Islam and Culture in the Context of the Central Asian Civilization

he emphasis in the article is placed on the analysis of intricate and contro Jl versial interactions of culture in its broad significance with Islam and lamic cultural-ideological complex within various civilised society types in Cen tral Asia, mainly on the material of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, which are the countries with a strongly pronounced Islamic dominant. Somewhat a different situation takes place in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan, which requires a separate study. An ambivalent attitude towards Islam is observed among con temporary Kazakh intellectuals, even its rejection, as a phenomenon alien to tra ditional Kazakh culture and mentality. Insufficiently strongly pronounced and, one can say, indifferent is the attitude towards Islam in Kyrgyz intellectual and popular sphere as well. Here Islam is not reflected in mentality and is not recog nised with national identity as it is among Uzbeks and Tajiks. It is limited al most exceptionally to ritual functions in strictly fixed situations, which occur seldom enough in human life (wedding, death and funerals etc.). Islamic culture retains a traditionally firm significance in the southern regions of Kazakhstan and Kyzgyzstan, where a mixed Kazakh-Uzbek and Kyrgyz-Uzbek population resides, and where Islam has very old and stable roots. We observe in Turkmenistan Is lamisation from above, carried out under assistance of Turkey and some Arab countries which are also trying, as in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, to surround the country with Islamic infrastructure (construction of mosques, supply of litera ture, organisation of educational process etc.). During a little over a century the Central Asian urban society has outlived two contrasting, polar conditions: 1) totally traditional-religious; and 2) predomi nantly secular. The first one has developed within actually a 100% religious so ciety of pre-revolutionary time, the second within the secular society of Soviet time. Two types of cultures traditional, related with a religious world view and

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