Globalized Islam: Watching Central Asia

Olivier Roy

Olivier Roy, lecturer at École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) and the Institut d'Etudes Politiques (Sciences-Po), gave an interesting seminar here at Berkeley on January 25. Roy is the author of several important books on contemporary Islam and Islamist movements, including, most recently, Globalized Islam: the Search for a New Ummah (Columbia University Press, 2004). In his talk here at Berkeley, he presented some of his most recent research, which compares Islamist movements in Western Europe with their counterparts in the former Soviet Union. Here, I will deal less with the comparative aspects of his scholarship and instead summarize some of his observations about the former Soviet republics of Central Asia.

In the decade following the collapse of the Soviet Union, many observers imagined that the Central Asian republics would opt for neo-Communism and/or a strict secularism along the lines of Turkey. There was and remains a consensus that the ex-Soviet -stans would fight radical Islam. At first glance, this is indeed what appears to have happened, with some success. The local Islamist movements that emerged immediately after the USSR's collapse have been largely defeated. But Roy pointed to two separate phenomena which suggest that these societies are increasingly being drawn into the orbits of Saudi Salafism, on the one hand, and Western-exported political Islam on the other. Let me begin with the latter.

By political Islam, Roy means ideologies which advocate the establishment of a pan-Islamic caliphate with borders that might range from Europe to the far East. The main group aiming for this goal in Central Asia is the Hizb-ut-Tahrir (Party of Liberation), which is today an illegal mass youth movement in Uzbekistan, where it boasts several thousand members. Hizb was founded in the 1950s and once had its base in Beirut. However, it now has a center in London, where its members have tried to avoid overt political activity. There is also a significant base in Australia. Roy believes that the Uzbek branch of the movement came from London sometime in 1996 or 1997. It achieved a breakthrough in Uzbekistan, spreading primarily among secondary school students. Unlike the Western European Hizb organizations, it is possible to talk to members of the party in Uzbekistan, whereas in the UK and elsewhere they have gone completely underground and do not publicize their headquarters. However, the movement faces repression from the authorities - repression which often attracts further adherents as family members of jailed or killed members join the party.

The other phenomenon, which is, at least for now, antagonistic to Hizb-ut-Tahrir is that of increasing numbers of Saudi-trained imams and teachers entering state institutions. All of the Central Asian republics kept the muftiat system of the Soviet period, i.e., an official clergy granted a religious monopoly by the state. (In fact, this is actually not all that different from the situation in much of Europe, most notably in France and Germany, where only official "churches" receive state-funding and the right to build houses of worship, while other groups are often classified as "cults").

Ten years ago, Roy says, it was a common place that the Central Asian dictators would want to employ only low-level clergy with relatively little knowledge, basically to maintain a rural Islam untouched by radical ideas - he referred to it as "folkloric Islam." But this is not what has happened at all. Rather, a slew of young, sophisticated, Salafi (or Wahabi) clergy, who speak Arabic fluently after years of study in Saudi Arabia, have entered the official religious institutions. Furthermore, all the money coming to train future Muslim leaders in Uzbekistan is coming from the Saudis. And the Central Asian governments are entirely unconcerned about this. On the contrary, leaders such as the Uzbek Islam Karimov are leaning more and more on Islam as a bulwark against democratization and reform, which they see as their real enemies. Karimov sees the social views of the Salafi clerics as congruent with his own. He is marshaling Islam to promote "authentic, traditional Uzbek values," according to which women should stay at home while men go to work. In Tajikistan, the president Emomali Rahmonov and the state clergy are even discouraging women from going to the mosque.

These two different groups - Hizb-ut-Tahrir and the Salafi clerics - are antagonistic as they basically compete for the same target group. Ideologically, too, Roy explained, the Salafis actually reject Hizb-ut-Tahrir and political Islam as "innovation": "The Prophet does not speak of ideologies" they might say in response to Hizb which describes itself as "a political party whose ideology is Islam." So far, the clerics have also stayed away from activity that might challenge the state. They are not political Islamists but conservative religious leaders. Ironically, according to Roy, a similar tendency can be observed in Western Europe. Here too most of those appointed to the official clergy have been the most conservative and orthodox clerics who are close to the Muslim Brotherhood or to authoritarian Middle Eastern regimes. It is obvious that Roy believes that this amounts to playing with fire - both in Europe and in Central Asia. While a ruler such as Karimov might think that he is co-opting the fundamentalists, he might soon find himself co-opted by them.

In a future post, I hope to describe another tendency antagonistic to both of these - the inroads made in Central Asia (and the rest of the former USSR) by various Christian groups, ranging from Witnesses to Korean Baptists; this phenomenon finds its counterpart in the conversions to (Salafi) Islam in Western and Eastern Europe. By next year, you should be able to read all about it in Roy's forthcoming book.

Watching the Caspian Sea Basin

A view of the region (Source: Perry Castaneda)

Most observers of the Middle East would agree that Iran has been making a successful run at establishing itself as a regional hegemon. So far, attention has been focused on its moves in Iraq, the Levant, and to a lesser extent, in Afghanistan. The elimination of Iraq as a threat on its western frontier has been the biggest boost to Iranian ambitions. Iran's successes in challenging the pro-Western government in Lebanon via its proxy Hizbullah and its ally Syria have further extended its westward reach all the way to the Mediterranean. Reports of Iranian activity in Afghanistan have also surfaced, especially recently. But Afghanistan offers little in the way of resources. A much more lucrative catch for Iran is the Caspian Sea basin to its north - an area with significant oil and natural gas reserves. Iran shares borders with the countries on both the Caucasian and Central Asian sides of the Caspian Sea - Azerbaijan in the west and Turkmenistan in the east.

Turkmenistan recently made the headlines when its eccentric post-Soviet dictator, Turkmenbashi Saparmurat Niyazov died. Like its other post-Soviet Central Asian neighbors, with the exception of Kazakhstan perhaps, Turkmenistan has little in the way of modern state institutions to ensure stability following the death of its revered leader. Peter Zeihan of Stratfor (you have to sign up to read it and pay, unless someone forwards it to you) is predicting that the Iranians will be hard-pressed not to make some sort of move on Turkmenistan - in order to control key oil and gas pipelines and to secure itself against an attack from the northeast. In so doing, however, Iran risks a showdown with Russia, which has been intent to monopolize Central Asian energy distribution networks through Gazprom. ADDENDUM: Josh and Nathan over at Registan are merciless in their criticism of Zeihan. The titles of their posts, "Piecing It Together, Sort Of" and "Dumb Things Written about Turkmenistan," respectively, give an indication of their critiques. I guess we'll see who's right 5 years from now.

Oil and gas fields in the southern Caspian (Perry Castaneda, 2003)

Azerbaijan has been in the news mostly due to its increasingly aggressive posturing vis-a-vis Russia. While its enemy Armenia has been moving ever closer to Russia, Azerbaijan has been seen as a Western ally, together with Georgia. Both Georgia and Azerbaijan are aiming for greater energy independence from Russia. Together with Turkey, the two Caucasian states are also trying to build an energy supply network that will bypass Russia and Iran as it delivers oil and gas to Europe and other markets (see our earlier post, "Pipe Dreams"). Iran is wary of Azerbaijan's ties to the U.S., and perhaps even more nervous about the country's potential to incite the large Azeri minority in Iran, especially in its northern provinces. A recent New York Times article suggests that the Iranians may be playing a similar kind of game they have pursued with such success in Lebanon and Afghanistan. Azerbaijan is overwhelmingly Shi'a, and although it is often represented as quintessentially secular and frequently compared to Turkey, there is a large market for Iranian-style Shi'a Islamism. Especially in the poor rural areas, Iran is investing in social programs and religious centers. According to local observers, the Iranian investment is paying off. As evidence, they cite reactions to a recent article by two Baku secularists who criticized Islam's negative impact on Azerbaijani's economic development. Provincial imams denounced the pair and an Iranian ayatollah called for their execution. It doesn't help that the regime has made no moves toward democratization (contra U.S. President Bush's statement in May 2006 after a meeting with President Ilhalm Aliyev that Azerbaijan "understands that democracy is the wave of the future"). Sooner or later, the current Azerbaijani government will face opposition from both conservative Shi'a in the provinces cut out of the oil and gas spoils as well as the secular urban elite in Baku demanding liberalization. But Iran might not have to be subversive in its activities for much longer. Although Azerbaijan has traditionally been very careful not to antagonize its southern neighbor, Aliyev has recently come out against sanctions being placed on Iran and announced that he would look to replace Russia with Iran as the country's electricity supplier.

Needless to say, Turkey, Russia, and the U.S. will not look on passively at Iranian moves northward. But who will join whom?