Image by neweurasia's Ben, CC-usage.

Editor’s note: Religion and totalitarianism exist uncomfortably together in Turkmenistan. “Perhaps divine law will be able to buck against the narcissism of the ruling regime? ” asks neweurasia’s Annasoltan in this open-ended series on the dangerous dance between the official Turkmen personality cult, which aspires to divinity, and the conscience of the individual believer. Also check out Professor H.B. Paksoy’s series, especially, “The Prayer Carpets of Marx” and “The Conversation of the Gods”.

They set aside for God a share of their produce and of their cattle, saying, ‘This is for God’ — so they pretend — ‘and this is for our idols’.

– Qur’an, 6:136

In my last post I reviewed the general scene for religion in Turkmenistan.  Much of what I said there probably came as little surprise to you.  “Yeah, it’s a totalitarian regime,” you probably said, “they want to control people’s minds.”  But have you ever stopped to think of what that means?

Brainwashing can be literal, such as when the authorities use psychiatric torture to bend the wills of dissidents.  But the brainwashing is more profound than just neurochemical manipulation.

When the state becomes divine

The situation for pacifists is especially telling.  That’s because more often than not pacifists are motivated by ideology, whether the tenets of a specific creed, such as Jehovah’s Witnesses, or the values of a general humanism, as in the case of conscientious objectors.  They are arrested and convicted to prison terms because the constitution makes military service compulsory and describes it as a “sacred duty”.

That the state would choose these words isn’t ironic or a joke.  The reality is much more unsettling: the authorities have literally replaced God with themselves.  In my interview with France24, I explained that the President is portrayed as a supernatural person with special powers on a mission to protect the country, and how this becomes a free pass for the government to do whatever it wants.

But believe it or not, according to Corley, Turkmenistan isn’t even the worst offender:

Although religious freedom does not exist in Turkmenistan, the situation for religious believers is even worse in Uzbekistan.  State violence and punishments for peaceful religious activity are far more widespread there.  Looking across the wider world, too, there are worse places, such as Saudi Arabia and the Maldives, where only state-approved Islam is allowed, or Iran, where many communities face severe problems.

I don’t think we can make such kinds of measures.  These are all societies that have made themselves the arbiter of belief for their people.  Just because Turkmenistan evinces a nominal pluralism, religions still exist under the boot of the official ideology.  My neweurasia colleague Averroes has some thoughts on how religion is regulated even in some very surprising places.

Islam to the rescue?

Yet, it seems that interest in Islam is reawakening among the population.  Perhaps divine law, which has stronger philosophical and emotional grounds to claim objectivity (or at least authority), will be able to buck against the narcissism of the ruling regime?

Felix Corley of Forum 18 says that whatever awakening there could be,  it would have weak foundations.  Consider that during the Soviet era only four mosques were allowed to function openly in Turkmenistan and religious instruction was curtailed.  Most Turkmens today only have a vague notion of their religious heritage.

But the government isn’t taking any chances. According to Corley, the authorities are seeking total control:

The government seeks to control Islam entirely, with restrictions on Islamic education, restrictions on the Hajj and denial of permission for independent mosques to operate.

Even the hajj is tightly controlled, often under very flimsy pretexts.  Meanwhile, although about 90 percent of the population are Sunni Muslims, there is no official religious instruction at public schools.

To cap it off, the government is even trying to replace the Qur’an itself with Niyazov’s “spiritual guide book”, the Ruhnama.  Reading lessons are compulsory throughout schools, including universities, and it has been placed on the same shelf as the Qur’an in mosques.  There is even a mosque engraved with inscriptions not of the Qur’an but of the Ruhnama!

Neverthless, Islam has deep roots in Turkmenistan, and as my neweurasia colleague Prof. Paksoy points out, it also taps into some very old pagan currents.  Whatever happens in the short-term, there is only so long that Islam as a force can tolerate the government’s oppression.  If Protestantism couldn’t be successfully co-opted in Nazi Germany, we shouldn’t be surprised if Islam, which is a far more systematic religion, rears its head eventually in Stalinist Turkmenistan.