One feature in Uzbekistan that’s common to many countries is the gap between folk religion and orthodox religion. A standard version of this is Catholicism mixed with indigenous Latin American religions. Since Islam can be one of the strictest religions in terms of what it sees as idolatry, this tension tends to be higher in Islamic countries. While mainstream Islam in Uzbekistan is not fundamentalist, a bit of tension was there. In many popular tombs and places of pilgrimage, there are official signs from (something like) the Ministry of Religion. The signs say (paraphrased): “The acts of tying ribbons for good luck, making offerings for a pregnancy etc are forbidden under Islam”. Not that this stops people. Below are some women tying ribbons to a tree outside the Tomb of Daniel in Samarkand. The “grave” of Daniel is over 10m long as his corpse is said to grow every year.
As per my mention of a ministry of religion above, Islam is pretty centralised in Uzbekistan. There is an official clergy, as sanctioned by the state and other groups might have trouble getting “permits” and so on. In Tashkent, I visited the religious centre of the country: a conglomeration of the major state-affiliated medrassahs and a theological seminary. It had a quote by president Karimov engraved in enormous letters by the entrance. The Karimov regime has used the threat of fundamentalism and the war on terror as the frame from which to target dissenting clergy.
There is certainly fundamentalism in the Ferghana valley. It is the most densely populated part of Uzbekistan and is associated with the most traditional lifestyle. The Australian Department of Foreign Affair’s level of advice for the Ferghana valley is “reconsider your need to travel”. However, the religion there is also entangled with popular anti-Karimov feeling.
The sharia school of Islam that predominates in Uzbekistan is Hanafi. This is the oldest of the 4 Sunni schools and considered the most liberal. Although if you see a map of where it predominates, you’ll find that it includes Afghanistan and Pakistan which are anything but. Of course, the many decades of Soviet rule have meant that the particular flavour in Uzbekistan is probably more liberal than other Hanafi countries (with the exception of perhaps Kyrgyzstan+Kazakhstan). A lot of people seem not to drink but alcohol is available and is currently not seen as something outrageous (to the extent that it is in Iran or the Arabian peninsula). I did not see any kind of veiling that non-Muslims often associate with stereotypes of Islam. Although I did not visit the more conservative parts of the country, there doesn’t seem to be an emphasis on it. Older women and married women do often wear a loose headscarf for the hair but it was pretty much the traditional Russian babushka-headscarf. As one Kyrgyz tour guide said when a Russian tourist asked about headscarves, “we’re not Arabs!”.
Uzbekistan also used to have a large Jewish community. Most of the younger generation have left for Israel and the US since the borders were opened up after 1991, leaving a melting community of pensioners. It was interesting to be told in Israel by a particularly ill-informed and bigoted person that “Uzbekistan is an enemy state”, and that Jews left because of persectution. While I’m sure there was (and is) systemic anti-Semitism as there is in most countries with a Muslim majority, it does not seem to have been the primary cause of people leaving (unlike, for instance, Tajikistan where the country’s descent into civil war did make many Jews fear for their lives). Or so my uninformed brain thinks, let me know if you have info to the contrary. And there are plenty of Israeli tourists in Uzbekistan and I walked past the Israeli embassy in Tashkent.
Finally, I was asked my nationality many times. In the former USSR, this means your ethnic background. I was never uncomfortable with saying I was Jewish and the reaction was pretty much as normal as you could expect. One mullah at a mosque in Samarkand (who was also a scientist) described his Jewish neighbours who lived in their courtyard for many years as part of the large-scale evacuation of Jews into Uzbekistan during WWII. My grandfather himself was one of these Jews, living in Tashkent, but unfortunately I can no longer quiz him…
Samarkand synagogue
8 comments ↓
Is it true that, in the former USSR, each passport had one’s nationality written in it, “Jewish” being one, even though there was no Jewish nation?
I have met (older) Russians who identify other Russians as Jews, rather than Russians, claiming they are a different nation.
Yes, and again any kind of ethnicity was considered a separate nationality. This was the dreaded “Item 5″ on the passport which meant that Jews were unofficially all-but-barred from universities and prestigious employment etc.
However, as a correction, Soviet policy was that all ethnicities should have a Soviet republic within Russia and the Jews got theirs in the Far East (east of Mongolia). See the table at the top of this article for a complete list of ethnic homelands within Russia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_delimitation_in_the_Soviet_Union
However its location does say a lot.
Many Russian Jews I know identify themselves as Jewish (often in opposition to “Russians” who are considered ethnic Russians, and who are also considered likely to be anti-Semitic).
Your comment on alcohol. When I questioned a Muslim gentleman about the high consumption of vodka in Uzbekistan he replied “the Koran says that wine drinking is prohibited. There is no mention of Vodka”
I’ve met a girl from Israel who moved from Moscow. She said russians called them jews when they lived in Russia and now jews call
them russians ever since they moved to Israel.
Blogger could not come out of his Jewish back ground. Yes all over USSR there are Jokes about jews but they are never discriminated or victimized. On the contrary still people admire their talents and they get priority in Private sector. Jews were never Victimized in Uzbekistan and held special status and Bukhara Jews are living there since centuries. In Israel people get legal status by narrating fabricated stories about discrimination and same they do in Europe and USA. It has nothing to do with reality but to get Immigration. A person should take care of writing on a subject which requires deep knowledge. Sketchy knowledge could misguide the readers.
On #5, I’m not sure if it’s a spambot or a genuine racist and bigot (who also happened to misread my post to a degree I thought impossible). Either way, I removed the “useful” anchor text and the link to the Pakistani travel agency specialising in Central Asia. If you really were from that company, trust me, I’m doing you a favour…
My impression was that #5 was a bigot. Probably someone working in that travel agency. His comment is ridiculous.
By the way, thanks for clarifying my comment. I had no idea of the existence of the “Jewish Autonomous Oblast”. So the intention was to move all Jews there, I suppose, but it didn’t work…
From wikipedia:
In another instance, a government-produced Yiddish film called Seekers of Happiness told the story of a Jewish family that fled the Great Depression in the United States to make a new life for itself in Birobidzhan.
I’d be curious to know if anyone in the US knew the word Birobidzhan…
Yeah, but even given the bigotry the comment was misreading my post to such a level that I thought it might be generic/boilerplate comment spam!
The intention wasn’t to move Jews there originally but to provide them with the opportunity — which few took given that it was 99 million miles away. However, there are theories that the Doctor’s Plot (the accusations Stalin was pursuing that somehow surround the circumstances of his death in a sketchy way) was an indication that Stalin was considering something like deportation but died before he could accomplish this.
BTW, I have seen this turn of events being used to argue that YHWH must exist…