Uzbekistan
Fundamentalist Islam
In light of the role that
Islam
has played throughout Uzbekistan's history, many
observers expected that Islamic
fundamentalism
would gain a strong hold after
independence brought the end of the Soviet Union's official
atheism
. The expectation
was that an Islamic country long denied freedom of religious practice would undergo a
very rapid increase in the expression of its dominant faith. President Karimov has
justified authoritarian controls over the populations of his and other Central Asian
countries by the threat of upheavals and instability caused by growing Islamic
political movements, and other Central Asian leaders also have cited this danger.
In the early 1990s, however, Uzbekistan did not witness a surge of Islamic
fundamentalism as much as a search to recapture a history and culture with which few
Uzbeks were familiar. To be sure, Uzbekistan is witnessing a vast increase in
religious teaching and interest in Islam. Since 1991, hundreds of mosques and
religious schools have been built or restored and reopened. And some of the Islamic
groups and parties that have emerged might give leaders pause.
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