biz javob beramiz
).
Soon a large crowd of the curious did assemble, many arriving by bicycle. There
were large numbers of teenagers and even children, who are shown in the video-
tapes walking idly near the City Hall and on the square. At one point the operator
of one of the video cameras is heard to say, “Thank God, a crowd is gathering . . .
This is what we needed” (Talpa boshlanayapti, Khudoga shkur, ashinisi kerak edi
bizga
). Note that several of these speakers use a variation of the Russian word for
crowd, tolpa, which almost means “mob,” and that Akromiya was working hard
to mobilize the curious or disgruntled for its own ends.
Traditional religious leaders who were drawn to Babur Square posed a problem
for Akromiya. One was filmed calling on everyone to disperse. The Akromiya fighter
immediately interrupted him and forced him to look directly at the camera. As he
did so he yelled, “Your intentions are different from ours. Where is the second one
of [the mullahs]? Drive them out of here” (Bitta niyatingiz bo’lay [bo’lak] yuribsiz
. . . Qani haligi ikkinchisi? Chikarib yuboring mana shularni
). Akromiya activists
were eager to remove such voluntary “anti-agitators” from the square.
The three extant videos leave the clear impression that most of the people who
gathered in the square and at the City Hall wanted to leave as soon as they saw
guns everywhere. But Akromiya activists would not let them disperse, as proven
by the cordons set up at the exit points. One of Akromiya’s videos actually records
one of the armed insurgents telling someone on Babur Square, “You can enter . . .
but you cannot leave” (Kirish bor . . . chiqish yo’q).
134
Beyond this, the Akromiya’s camera operators recorded scenes of large numbers
of armed militants among the crowd, Akromiya snipers on rooftops, armed men
in positions around the City Hall, banks being seized on nearby Fitrat Street, and
other indications of violent intention. Some militants even pose before the cam-
336 BABADJANOV, MALIKOV, NAZAROV
eras, grandly holding their guns at the ready. One video sequence shows young
fighters in front of the City Hall preparing Molotov cocktails. Overall, the films
recorded more than a hundred young men with rifles in front of City Hall and on
Babur Square. They show terrorists leading into the City Hall columns of hostages,
among them ordinary soldiers, City Hall guards, militia officers and troops, and a
number of civilians. One of the insurgents commands a captive police officer to
“Look at the camera” ( Kameraga qara). Of the seventy hostages identified, nearly
half were civilians.
What was Akromiya’s purpose in so deliberately filming its actions? Why did its
members film armed hostage-taking, including of civilians, and force them, with guns
pointed at their heads, to look into the camera? Obviously, they intentionally created
a large body of highly compromising evidence that could be used against them.
The camera operators themselves provide some answers. Thus, when the lens
catches a group of Akromiya militants armed with AK-47s sitting on the edge of
Babur Square, the operator calls out for them to “Come closer, let me film you for
history” ( Kelinglar, sizlarniyam tarix uchun olib qo’yay). When a crowd of women
saw they were being filmed, one of them asked, “Why are you filming us?” ( Nima
uchun bizlarni videoga olayapsizlar?
), to which the cameraman replied, “For a
new government” ( Yangi hokimiyat uchun).
However differently the Andijan events might be interpreted, it is clear that the
Akromists confidently believed they would triumph, that they themselves would
constitute the new government, and that their films would therefore become im-
portant documents in forging a new and revolutionary history.
Reflecting on developments in the Uzbek sector of the Ferghana Valley, one should
not be surprised that Yo’ldoshev and similar leaders of informal religious communi-
ties would have produced an often contradictory body of writing, or that many of
their views would have come into conflict with those of the bearers of traditional
religious knowledge. In spite of their ambition to become “connoisseurs of truth,”
they suffered from their lack of having had any systematic religious education.
The dramatic increase in the number of translated sacred texts and theological
works freed them from dependence on traditional theologians, yet caused them to
turn to “experts” who in most cases already were thoroughly radicalized and who
harbored their own leadership ambitions.
135
This set the stage for mutual hostility
and recriminations between the traditionalists and the new Wahhabis.
In spite of strict government controls, the signs of emerging re-Islamization
had been evident even in Soviet times. Calls to purify Islam and Muslims found
a particularly receptive audience in post-Soviet Uzbekistan and gave rise to many
new groups, including extremist and terrorist ones. From the outset, all manifesta-
tions of this process of re-Islamization found their focus in the Ferghana Valley,
and it was there that Wahhabi ideology first took root.
136
Re-Islamization brought
many positive gains, including freedom of worship and a revival of spiritual values.
However, it had a negative side as well, in the form of aggression, violence, and
ISLAM IN THE FERGHANA VALLEY 337
even terrorism, much of it directed against the government but just as much aimed
at the conservative majority of believers, who were seen as political conformists
and followers of the “wrong” Islam. The majority applied the popular label Wah-
habi to all those whom they considered strangers,
137
including HT and Akromiya,
while the new groups acted on the principle that “Whoever is not with us is against
us.” Thus, intolerance bred intolerance.
Law-enforcement bodies were entirely unprepared for this explosion of reli-
gion, ideological ferment, and political-religious aspirations. Naturally they took
the side of the conformist majority, or conservatives, who were the bearers of the
ancient regional tradition of political loyalty. Accordingly, official bodies adopted
the positions and approaches of the conservatives with respect to all those who
were non-conformists, and in doing so fostered an environment conducive to
further dissent.
Some of the resulting groups, like Tablighi Jamaat and HT, became branches
of Muslim parties elsewhere, while others, like Ahli Hadith and Ahli Qur’an, were
more locally grounded but pursued the same goals with the same slogans. Nearly
all of them appeared in the Ferghana Valley, mainly in those parts belonging to
Uzbekistan. Underlying these many currents was certainly an attempt, if only in
embryonic form, to bring about some sort of Reformation within Islam. However,
this effort could not make headway among the population at large, and so descended
increasingly into aggression and terror.
Jadidism, the first reformist and modernist religious movement in the former
Russian Empire, arose under the direct influence of similar undertakings in Egypt
and Turkey. Bolshevism interrupted this movement but did not kill it. With the
religious revival that began in the late 1970s a reformist movement once more
slowly emerged, again under the influence of reformers from the eastern (Maududi
from India) and western parts (Muhammad Abdo/Abduh, Sayid Qutb, and others)
of the Muslim world. It is fair to say that almost all branches and currents of this
religious-political reformism in the Ferghana Valley, as in Central Asia as a whole,
are fundamentally imitative, adapting the most extreme manifestations of foreign
currents to local conditions. Yet in the end the Wahhabis and their radical or Salafi
successors failed to launch real political and economic programs, or even to create
a body of ideas that could thrive locally.
The future of Hizb ut-Tahrir in Ferghana and the region appears more promising.
Recent interviews with members suggest a far smaller increase in HT membership
than the organization itself claims. At the same time, many ordinary believers now
view HT more calmly, and some imams who disagree with their ideas openly call
for the party to be legalized.
138
But the head offices in London have cut off fund-
ing for HT publications in the Ferghana Valley, and those that are issued no longer
attract much attention, especially among young people. Increased activity on their
websites, however, suggests that local leaders may be trying to reverse this.
139
Besides such formal entities, the Uzbek sector of the Ferghana Valley teems with
self-proclaimed messengers of God, and with new prophets. While their activity
338 BABADJANOV, MALIKOV, NAZAROV
is mainly limited to a single village or urban district, their very appearance and
popularity attest to the crisis of identity that persists even in the face of official
propaganda about Islamic values.
The core of nearly all radical groups and parties are young people between
the ages sixteen and thirty. With no religious education at all, they have at best
a secondary schooling, during which they were poorly indoctrinated in “cor-
rect political thinking”
140
in a very simple, primitive form. Such people, most
of them unemployed or impoverished farmers and small businessmen who
have been sidelined by economic reform, can readily accept as immutable truth
that the only just system of government is a caliphate. Faced with seemingly
insurmountable difficulties in their personal and economic lives, such young
people easily embrace the notion of an ideal realm on behalf of which they can
struggle.
141
Theirs is an ideology of the Muslim “lumpenproletariat,” defined
in terms of jihad in its militaristic sense, so long as it is “on God’s path” and
“against infidels.”
142
Meanwhile, even so-called moderate Islamists fill their publications and ser-
mons with retrograde talk about the hostility of the “infidels” toward the faithful,
and the need for Muslims to join forces against their common enemies. We have
explained this in terms of the suppression or failure of earlier reform movements
(for example Jadids), which denied to Islam in the Ferghana a natural evolution
and left it, at the start of perestroika, in a very conservative and highly defensive
condition, constantly expecting treachery from infidels and dissenters, but with
only the most primitive means of responding to such perceived threats.
The most dangerous potential threat to the security of the region remains the
IMU, which recently re-named itself the Islamic Movement of Turkestan (IMT).
According to former members,
143
the Movement, working from its camps in Paki-
stan, is seeking new funding, mainly from Saudi Arabia.
144
But since the fall of the
Taliban in 2001 and the arrival in Afghanistan of coalition forces, IMT’s prospects
have diminished sharply.
In conclusion, it is important to review the main factors shaping re-Islamization
in the Uzbek part of the Ferghana Valley today. These include the enduring eco-
nomic problems that cause inter-group tensions, the identity crisis of a large part
of the population, the related embrace of religious identities, the absence of a
coherent national ideology and of an official strategy for dealing with the issue of
religious extremism, the decline of secular education and the control of religious
education by radicals (i.e., the “Salafization” of religious education), the dis-
semination of publications by Muslim extremist groups fostering hatred toward
domestic and foreign infidels, the absence of a cadre of trained specialists in the
area who are not themselves under the sway of one or another religious group,
and the lack of coordination of policies for dealing with such issues among the
three Ferghana states.
145
The future of religious extremism in the Uzbek sector
of the Ferghana Valley will be shaped by these elements, and by the responses to
them by official bodies.
ISLAM IN THE FERGHANA VALLEY 339
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