In the Whirlwind of Jihad by Martha Brill Olcott

Author:Martha Brill Olcott [Olcott, Martha Brill]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, mobi, epub
Tags: Islam in Uzbekistan, Islam and the Soviet Union, Islamic renewal in Uzbekistan, Uzbekistan 20th and 21st century history
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
Published: 2012-07-11T16:00:00+00:00

Tashkent Islamic University49

One of the ways that the Uzbek government hoped to solve its cadre problem for teaching religion in state schools was through the creation of the Tashkent Islamic University. TIU was designed to be a secular alternative to the Higher Islamic Institute. It was created as the result of an April 7, 1999, presidential decree calling for the establishment of a “secular education institution that prepares specialists in Islamic studies and Islamic law.” It has not really served that purpose.

The two senior Uzbek officials who were the architects of TIU, Hamidulla Karomatov50 and Zuhriddin Husniddinov,51 had little understanding of how a Western-style educational system operates.52 And while TIU is not the only Uzbek higher educational institution to be found wanting, official fears about the spread of Islamic radicalism are so great that the authorities decided in 2006 to substantially reorganize the institution. However, Bakhtiyar Babadjanov, who has been a part-time faculty member at the university, does not believe that these new measures will be sufficient to transform the university and make it able to serve its original goals.

Students, in his opinion, were taught to understand religion not as a component of the secular state, but as the main source of positive values in the governance and in the historical heritage of the nation. Rather than creating an intellectual atmosphere in which there was a discussion of religious scripture, teachers often urged the students to treat them as consecrated texts.

Compounding the problem is the selection bias on the part of the students chosen for admission. Babadjanov notes that more than half of all students entering the university come from religious backgrounds or are practicing Muslims and that about a third of the faculty appears to be religious themselves, but their number includes several Al-Azhar graduates as well as others who were trained in the Arab world. Furthermore, Babadjanov observes, as students go through the program they tend to become more religious.

Babadjanov also cites problems of an organizational nature. At the time of its creation, TIU failed to establish a division between departments teaching secular subjects and those teaching religious subjects. Instead, both were staffed by faculty who had a background in teaching in religious institutions or were graduates of madrasas. The administration of the institution is said to have provided very little supervision of the content of the lectures and seminars. As a result, he says, the content and style of instruction is said to have frequently been far closer to preaching than to secular higher educational instruction. The end result, in Babadjanov’s opinion, is badly trained quasi-imams, lacking the rigor or religious education and unable to teach in religious institutions but unfit to teach religion to students using a secular approach.

In the first years, the readings that students were assigned relied heavily on works by Salafi authors instead of the region’s own Hanafi authors, and students had very limited exposure to writings by Western theologians or materials on comparative religion. In addition, the institute’s library was poorly equipped.

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