Conclusion
From this overview, we may conclude that the culture of the Ferghana Valley
faces the challenge of adapting tradition to modernity, and vice versa. When these
become mutually exclusive ideologies, they can become obstacles to development
and lead to serious conflict, as has happened repeatedly. Because of this common
challenge, the borders of the valley’s three states cannot only divide but unite. Yet
is no overstatement to say that identity in the Ferghana Valley is in crisis, with each
country pointing to threats to its particular identity that it believes are emanating
from the other states. Put differently, each country in the Ferghana Valley seeks
today to deconstruct and redefine the common Ferghana identity within the confines
of its own national identity.
Yet the Ferghana region as a whole must sooner or later confront globalization,
and the manner in which it addresses the issues of tradition and modernity will
shape its development thereafter. This process today is not helped by the crisis of
education in the Ferghana Valley, which is accompanied by a sharp decline in the
status of the intelligentsia, whose authority is everywhere being challenged by
members of clergy.
The intelligentsia, meanwhile, is finding it difficult to define its own cultural
traditions in either spatial or temporal contexts. As a result, the quest for identity
in the Ferghana Valley is increasingly perceived as a choice between religion and
nationalism, with no third path.
The erosion of traditional networks and institutions in the Ferghana Valley and
the still-weak national sovereignties has opened the way to non-traditional religious
ideologies of a trans-national and pan-Islamist nature. These currents of political
Islam are emerging as primary social forces and have the potential to destabilize
the region. This is happening because governments have largely ignored this new
Islamist middle class. For the time being this group maintains a balance between
its national and religious identities, but this need not last.
In speaking of this, it is useful to distinguish between traditionalism and tradi-
tions, modernism and modernization, globalism and globalization, with each of the
former being an ideology and the latter a real process in social, economic, religious
or cultural spheres. Excessive ideologization leads to polarization and a reduction
in the space for dialogue. Social and political space lend themselves more naturally
to dialogue, which is particularly important in the context of the Ferghana Valley’s
cultural and religious situation. However, they play a positive role only when they
are grounded on civic principles of coexistence, not on ethnic or national principles.
294 SHOZIMOV, SULAIMANOV, S. ABDULLAEV
Special mechanisms are needed today to create the free social space in which key
issues affecting the Ferghana Valley can be pondered. This only can be done by
drawing on existing social and cultural capital and by developing citizens’ ability
to present and defend their views calmly, as well as to adapt them to rapidly chang-
ing circumstances. This will prevent concern for tradition from descending into an
ideology of traditionalism, modernization from becoming a narrow modernism, and
globalization from becoming a sterile ideology of globalism. It will foster favorable
conditions for people of the Ferghana Valley to adapt traditions to modernity and
vice versa. In the end, “free intellectual zones” are as important to such a region
of disputed borders as “free economic zones.”
The above analysis suggests the need to activate the social capital that inheres
in the Ferghana Valley’s rich traditions, and use it to mediate among the diverse
cultures there and also between those cultures and the modern world. This social
capital undeniably derives from an Islamic identity, but it is manifest through locally
rooted Muslim traditions that affirm the co-existence of religion with secular and
intellectual values. It is possible that many received traditions will be discarded,
but others can be restated in a contemporary context and thereby preserved. This
process will forge links between tradition and modernity.
The existing infrastructure of the Ferghana Valley limits both cross-border
business contacts and the exchange of ideas that is so vital for the region’s cultural
revival. Poor communications create immense possibilities for radical groups.
There is therefore an urgent need not only to expand transport across the Ferghana
Valley, but also to open new channels for communication that will help a world of
traditions cope with contemporary changes.
Notes
1. Shamshad Abdullaev, “Ob odnom fenomene ferganskoi kultury: genesis i mestnost,”
unpublished manuscript, 2008.
2. “Arkheologiia uzbekskoi identichnosti,” Etnograficheskoe obozrenie, no. 1, 2005
(Special Issue).
3. Adam Metz, Musulmanskii Renessans, Moscow, 1973, p. 473.
4. See Abu Khamid Al-Gazali, Krushenie pozitsii filosofov, translated from Arabic.
Moscow, 2007, p. 277; Pulat Shozimov, “Problemy vzaimootnosheniia razuma i very vo
vzgliadakh Abu Khamida al-Gazali: sovremennyi kontekst,” Izvestiia of the Academy of
Sciences of the Republic of Tajikistan, series Filosofiia i Pravo, no. 3, 2008, pp. 51–59.
5. See Bakhtior Babadzhanov, “Ferghana: Istochnik ili zhertva islamskogo fundamen-
talizma?” Central Asia and the Caucasus, vol. 4, no. 5, 1999.
6. Order no. 1247 of the president of the Republic of Tajikistan Emomali Rakhmon
“On Procedures for the Conduct of Events Related to Customs and Rites of the Republic
of Tajikistan.”
7. Law of the Republic of Tajikistan “On Regularizing Traditions and Ceremonies in
the Republic of Tajikistan,” no. 272, July 8, 2007.
8. Pulat Shozimov’s interview with Muradullo Davlatov, Dushanbe, 22 July, 2007.
9. At present Muhammadsharif Khimmatzoda, one of the IRPT members of the parlia-
CULTURE IN THE FERGHANA VALLEY 295
ment, left due to illness. Thus, only one IRPT representative remains—Mukhiddin Kabiri,
the chairman of the IRPT.
10. Pulat Shozimov’s interview with Mukhiddin Kabiri, Dushanbe, March 2007.
11. Personal archive of the writer Lutfi Said, Sughd Museum of Historical-Regional
Studies, Manuscripts Department, Sughd province, Isfara city. Their patents were called
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