International Fund of al-Imam al-Bukhari Friedrich Ebert Foundation

particularly the violent forms of Islamism. The secular state can secure
recognition again for the moral potential of Islam without endangering the
secular order.
In this region with its Sufi tradition, there is also the question of whether
the renewal of a spiritual Islam in the secular states of Central Asia has a
realistic chance. It is enlightening to consider the potential for a renaissance
of the autochthonous religious orientations which played a role in this region
before its Sovietisation, such as Naqshbandiya and its slogan “dil ba-yar
– dast ba-kar”, which, loosely translated as “ora et labora,” recalls the
maxim of a Christian order. Can the revival of the spiritual – Sufi – traditions
of Central Asia contribute to the moral recovery of society in this region?
Finding a place for “religious Islam” in a secular state means seeking a
reasonable relationship between secularity and religiosity – “diniya wa
‘almaniya”: as part of this, the secular state must define the borders of its
religious tolerance with respect to gradualistic Islam; the spiritual leaders
must accept the regulation of changing worldly affairs by the secular state,
i.e. relinquish the desire to subject them to religious norms.
If Central Asia succeeds in creatively organising the relationship between
religiosity and secularity, then this region can become an example for the
entire Muslim world. This part of Central Asia – Mawarannahr – can
again become a centre of Islamic scholarship, as in the past, which not
only imports foreign ideologies but also produces again its own ideas.
This region suffered in its earlier history under communist state terrorism,
the product of European totalitarian ideology; but at the same time – also
via Russia – internalised progressive European ideas. In this sense, post-
Soviet Central Asia is “Eurasian” also in an intellectual sense. It is desirable
that this positive European legacy, the secular concept of the separation
of religion and state, now supply the impulse for the renewal of Islam –
not for a regressive “renewal” in the sense of a fundamentalist step
backwards, but in the sense of a progressive enlightenment.
Islam is a real factor in Central Asia; without the integration of Islamic

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The search for rational balance between religiosity and secularity
253
social values and fundamental elements of Islamic law into the state order,
long-term stability in the region cannot be achieved. Yet the separation of
politics and religion is the precondition for the development of society, for
its sustained capability for inner reform. Without this, it will stagnate and
finally collapse, as we have seen in the collapse of the socialist system.
Only the secular state can meet global challenges which every land faces
from the technical and economical developments presently taking place
throughout the world. The fundamentalist return to the early historical age
of Islam robs Muslim society of its future. For this reason, a “secular
consensus, ” i.e. a consensus in society about the secular order of the
state, must be maintained in the Central Asian states.
1 
See an article by Prof., Dr. Tilman Nagel in this book: Nagel T. The Development
of the Secular State in Latin Europe.
2
 See an article by Prof., Dr. Z. Munavvarov in this book.
3
 See an article by Prof., Dr. R. Wielandt in this book.
4
 See an article by Prof., Dr. G. Krämer in this book.

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254
Islam and Secular State
Prof., Dr. Zahidulla Munavvarov
(Tashkent, Uzbekistan)
The formation of a new balance between secularity and
religiosity in the Republic of Uzbekistan
The concept of the separation of religion and state is originally
based on the idea of freedom of thought and on the development of
secular rational thinking. Yet, in the countries of the Muslim East,
including Central Asia, until recent times it was not considered as
purposefully as was the case in the West throughout the centuries.
1
This vital scientific problem, which for centuries has occupied a key
place in the general spectrum of the main trends of European socio-
political science, has gained a particular relevance for the countries
of Muslim East only on the threshold of the third millennium. Its
actualisation for the states of Islamic world, caused, first of all, by
the global geopolitical shift which occurred in the world in the last