AMID GROWING TURBULENCE IN CENTRAL ASIA, BELIEVERS PRACTICE ISLAMIC FAITH
A photo essay by Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert: 7/6/01

There are growing indications that Uzbekistan’s crackdown against unauthorized Islamic worship is testing popular patience. According to media reports originating in Kazakhstan, over 50 people were arrested during a protest against the mass arrests of Islamic believers, held July 2 in the Uzbek capital of Tashkent.

Tolib Yakubov, the head of the Human Rights Society of Uzbekistan, says that protests like the one staged in Tashkent have become an increasingly common occurrence in Uzbekistan, where hundreds, if not thousands of believers have been arrested in a government effort to counter the security threat posed by radical movements, including the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) and the Hizb-ut-Tahrir.

Yakubov repeated assertions that that the government crackdown was counter-productive, embroiling moderate believers with the radicals. "These circumstances [the continued persecution of believers] may give rise to big riots," Yakubov told Iranian radio. "Unfortunately the government believes that the only way of preventing this [radical activity] is to further torture and arrest people."

Many in Central Asia, spurred in part by ongoing economic difficulties, yearn to reconnect with the region’s Islamic heritage. However, the growing government wariness of Islam as a political force, not only in Uzbekistan, but also in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, threatens to close avenues for religious expression in the region, except those tightly controlled by the state.

Photographer Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert, in this photo essay, seeks to capture daily life for practicing Muslims in Central Asia today. During the past several years, Sutton-Hibbert has traveled extensively in Central Asia, visiting holy sites in Samarkand, Bukhara and Osh, as well as visiting functioning mosques throughout Kazakhtan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. These selected images depict Islamic believers from all over Central Asia.

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Posted July 6, 2001 © Eurasianet
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