Language
English
English
Degree
M.A.
Select type of work
CIS Program Old
CIS publications
No
CIS Thesis
Yes
Student Name
Tayeb, Mutiullah
Year of Graduation
2018
QF Thematic Areas
CIS Program
Abstract
| Although Islam has been part of the Central Asia's identity for centuries, Islam as a religion and as a cultural identity has been subjected to tremendous repression since the mid-nineteenth century. The emergence of an official Islam comprising a set of actors and institutions took place in the mid-twentieth century under Soviet domination. The newly independent states of Central Asia inherited the structures of official Islam from the Soviet period. In Tajikistan, as in other Central Asian states, state-appointed fatwa bodies partly represent the continuation of the Soviet legacy in their structure, policy, and ambition. The Tajikistani Council of ʿUlama has the complex task of managing state-religion relations through the accommodation of state secularism and the promotion of the now official Ḥanafi doctrine. This thesis examines how this task is accomplished by the Council of ʿUlama. Drawing on a corpus of one thousand fatwas in Tajiki language, the thesis explores how the Council's fatwas on ritual, society and politics help to shape a distinctive form of Tajik Islam in contemporary Tajikistan. It highlights the various ways in which the Council departs from Ḥanafi doctrine in order to secure state interests in some fields, while confronting state policies in order to advance Islamic law and preserve the authority of the Ḥanafi madhhab in others. |