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Post-Soviet Central Asian states celebrate their 26 years of independence in 2017 in a context marked by fear of terrorism and the significant impact of jihadist issue in the former USSR. The sensitive topic is now widely publicized among the civil society, at least in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan echoing the situation in the Russian Federation, but also in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan where it has become an obsession for the ruling power in recent years. This article aims to present the current situation of the djihadist radicalization issue in Central Asia, mostly from the social point of view, trying to highlight the path from re-islamization to radicalization in the region and some political means that the current power try to implement in order to solve the problem.

This paper explores the state of minority rights in the three Central Asian countries of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan. These countries share a lot of similarities in terms of their post-Soviet authoritarian legacy and weakness of democratic institutions. The repressive political landscapes of the Central Asian states have taken their tolls on minority groups, leaving them discriminated against, mistreated, and severely disadvantaged. Minority rights violations range from ethnic and religious discrimination to state-sponsored homophobia. Even though the leadership changes have positively affected the state of human rights in the three countries, there is still a slow pace of reforms. Overall, domestic changes in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan have not yielded considerable results so far in terms of alleviating the plight of minority groups across these countries.

Against the background of the Ürümchi riots (July 2009), this book provides a longitudinal study of contemporary Uyghur identities and Uyghur-Han relations. Previous studies considered China’s Uyghurs from the perspective of the majority Han (state or people). Conversely, The Art of Symbolic Resistance considers Uyghur identities from a local perspective, based on interviews conducted with group members over nearly twenty years. Smith Finley rejects assertions that the Uyghur ethnic group is a ‘creation of the Chinese state’, suggesting that contemporary Uyghur identities involve a complex interplay between long-standing intra-group socio-cultural commonalities and a more recently evolved sense of common enmity towards the Han. This book advances the discipline in three senses: from a focus on sporadic violent opposition to one on everyday symbolic resistance; from state to ‘local’ representations; and from a conceptualisation of Uyghurs as ‘victim’ to one of ‘creative agent’.

To what extent does Islam help explain the dynamics of a participatory civil society in the post-Soviet Muslim-majority Central Asia? More specifically, to what extent does the variation in Islam (personal religiosity) and political Islam (support for Islam's role in politics) help predict the propensity to engage in elite-challenging collective political actions, rooted in self-assertive social capital? Grounded in emancipative social capital theory, this article embarks on an individual-level quantitative analysis to systematically examine the variation in self-assertive collective action in four Central Asian republics. This study contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the empirical nexus between general religiosity (Islam), Islamism (Political Islam), and elite-challenging collective actions and offers new clues on the empirical interactions between resurgent Islam and collective political participation in the post-Communist Muslim world.

The essays in this collection examine the emergence of Islam as a force in today's international political arena. Driven by a concern to understand factors leading to, and the implications of, this heightened political profile the contributors go beyond polemics and apologetics. The book critically examines some of the major events, movements and trends in the Islamic world over the past fifty years and their impact on the international scene. Reflecting the diversity and heterogeneity of the Muslim world, the book covers issues including: the challenge of Islamism to the Muslim world the use of Islam as a political tool on the international scene Islam's contribution to the theory and practice of global finance Islam's role in gender discourse Islam's articulations in the Indian Sub-continent, Southeast Asia, Central Asia and the Arab world. Very little of the current literature deals with political Islam globally, and very few books go much beyond the Middle East and its terrorist groups. This volume fills that gap, providing a compelling cross-national, cross-cultural and interdisciplinary analysis of Islam as a potent political force.

To make an object transparent implies that its internal features become better visible. It also means that the surface of that same object becomes less discernable. I apply this analogy to argue that the current preoccupation with transparency allows certain ideological movements to hide controversial agendas from public scrutiny. Focusing on evangelical Christian aid to Kyrgyzstan, this article traces how post-Soviet liberalization enabled evangelicals to gain a strong footing in this Muslim-majority society. Their emphasis on religious rights served to legitimize their missionary agendas, while the adoption of development rhetoric allowed evangelicals to present themselves as \"transparent\" civil society players. As such, this empirical case illuminates the ideological workings of \"empty\" and ostensibly value-free political imageries.

In this article, Noor O’Neill Borbieva presents research on the work of Muslim female activists in the Kyrgyz Republic and on the religious fellowships they organize, revealing these groups as important but neglected civil society actors. These religious fellowships are “hybrid,” neither complicit with coercive interests nor fully independent of them. Borbieva explores how the religious sensibilities of her informants inspired unique responses to the institutions and discourses that otherwise shape their lives as Muslim women and Kyrgyz citizens. These women are engaged in more than a struggle for female empowerment; they are crafting a response to national and international power structures, a response informed equally by their gendered identities and their spiritual sensibilities.

No detailed description available for \"Civil Society in Central Asia\".

The presence of the U.S. airbase outside the Manas Airport in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan - despite the removal of American forces from the Khanabad-Karsi Air Base in Uzbekistan - indicates that the presence of U.S. military forces in the region is not temporary but longterm.4 Not only Central Asia, but also Azerbaijan in the Caucasus, is equally vital to the logistical requirement of safe airspace and a route for NATO operations in Afghanistan.5 Within this framework, Central Asia will remain central to U.S. foreign policy for three major reasons.6 First of all, the global war on terrorism makes Central Asia a necessary location for military bases as well as airspace. second, the vast energy resources of the Caspian Basin have been explicitly stated to be vital to the U.S. strategy of securing alternative energy resources to those of the Middle East. Thus, the longstanding authoritarian regimes of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan had become confident that American support would continue to bolster their authoritarian rule against radical Islamic challengers.8 The Central Asian leaders had their hopes raised that the increasing strategic focus of U.S. foreign policy on Central Asia in the aftermath of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars would mean more grants in aid, debt relief, and the turning of a blind eye to their reppressive regimes in the short term.

Blank discusses the prospects for democratization in Central Asia. Among other things, any assessment of prospects for democratization in Central Asia must duly start from the problems of state order and of constructing viable and legitimate states, and that to realize the dream of a democratic progressive Central Asia, people must start with current realities and act intelligently and purposefully to transform them.