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

part, spurred him to a conscious close relationship with the highly
respected Shaykh Sayyid Baraka (d. 1403-04), well-known in history
as a spiritual teacher of Amir Timur. The sources mention that the
most influential representatives of the clergy had unconditionally
recognised the superiority of Sahibqiran’s decisions and publicly
blessed practically all his initiatives, including war campaigns.
3
 This
fact can be seen as one of the well-considered tactical-strategical
steps which relieved tensions between secular authorities and the
‘ulama’ (clergy), established a rational balance between secular and
religious forces in socio-political life and, consequently, strengthened
the power of his state.
Observing the history of Mawarannahr in the Middle Ages and the
new time, it becomes clear that whenever a reasonable consensus
was reached between the political forces in power, on the one hand,
and the clergy, which had assumed indisputable authority over the
military-tribal and urban aristocracy, on the other hand, the rate of
general progress in the state increased. It is also important to note
that such periods, tentatively speaking, were marked by the superiority
of the secular political forces, responsible for decision-making on
issues of secular or worldly character. One of the most convincing
examples of this can be found in the time of Amir Timur’s rule. The
proviso “tentatively” is used here to stress that, with regard to that
epoch of the region’s history, as, by the way, with regard to the rest
of the vast Islamic world, it seems to be very difficult to define the
exact boundary between the domains of the secular and of the
religious/spiritual authorities.
Yet, whenever the balance between these two constituents was
upset and the clergy’s influence on political issues became stronger,
this caused socio-political chaos, which sometimes even led to the
physical elimination of rulers.
4
 Evidence of this can be found in the
socio-political situation in the region at the end of the 15
th
-beginning
of the 16
th
 century, when the influence on socio-political life of the
Naqshbandi Sufi brotherhood, headed by such authoritative religious
leaders as Khwaja ‘Ubayd Allah Ahrar (d. 1490), Makhdum-i A‘zam
(d. 1542), Mawlana Lutf Allah Chusti (d. 1571) and Khwajas of Juybar
(16
th
-17
th
 centuries) reached its apogee. In that period of Central

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Islam and Secular State
Asian history all the negative consequences soon became apparent
of the gradual transformation of Islam into a religion whose ideology
was predominantly determined by the clergy. This furthered the
intensification of subjectivism in interpretations of the fundamental
provisions of Islam, as well as their transformation into a delicate
social mechanism reacting to all more or less serious changes in socio-
political and socio-economical life. We can judge this from the rapid
development in this period of a special literary-philosophical genre,
dedicated to providing rulers with recommendations on various
questions regarding the governance of a state.
5
One of the characteristics of that historical epoch of Mawarannahr
was the intensification of the process of its socio-political
fragmentation, which led, in turn, to a noticeable worsening of the
socio-economical stagnation in the region. The main reasons behind
that process, of course, lay in somewhat another dimension and were
connected mainly with conquest campaigns carried out by invaders
of Mawarannahr, particularly nomadic Uzbek tribes headed by
Muhammad Shaybani-khan (1500-1510) and, later, by the Iranian
ruler Nadir-shah Afshar (1736-1747). In fact, since the end of the
18
th
-beginning of the 19
th
 century, the factor of external influences,
which played a disintegrative role in the socio-political life of
Mawarannahr and all Central Asia, was significantly increased due to
the contest between Russia and Great Britain for control over the
region and the strengthening of military-political expansionism in the
foreign policy of Russian czarism towards this part of the world.
However, the intensified involvement in this period of the clergy,
represented by influential shaykhs and the ‘ulama’, who were often
manipulated by certain forces aspiring to achieve their own aims in
political affairs, also played its unconstructive role, furthering
internecine strife. Finally, in the 18
th
 century those processes led to a
political schism in Mawarannahr and the emergence of three small
state formations on its territory – the khanates of Bukhara, Khiva
and Khoqand.
Nevertheless, with regard to the process of state formation on the
territory of Central Asia in general, it is obvious that the predominant
feature of the evolution of the interrelation between religiosity and
secularity in questions of governing traditional Central Asian society
remained the steady strengthening of the role and significance of
secular political forces, on the one hand, and the constant narrowing
of the sphere of influence exerted by religious circles mainly to
questions of spiritual and moral character, on the other hand. The

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The search for rational balance between religiosity and secularity
257
fact that the history of Mawarannahr in the Middle Ages and in later
periods did not witness an emergence of states inclining to theocratic
methods of rule bears eloquent testimony to this. Thus, without
diminishing the role of religion, namely Islam, in the organisation of
social life in Central Asia, it can be concluded that although it is always
significant, this role never becomes dominant.
Russia’s conquest of Central Asia led to a substantial change in
the position and role of Islam in socio-political life. Essentially, it
resulted in the maximum possible exclusion of Islam from the socio-
political scene. The colonial authorities tried to achieve their aim mainly
in two ways: firstly, completely ignoring the Muslim clergy and
gradually ousting them from social life; secondly, undermining their
economic basis. For the second aim, particularly, large-scale
campaigns were carried out that provided for the reduction of the
waqf property of Islamic organisations. For all that, in their relationship
with the Muslim clergy the colonisers conducted themselves cautiously,
avoiding any open confrontation.
The Soviet epoch was to some extent different from the czarist
time. Its main characteristic was a strong tendency to minimise the
role of religion in social life. This aspiration was realised by the
methods of miltant atheism, a total offensive against the clergy and
religious institutions, and the denial of any positive potential of religion
in general. The attempts of the Turkestanian Jadidists to urge the use
of Islam’s educational potential were also rejected. The pressure put
on the clergy and the religious institutions grew steadily stronger: the
illusions of building an atheistic community turned out more and more
persistently to be the reality. Yet, such a policy, of course, could not
guarantee the eradication of religion from the life of the Muslim
community, which had been formed over the centuries: despite the
physical liquidation of a significant part of the ‘ulama’ and the
destruction of the absolute majority of Islamic institutions, the Islamic
factor did not disappear from the social scene; its role merely changed
– it became highly particular. In consequence of those policies, religion
went partly underground, transforming into an oppositional force. This
tendency did not weaken even after the period during World War II
when the Soviet authorities, under the pressure of specific historical
circumstances, were forced to permit some indulgences in the religious
sphere, as manifested, for instance, in the establishment of the Spiritual
Board of Muslims of Central Asia and Kazakhstan (1943-1992).
Moreover, the underground movement of the radical part of the
Muslim clergy, which considered itself an oppositional force, steadily

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Islam and Secular State
gained strength. It became a dangerous political factor posing a threat
to the future well-being of the ruling regime itself. The movement,
known in the Western countries as “parallel Islam,” became fertile
soil for radical religious activists. From the end of the 1980s, when it
finally became apparent that the process of the disintegration of the
former Soviet Union had become inevitable, some of them began
openly to lay claim to the role of spiritual leaders of the nation. This
revealed the absence of a classical hierarchical structure in Islam – a
fact that created favourable conditions for the initiatives of these
activists pursuing their particular goals. The experience of the
independent development of the Central Asian states in the last decade
confirms that it soon develops into a striving of certain forces towards
the establishment of political parties and organisations with a religious
tint. They aspire to exert their influence over new territories, as widely
as possible. The degree of influence of the ideas disseminated by such