a Turkic pagan culture shared in one form or another throug large swaths of Eurasia. Yet in the current phase of history, it has become marginal and certainly not a movement that can put up resistance against US and other imperialism like you want to do too.
Finally, the track record of nationalism is a disaster written in blood (cf. the Balkans, the Caucasus, Osh, … ).
http://www.khilafah.com/index.php/multimedia/books/10607-book-emerging-world-order-the-islamic-khilafah-state
[...] Rahat informs his readers that police is on a patrol in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan's capital city, after the shootings between police and armed terrorists, who were identified by the officials as radical Islamic militants. Tweet [...]
[...] Перевод поста Rahat (ENG) [...]
@Turgai, First, there is nothing about Uzbek minority in the article. In fact all arrested persons are ethically Kyrgyz.
Second, Kyrgyzstan never was a deeply Islamic country, for instance the first mosque in Naryn was built in 1990s. I see no harm in reminding and remembering that modern Kyrgyzstan is more pagan rather than Muslim.
@Bai Ulen, I agree with point that in general Central Asia has its own religious base which is different from Islam. However, CA countries tend to forget about their Tengri.
Reply
Turgai Reply:
February 25th, 2011 at 11:38 am
@Rahat, “Central Asia has its own religious base which is different from Islam. However, CA countries tend to forget about their Tengri.” The result is that many have, in fact, no culture: not Muslim, not pagan. Expect for imitating parody of Western culture.
Reply