For Solijon, the devout Muslim owner of a small restaurant in Andijan, Uzbekistan, this year’s Ramadan is memorable. Unlike previous years, officials have not forced him to sell alcohol and report on his pious guests during the holy month.
Gezi Park in downtown Istanbul has become the battleground in a struggle over the significance of Ramadan and a growing concern over the chasm that has opened between rich and poor in Turkish society.
The trial of senior members of the banned Islamic Party of Azerbaijan on charges of terrorism and plotting a government coup again has centered attention on the hyper-conservative Baku suburb of Nardaran, where the party got its start.
Afghanistan’s rapidly growing population is starting to worry officials in Kabul. The demographic issue has the potential to become a significant source of instability in the coming decades.
Devout Muslims have become increasingly assertive in Azerbaijan over the past year, as protests about an informal ban on hijabs in schools attest. But this growing assertiveness does not mean that Islamists are coalescing into an influential political force in Baku.
A powerful earthquake registering 6.2 on the Richter scale struck Ferghana Valley early July 20, affecting Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. The epicenter of the quake was about 45 kilometers south of the Uzbek city of Ferghana.
In a sign of religion’s growing influence in the South Caucasus, the founding of an organization to represent Georgia’s Muslim population has sparked an emotional face-off with the Soviet-era body for the region’s Muslims, the Baku-based Caucasus Muslim Board.
In a sign that Islam’s role in Azerbaijan may be slowly evolving, the country’s largest and only state-owned bank, the International Bank of Azerbaijan, plans this autumn to open a specialized branch offering limited Islamic banking services.
Following two deadly explosions in Kazakhstan, investigators and officials remain tight-lipped over their probes, only insistently ruling out terrorism. Many, however, are finding the hazy explanations hard to swallow, and the press is rife with speculation about the rise of Islamic radicalism.
Two weeks after a surprise pro-hijab protest by scores of Muslim believers outside Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Education, authorities are still trying to figure out who organized the show of defiance.
