This book provides a comparative history of Islamic education in the Soviet Union and the post-Soviet countries. Case studies on Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan and on two regions of the Russian Federation, Tatarstan and Daghestan, highlight the importance which Muslim communities in all parts of the Soviet Union attached to their formal and informal institutions of Islamic instruction. New light is shed on the continuity of pre-revolutionary educational traditions – including Jadidist ethics and teaching methods – throughout the New Economic Policy period (1921-1928), on Muslim efforts to maintain their religious schools under Stalinist repression, and on the complete institutional breakdown of the Islamic educational sector by the late 1930s. A second focus of the book is on the remarkable boom of Islamic education in the post-Soviet republics after 1991. Contrary to general assumptions on the overwhelming influence of foreign missionary activities on this revival, this study stresses the primary role of the Soviet Islamic institutions which were developed during and after the Second World War, and of the persisting regional and even international networks of Islamic teachers and muftis. Throughout the book, special attention is paid to the specific regional traditions of Islamic learning and to the teachers’ affiliations with Islamic legal schools and Sufi brotherhoods. The book thus testifies to the astounding dynamics of Islamic education under rapidly changing and oftentimes extremely harsh political conditions.

This volume explores the dominant types of relationships between Muslim minorities and states in different parts of the world, the challenges each side faces, and the cases and reasons for exemplary integration, religious tolerance, and freedom of expression. By bringing together diverse case studies from Europe, Africa, and Asia, this book offers insight into the nature of state engagement with Muslim communities and Muslim community responses towards the state, in turn. This collection offers readers the opportunity to learn more about what drives government policy on Muslim minority communities, Muslim community policies and responses in turn, and where common ground lies in building religious tolerance, greater community cohesion and enhancing Muslim community-state relations.

Annotation. Our image of Islam in the Soviet Union has changed a lot in the last three decades. During the Cold War period, Western observers were mainly driven by the question whether Islam - and above all the Sufi brotherhoods with their male disciples - could become a political and military threat to Moscow's rule in Central Asia and the Caucasus. Russian scholars, by contrast, regarded Sufi sm as a threat because the Sufi shrines attracted a mainly female audience; these women would transmit the 'superstitions' of Islam to their children and contribute to the dominance of Muslim traditionalism - a kind of Soviet subculture that seemed to be resistant against atheist education. As shown in the lecture, Western and Soviet researchers made the same methodological mistakes; and today we often repeat these mistakes when stereotyping Islamic 'fundamentalism'. This title can be previewed in Google Books - http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN9789056295653.

With the end of the Soviet Union in 1991, a major turning point in all former Soviet republics, Central Asian and Caucasian countries began to reflect on their history and identities. As a consequence of their opening up to the global exchange of ideas, various strains of Islam and trends in Islamic thought have nourished the Islamic revival that had already started in the context of glasnost and perestroika--from Turkey, Iran, the Arabian Peninsula, and from the Indian subcontinent; the four regions with strong ties to Central Asian and Caucasian Islam in the years before Soviet occupation. Bayram Balci seeks to analyse how these new Islamic influences have reached local societies and how they have interacted with pre-existing religious belief and practice. Combining exceptional erudition with rare first-hand research, Balci's book provides a sophisticated account of both the internal dynamics and external influences in the evolution of Islam in the region.

Educating Believers: Religion and School Choice offers theoretical essays and empirical studies from leading researchers on religion and schooling. Religious authority and emphasis on fairness and caring provide consistent rules governing the stable family and community relationships needed for individual growth and collective action. Religion is among the most important aspects of human life, likely hard-wired into human beings, and intimately intertwined with schooling. The book addresses key matters regarding religious pluralism in education, including the history of state-faith relationships in schooling, how religious faith can motivate teachers, whether religious education teaches tolerance, and whether practices in Europe and Asia hold lessons for American schools. The works in this volume can guide future scholarship on religious pluralism in education, particularly work related to civic values, character formation and public policy. The chapters in this book were originally published in the Journal of School Choice.

World War II and Islamically informed Soviet patriotism -- Institutionalizing Soviet Islam, 1944-1958 -- SADUM's new ambitions, 1943-1958 -- The anti-religious campaign, 1959-1964 -- The muftiate on the international stage -- The Brezhnev Era and its aftermath, 1965-1989

Over the past three decades, Uzbekistan has attracted the attention of the academic and policy communities because of its geostrategic importance, its critical role in shaping or unshaping Central Asia as a region, its economic and trade potential, and its demographic weight: every other Central Asian being Uzbek, Uzbekistan’s political, social, and cultural evolutions largely exemplify the transformations of the region as a whole. And yet, more than 25 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, evaluating Uzbekistan’s post-Soviet transformation remains complicated. Practitioners and scholars have seen access to sources, data, and fieldwork progressively restricted since the early 2000s. The death of President Islam Karimov, in power for a quarter of century, in late 2016, reopened the future of the country, offering it more room for evolution. To better grasp the challenges facing post-Karimov Uzbekistan, this volume reviews nearly three decades of independence. In the first part, it discusses the political construct of Uzbekistan under Karimov, based on the delineation between the state, the elite, and the people, and the tight links between politics and economy. The second section of the volume delves into the social and cultural changes related to labor migration and one specific trigger – the difficulties to reform agriculture. The third part explores the place of religion in Uzbekistan, both at the state level and in society, while the last part looks at the renegotiation of collective identities.