State Regulation of Religion in Kazakhstan: Religious Liberty or Subjection? The Case of the Protestant Christian Community

Abstract

This paper mainly concerns the issues of state regulation of religion in the prism of the adoption of the new religious legislation in 2011. It also discusses the problems of how the new law affected the religious sphere specifically with regards to the Protestant minority groups. As it is claimed by many international human rights organizations the new law has downgraded the rights and freedom of religion or belief of the minority denominations, while at the same time strengthened the positions of the dominant and “traditional” religions of Hanafi Islam and Russian Orthodoxy. This master thesis tries to explore the main problematic spots of the new law (such as compulsory registration of all religious groups in the country or religious literature mandatory expertise) with comparison to the first religious law, signed in 1992, that was considered by majority of academics as a liberal and one of the most democratic. This work also presents the main patterns of state regulation’s evolving coercive character, especially vis-à-vis various religious minorities, including Protestants. Finally, through the theory of “hegemonic religions” by Anthony Gill the paper examines the cooperative alliance of state with the dominant religions versus the activity of religious minority denominations, Protestants in particular.