Keston
News Service - 24 May 2002
Posted 26 May 2002 on RELIGIOSCOPE
In
the wake of a visit between 15 and 20 May to the Uzbek city
of Bukhara (500 kilometres or 300 miles west of Tashkent),
the "capital" of the Sufi Naqshbandi order in Central
Asia, Keston has learnt that currently the Uzbek authorities
are not simply not opposing the spread of the Naqshbandi order
but, on the contrary, are doing all they can to support it.
They
are using Sufism as a distinctive counterweight to those Muslims
who are independent of the authorities, the so-called Wahhabis
(the name given in Central Asia to Islamic fundamentalist
groups, which often have little in common with the Islam that
predominates in Saudi Arabia) and the international Islamic
party Hizb-ut-Tahrir, which campaigns for the unification
of Muslims throughout the world into a single caliphate.
Bukhara
is held to be the most significant Muslim holy site in Central
Asia. It was in this city that Bahauddin Naqshbandi, founder
of the Naqshbandi order, one of the most influential Sufi
orders, was born in the 14th century.
Sufism
is a mystical branch of Islam, rooted in the attempt to reach
God through personal experience. The first Sufis are said
to have been the ascetics who lived in Iraq and Syria at the
end of the 8th century and the beginning of the 9th century,
who strove to comprehend the "hidden" sense of the
Koran's revelations, and who followed strictly the instructions
of the Koran, held vigils, took vows, and observed additional
fasts. The name of the movement is believed to derive from
the Arabic word suf - meaning wool - as the Sufis wore
cloaks made out of coarse wool.
From
its origins in Bukhara, the Sufi Naqshbandi order (translated
literally, an engraver of wooden stamps) now has followers
in all the Muslim countries. During the war in the North Caucasus
against Russian forces in the 19th century, it was members
of the Naqshbandi order that made up the main part of the
resistance movement. In 1940-42 an uprising against the Soviet
authorities was also led by members of the Naqshbandi order.
During the colonisation of Central Asia, Russian forces were
also forced to confront not so much opposition from the local
feudal lords, the state apparatus and the armies of local
rulers, as resistance by members of the Sufi orders. Almost
all the leaders of anti-Russian movements were Sufi sheikhs.
Now
the official respect for Naqshbandi and his legacy is clear.
In 1991 Bukhara's central street (called Lenin Street in the
Soviet era) was renamed Bahauddin Naqshbandi street. In the
Soviet era, Sheikh Naqshbandi's mausoleum (10 kilometres or
6 miles east of Bukhara) was used to store fertiliser. However,
in 1991 the mausoleum was reopened and Naqshbandi's grave
became a place of mass pilgrimage.
"In
Soviet times it was even more dangerous to be a Sufi than
simply to be a Muslim - the police got rid of such people
right away," the imam-hatyb of the mosque next to
Naqshbandi's mausoleum, Bobodzhon Rahmonov, told Keston on
16 May. "But now we do not have any problems with
the state. For example, the chairman of the state committee
for religious affairs, Fazil Sobirov, belongs to the Naqshbandi
order. Moreover, we are working with the state to show people
how wrong the Wahhabi outlook is. We explain that the building
of mausoleums in honour of holy Muslims - something the Wahhabis
oppose - is not against Islam."
Teachers
at Bukhara's Mir-Arab madrassah (the largest religious teaching
establishment in Central Asia) expressed their full support
for the state's policy towards believers. "'Sufism'
is one way of reaching God. We have begun to teach Sufism
as of this year as a separate subject," a teacher
at the Mir-Arab madrassah, Abduhalil haji Niyazov, told Keston
on 17 May. "Sixty hours in the year are allocated
to the study of Sufism." In private conversations
with Keston, students at the Mir-Arab madrassah reported that
students suspected of supporting Hizb-ut-Tahrir were immediately
expelled, while to profess Sufism was completely safe.
Significantly,
the government is also trying to attract foreign Muslim communities
in order to raise the authority of the Naqshbandi order in
Uzbekistan. It maintains close contacts with the Islamic Supreme
Council of America, which represents followers of the Naqshbandi
order in the United States. The number of ISCA members is
relatively small (in the tens of thousands), but Uzbek propaganda
represents the ISCA as being one of the most influential Muslim
organisations in the United States. ISCA leaders have visited
Uzbekistan and have met President Islam Karimov, while the
Uzbek government invited ISCA representatives to act as observers
at the presidential elections in January 2000. The ISCA remarks
on its web-site (www.Islamicsupremecouncil.org): "In January 2002, Islamic Supreme Council of America
was honoured to have been the only American Muslim organisation
to be invited to observe Uzbekistan's constitutional referendum.
The invitation was a result of the ISCA's long-standing commitment
to working with the moderate government of President Islam
Karimov and supporting Uzbekistan's fight against religious
extremism."
The
government's support for followers of the Naqshbandi order
may be explained by the fact that Sufism in Central Asia is
quite closely linked with local, essentially pagan, customs.
For example, one should only start with one's left foot when
entering Naqshbandi's mausoleum. There are some shrivelled
remains of a tree at the entrance to the mausoleum. According
to folklore this tree grew when Bagauddin Naqshbandi was alive,
and it is mystically linked with the founder of the order.
It is said that if you walk three times around the shrivelled
trunk of this tree, then your wish will be granted. The Uzbek
government is primarily afraid of supporters of fundamentalist
Islam, which has been imported from Arab countries and which
calls for religion to be purified of regional and local customs.
It therefore regards it as expedient that local Islam should
be as distinct as possible from the religion preached by Muslims
abroad.
The
Tashkent government's current support for Sufism is reminiscent
of the experience of the KGB's work in the Russian North Caucasian
region of Chechnya-Ingushetia in the Soviet era. In the 1930s,
40s and 50s, the NKVD (the KGB's predecessor) murdered all
the influential sheikhs of the Naqshbandi order. Those who
inherited the leadership in the Sufi orders in Chechnya (the
heirs to the sheikhs), could survive only if they co-operated
with the NKVD and KGB. When the Chechens and Ingush returned
from exile in 1957, the Kremlin placed these same followers
of the Naqshbandi order in leading positions in the republic. "The opinion spread among a significant section of
religious authorities in the Naqshbandi order that it was
necessary to co-operate with the atheist, communist authorities," one of the most influential theologians of Ingushetia, imam-hatyb
of the Nasyr-Kurt mosque (a village in Ingushetia near the
border with Chechnya) Salambek haji Ivloyev, told Keston in
November 1996. "In the Soviet era the KGB tried to
govern Chechnya, where the majority of the population remained
law-abiding Muslims, with the help of the Naqshbandi order.
The top level of Chechen-Ingushetia society was drawn from
the formal adherents of this order." He noted that
Doku Zavgayev (chairman of the Supreme Soviet of Chechnya-Ingushetia
in 1990 and head of the "pro-Russian" government
in Chechnya in 1996) was a member of the Naqshbandi order.
Igor
Rotar
Source:
Keston Institute <http://www.keston.org>
