‘Kyrgyzness’ under the Threat? Discourses on Muslim Identity in Kyrgyzstan

Abstract

Religion policy in Kyrgyzstan differentiating between traditional and nontraditioinal Islam, is cooperating with the first in order to curb the influence and spread of the second. The new changes that have taken place in the policy have delegitimized the forms of Islam that do not fall to the category of Hanafi/traditional Islam because the state wants to have a dominance of traditional Islam, which is apolitical and thus loyal to the controlling and regulating changes. Speeches of the president Atambaev on construction of Muslim Identities, which are dichotomous, are analyzed so as to discuss the discourses on the ‘foreign’ and the ‘local’ Islam in Kyrgyzstan.