• Forum

The religious extremism - the dimension at South Kazakhstan.
Igor SAVIN, NGO Dialogue, South Kazakstan

The theme of the religious extremism is gradually becoming more actual for the people of Kazakhstan in general and the dwellers of the south regions in particular.

The hearsay and non-officially spread information say about the clashes at the border of Kazakhstan. Those clashes are supposed to be between smugglers, criminals or extremists. The latter are usually associated in the public opinion with vakhabists (not vakhabits, but vakhabists is the generally known name) or thalibs. The population has the shallow ideas about the both. That is why the most fantastic ideas are rampant among the common people. It is facilitated by the various levels of Islam penetration to the different layers of the society. In spite of the fact that Islam is supposed to be an officially acknowledged religion in Kazakhstan the knowledge of the overwhelming part of the Kazakh population about the doctrine differences between the separate tendencies and sects in Islam are the most shallow.

That is why it is unclear why on the one hand the Islamic propaganda is backed by the official authorities, the great number of the Moslem mosques are being constructed, the Moslem choirs sanctify the events of the public importance. But on the other hand there is a threat of the Islamic extremism, which was mentioned by Nazarbaev. So the people are in the deadlock, they are not able to distinguish between Islam authentic and the one which bears extremism.

The matter is that the rhetoric of the national Renaissance which has entered into the ideological paradigm of the sovereign national state comprises a considerable reference to Islam as one of the main pillars of the forthcoming national (ethnical Kazakh) unity. Almost all the national-radical public movements of the sovereign period consider Islam to be the means to restore the authentic national spirit and the spiritual revival of the Kazakh nation after the decades of the decaying influence of the Soviet ideology. Furthermore the religion helped the Kazakhs be aware of their ethnical originality, their belonging to the Turk and Islamic culture, but not only to the family of the brotherly people of the USSR .

The active rush towards the Islam appeared in the form of the mass attraction of the Islamic preachers to Kazakhstan and vast investments to the Islamic development in the republic, including the investments to the constructions the mosques, medreses, openings of the Islamic institutes and the religious schools.

All these attempts were perceived by the population as the essential part of the general process of the national Renaissance . Nobody doubted in their necessity.

So Islam was supposed to be the part of the Kazakh identity along with culture and national policy.

The danger of the religious extremism was firstly spoken in the fall of 1998, it was the period when thalibs achieved quick success in the north of Afghanistan. Afterwards mass media aroused the problem of the separate Islamic sects and the organizations which present a great threat to the official authorities.

But the whole situation has not much changed: the main part of the religious Islamic organizations continued to operate being backed by the population and local authorities. For example when two citizens of Syria and Jordan were persecuted in the course of the several months of 1999-2000 for the organization of the summer camp where the pupils were forced to learn the bases of the most extreme tendencies of Islam by means of violence and punishments. The representatives of the local department of the national movement Azat appealed with their objections to the Shymkent department of the Kazakhstan bureau on human rights. They announced that the persecution was supposed to be an ethnical discrimination of Moslems because the Christians of the South Korean origin as well as other confessions do not face any hindrance to their activity. The reply to the question concerning their attitude toward the trial gave the evidence that they were interested not in the religion but in the political aspect of the matter. The trial was thought to be the menace to one of the pillars of the Kazakh identity. (This information was provided to the author by the executive of the local bureau on human rights.) Naturally common people fail at comprehension of this complicated situation. In the long run the convicted were found guilty but they were released immediately after the trial.

The whole situation looks like the following. Islam is admitted by the people as the symbol of the true Kazakh, but still people slip in dogmas of the religion and are liable to various interpretations, that is why they easily react to discussions about the difficulties of life caused by the non-authentic Islam spreading and about the struggle for Islam as the only way out of the current social problems. It is especially actual for the rural inhabitants who have been left to the mercy of fate. Moreover the miserable financial property of people carries a convincing argument in the favor of the wrong policy held by the authorities. The agitation of the Islamic missionaries seems to have more weight if they promise and partly perform the perspectives of the future economical prosperity. As usual it comprises the purchasing of the food at high prices from the local cattle-breeders in the mountains and a modern equipment of the Islamic schools and the educational centers in the towns.

Besides we can mention another aspect which promotes the success of the religious propaganda. The matter is that the Islamic preachers appeal not to a definite individual but to the communion of fellows united by one purpose. The communal ethic is the base widely used by the official propaganda, hence all the Islamic preachers do not disturb the habitual outlook of the listeners, but on the contrary stick to the common principles and modes of behavior. The situation gets aggravated by the fact that there is a great abyss separating the official authorities and the people and also at the same time the institutes of the civil society of legal individual self-realization are not developed yet. So the offered brotherhood in the name of Islam is a widely demanded form of the present social life.

Thus there are the prerequisites to the rapid dissemination of the extremist ideology in the South of Kazakhstan where another factor is added to the mentioned above, that is shortage of sewage farming areas. At the same time nothing is being done to neutralize the impact of the extremist. The massive religious propaganda is not ceasing after the invasion of the religious extremists to Uzbekistan and Kyrgizstan. The dwellers of Turkestan applied to the law-enforcement agencies with the request to detain one of the distributors of the religious extremist literature. It was done in Turkestan. But the requests of the local dwellers were left without any attention on the part of the police in the Saryagash village which is adjacent to Uzbekistan border. In the opinion of the local inhabitants the police do not respond their requests not to scare off the extremists.

Up to now the inhabitants of the large villages act as passive listeners of the Islamic missionaries. The inertia of the secular way of life brought up during the Soviet power is too high. They willingly interact with the missionaries but not hurry up to change their habitual mode of life and enter the community-organization of the strugglers in the name of Islam. For example, in the large village Sairam mainly populated by Uzbeks several families became Vakhabits. The rest of the population condemn them and do not let the Vakhabits to conduct public services in the local mosques. But at the same time they can not banish them out of the village so the are forced to live along with them. Obviously other families will join the Vakhabits. The imam of the Chimkent mosque offered to declare Islam, Christianity, Judaism to be the public religions and to declare other confessions out of law. Undoubtedly such decisions violate the principle of the freedom of religion but its introduction can be justified by the peculiar situation in the region. It goes without saying it would be easier for the authorities to struggle against the extreme of the material prosperity of the population. In the whole the attitude toward the members of the sects and Vakhabits is suspicious and alert but in the conditions of the economical situation which is getting worse and the ideological vacuum the situation can get aggravated.

Especially it concerns people living in isolation in mountains, also the young people who left auls and being out of the fixed social midst in the towns. People belonging to these categories are vulnerable to the extremism propaganda. Now the rumors spread in the midst of unemployed young people say about strange people who will come and destroy the present regime to get rid of injustice. People name those strangers as either Vakhabits, or Dushmans, or Thalibs.

The cattle-breeders or people living in the isolated hamlets tell about meeting with kind people dressed in military uniform who look as aliens and pay much money for the usual food. They behave excessively friendly with the local dwellers and with tourists as well. All of them have beards of different length which give the evidence that they got there by different ways and in different time. These rumors circulate among journalists, officials of the law-enforcement agencies and tourist during all the spring months. But at the same time the specially organized expeditions of the police did not find any traces of the armed people.

Thus the theme of religion in Kazakhstan is obtaining the features of the problem of the social importance especially in the context of the menace of the extremism in Central Asia. The matter is that in the terms of the multi-ethnical region and the admittance of Islam as one of the main markers of the ethnical boundaries any social movement using the religious attributes immediately arouse a considerable social resonance. People start identifying themselves with this or that side and afterwards their dissatisfaction with their material and social position can be easily converted into an aggression against the representatives of other religions.

The government of Kazakhstan is not interested in the situation development like this and it will aspire to preservation of the stability but its resources are limited. It is caused by two facts: Islam is admitted as a factor of the ethnical consolidation of the Kazakh nation and on the other hand the moral authority (in the eyes of common people) of the official government is constantly decreasing.

Nevertheless the official power and the religious leaders loyal to them are not going to yield up. During the fall of 2000 the leaders of the state and religious organizations as well protested against the religious confessions which are beyond the control of the government.

Moreover the public prosecutor of the republic held attestation of all the religious organizations of the South regions of the republic, in the course of which several hundreds of religious communities illegally operating in the republic were found. Various books and maps in which the territory of modern Central Asia had completely different administrative borders were found.

In October in the course of the preparations to the celebration of 1500- anniversary of Turkestan several persons were detained, the investigation which was held in January of 2001 found them to be members of the international religious organization Khizb-ut-Tahrir. But the trial was postponed because to the opinion of the judges they had not sufficient evidences against them at their disposal. So it is difficult to define who is the real disturber of peace in the region.

But the administrative- repressive measures backed by the government do not shift the situation.

In the long run we have the following situation: the theme of the forthcoming invasion of the religious militants is actively discussed in press and in everyday life. It is said as something inevitable and even people fix the concrete terms of the invasion: April-May. The reinforced activities to defend the south borders in the military respect give the evidence that those rumors are not groundless.

At the same time the constant discussion of this theme evokes some excessive phobias in the midst of the population toward the people who are associated with the negative identity. There are the cases of non-tolerable behavior towards the families of Vakhabits who live among the Sunnis. The local Vakhabits were found guilty in all the existing sins which are associated by the public consciousness with bearded Vakhabits.

Thus lack of the information about the character of the problem and non-adequate measures of the authorities which deal with the military- repressive activities lead to decrease of the internal consolidation of the society and its ability to resist the exterior threats. But up to now the most vital threat is the internal isolation and the distrust of people to different layers of the society on one hand and on the other hand distrust between people and the government.

"Central Asian Bulletin", 10 April, 2001