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Kyrgyzstan - Religion

The vast majority of today's Kyrgyz are Muslims of the Sunni branch, but Islam came late and fairly superficially to the area. Kyrgyz Muslims generally practice their religion in a specific way influenced by earlier tribal customs. The practice of Islam also differs in the northern and southern regions of the country. Kyrgyzstan remained a secular state after the fall of communism, which had only superficial influence on religious practice when Kyrgyzstan was a Soviet republic. Most of the Russian population of Kyrgyzstan is atheist or Russian Orthodox. The Uzbeks, who made up 12.9 percent of the population in the 1990s, are generally Sunni Muslims.

Islam was introduced to the Kyrgyz tribes between the ninth and twelfth centuries. The most intense exposure to Islam occurred in the seventeenth century, when the Jungars drove the Kyrgyz of the Tian Shan region into the Fergana Valley, whose population was totally Islamic. However, as the danger from the Jungars subsided and Kyrgyz groups returned to their previous region, the influence of Islam became weaker. When the Quqon Khanate conquered the territory of the Kyrgyz in the eighteenth century, the nomadic Kyrgyz remained aloof from the official Islamic practices of that regime. By the end of the nineteenth century, however, most of the Kyrgyz population had been converted to at least a superficial recognition of Islamic practice.

Alongside Islam the Kyrgyz tribes also practiced totemism, the recognition of spiritual kinship with a particular type of animal. Under this belief system, which predated their contact with Islam, Kyrgyz tribes adopted reindeer, camels, snakes, owls, and bears as objects of worship. The sun, moon, and stars also played an important religious role. The strong dependence of the nomads on the forces of nature reinforced such connections and fostered belief in shamanism (the power of tribal healers and magicians with mystical connections to the spirit world) and black magic as well. Traces of such beliefs remain in the religious practice of many of today's Kyrgyz.

Knowledge of and interest in Islam are said to be much stronger in the south, especially around Osh, than farther north. Religious practice in the north is more heavily mixed with animism (belief that every animate and inanimate object contains a spirit) and shamanist practices, giving worship there a resemblance to Siberian religious practice.

Religion has not played an especially large role in the politics of Kyrgyzstan, although more traditional elements of society urged that the Muslim heritage of the country be acknowledged in the preamble to the 1993 constitution. That document mandates a secular state, forbidding the intrusion of any ideology or religion in the conduct of state business. As in other parts of Central Asia, non-Central Asians have been concerned about the potential of a fundamentalist Islamic revolution that would emulate Iran and Afghanistan by bringing Islam directly into the making of state policy, to the detriment of the non-Islamic population.

Because of sensitivity about the economic consequences of a continued outflow of Russians, President Akayev took particular pains to reassure the non-Kyrgyz that no Islamic revolution threatened. Akayev paid public visits to Bishkek's main Russian Orthodox church and directed 1 million rubles from the state treasury toward that faith's church-building fund. He also appropriated funds and other support for a German cultural center.

The state officially recognizes Orthodox Christmas (but not Easter) as a holiday, while also noting two Muslim feast days, Oroz ait (which ends Ramadan) and Kurban ait (June 13, the Day of Remembrance), and Muslim New Year, which falls on the vernal equinox.

The State Commission for Religious Affairs (SCRA) can deny or postpone the certification of a particular religious group if it believes the proposed activities of that group are not religious in character. Unregistered religious organizations are prohibited from actions such as renting space and holding religious services, although many held regular services without government interference.

In February 2009 the then minister of education signed a decree that officially bans students from wearing religious clothing, particularly the hijab (traditional Islamic headscarf worn by women) in public schools. In March 2009, after local NGOs and parents gathered signatures in protest of the decree, it was changed from an official ban to a recommendation. During the year 2011, several Islamic organizations including Mutakallim, Dil Murok, and Sumaia protested some schools’ use of this recommendation as a basis to refuse admission to girls wearing headscarves. As a result, the new education minister, Kanatbek Sydykov, presented the protesting organizations with a semi-official letter specifically stating that “headscarves are not prohibited” in schools. The organizations then distributed the letter to the schools, and the issue appeared to be resolved. Nonetheless, the decree “recommending that hijabs not be worn to school” was not reversed.

The government expressed concern publicly about groups it viewed as having “extremist agendas.” The government was particularly concerned about politically motivated Muslim groups, whose followers it labeled “Wahhabists.” In 2003 the Supreme Court sustained a ban on four political organizations, citing extremism and alleged ties to international terrorist organizations: Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT), the Islamic Party of Turkestan, the Organization for Freeing Eastern Turkestan, and the Eastern Turkestan Islamic Party. In 2008 the Pervomaisky District Court of Bishkek identified one additional religious group, Jamaat al-Jihad al-Islamias, as a terrorist organization. There were no reliable estimates of membership in extremist Islamic groups.

The government continued to restrict the activities of Muslim groups it considered threats to security. For example, HT was banned and classified as “extremist” although its philosophy professes nonviolence and no terrorist acts have been attributed to it. Membership in HT was illegal, as was any activity on behalf of the group. Authorities used their powers broadly to enforce the ban. On 29 April 2011, Keneshbek Dushebayev, then director of the State Committee on National Security (GKNB), stated that there were 1,900 members of HT in the country. During the first four months of the year, 40 HT members were detained, of which 23 were sentenced to prison terms. Raids by law enforcement netted 719 electronic texts, 1,202 pieces of “extremist” literature and more than 2,000 leaflets.

In late 2010, Kyrgyz security forces carried out a series of operations against groups the government claims are Islamic extremists seeking to destabilize the country. These security operations resulted in the death or arrest of several suspects, and several members of the Kyrgyz security forces. These militants are blamed for carrying out a home invasion, planting a car bomb near a Bishkek police station, and detonating an improvised explosive device outside the venue of a large trial in downtown Bishkek resulting in some property damage and minor injuries.

In late November 2010, Kyrgyz Special Forces mounted an operation against suspected terrorists in Osh, resulting in the deaths of all four suspects and the wounding of two special-forces officers. In October 2012, the Kyrgyz government also arrested five individuals with alleged ties to terrorists and extremist groups. Additionally, Kyrgyz security officials found and confiscated large caches of weapons, including machine guns and explosive materials.