For well over a year, the Uzbek government has been engaged in a campaign against Islamic "extremism," which it also calls "Wahhabism." The net has been cast broadly: the campaign has targeted all expressions of Islamic piety beyond the direct control of the government's own religious administration. And it is not just the so-called extremists who have suffered.
During the Soviet era, the predominant sentiment in Western writing about Central Asia was one of outrage at the persecution of religious practice by Communist authorities. Any sign of continued religious observance in Central Asia was seen as evidence of the failure of the Soviet experiment, and of the resilience of an authentic Central Asian Muslim culture.
Much of the debate over Islam in post-Soviet Central Asia is cast in monolithic terms: Islam is contrasted to secularism, fundamentalism to democracy. In considering complex issues in mutually exclusive categories, we reduce each side to a homogeneous whole. Yet, Central Asia, in common with the rest of the Muslim world, is heir to a rich tradition of debate and contention.
