Islamic Radicalization and Securitizing Regimes of Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan

Abstract

After getting Independence from the Soviet Union, there was hope and fear about Islam's future in Central Asia. In Central Asian countries, Islamic radicalization is a highly discussed topic among scholars and state officials. The group of scholars believe that threat of Islamic radicalization is manipulated by the government’s and state officials argue about the reality of this threat to the region's security. This study focused on Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan’s case for 1991-2016 and analysed the two different regimes' misperception of religiosity and religious radicalization. The study is aimed to find out how Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan securitized Islam through Islamic radicalization? Kyrgyzstan continued the liberal approach to religion initiated by perestroika policies in the late 1990s in the Soviet Union and unlike this, Islam Karimov in Uzbekistan used the conservative approach to religion and suppressed religious institutions and leaders. The thesis is arguing about the securitization of Islamic radicalization by the governments of the region. Basing on literature review, extensive interviews with the experts on this field and discourse analysis of the presidents’ speeches, the study has provided the following results: a) Kyrgyzstan securitized the Islamic radicalization with adoption restrictive policies and programs because of the pressure of its neighbour’s countries such as Uzbekistan, Russia and China for not taking the threat of terrorism and radicalism seriously; b) Uzbekistan securitized the religious radicalization with adoption repressive laws and programs for repressing the political opponents of the regime. The result of analyses shows that both countries manipulated the threat of Islamic radicalization for the benefit of the regimes' security.