    [Joint House and Senate Hearing, 115 Congress]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]

    115th Congress }                            Printed for the use of the
    2nd Session    }      Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe

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    	        Mosque and State in Central Asis:
    	       Can Religious Freedom Coexist with
    	           Government Regulation of Isam?

    [GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

                             December 17, 2018

                               Briefing of the
              Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe
    ------------------------------------------------------------------------
                             Washington: 2019

          Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe
                      234 Ford House Office Building
                       Washington, DC 20515
                          202-225-1901
                          csce@mail.house.gov
                          http://www.csce.gov
                             @HelsinkiComm

                Legislative Branch Commissioners

                  HOUSE				SENATE
    CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey 	ROGER WICKER, Mississippi,
              Co-Chairman			  Chairman
    ALCEE L. HASTINGS, Florida		BENJAMIN L. CARDIN. Maryland
    ROBERT B. ADERHOLT, Alabama		JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas
    MICHAEL C. BURGESS, Texas		CORY GARDNER, Colorado
    STEVE COHEN, Tennessee			MARCO RUBIO, Florida
    RICHARD HUDSON, North Carolina		JEANNE SHAHEEN, New Hampshire
    RANDY HULTGREN, Illinois		THOM TILLIS, North Carolina
    SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas		TOM UDALL, New Mexico
    GWEN MOORE, Wisconsin			SHELDON WHITEHOUSE, Rhode Island

                   Executive Branch Commissioners

                        DEPARTMENT OF STATE
                       DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
                      DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE
                                [II]

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    Mosque and State in Central Asia: Can Religious Freedom Coexist with
                        Government Regulation of Islam?

                               December 17, 2018

                                      					Page
                                  PARTICIPANTS

        Everett Price, Senior Policy Advisor, Commission on Security and
    Cooperation in Europe                                                      1

        Nathaniel Hurd, Senior Policy Advisor, Commission on Security and
    Cooperation in Europe                                                      9

        Dr. Kathleen Collins, Associate Professor, Political Science, and
    Russian and Eurasian Studies, University of Minnesota                      3

        Dr. Emil Nasrutdinov, Associate Professor of Anthropology, American
    University of Central Asia                                                 5

        Dr. Edward Lemon, DMGS-Kennan Institute Fellow at the Daniel Morgan
    Graduate School of National Security                                       7

                                    APPENDIX

        Forum 18 statement for the record on religious freedom in Central
    Asia                                                                      29

        Journal article for the record: ``Counter-extremism, Power, and
    Authoritarian Governance in Tajikistan''                                  31

    Mosque and State in Central Asia: Can Religious Freedom Coexist with
                       Government Regulation of Islam?

                                  ----------

                               December 17, 2018

        The briefing was held at 3:04 p.m. in room 562, Dirksen Senate
    Office Building, Washington, DC, Everett Price and Nathaniel Hurd,
    Senior Policy Advisors, Commission on Security and Cooperation in
    Europe, presiding.
        Panelists present: Everett Price, Senior Policy Advisor, Commission
    on Security and Cooperation in Europe; Nathaniel Hurd, Senior Policy
    Advisor, Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe; Dr. Kathleen
    Collins, Associate Professor, Political Science, and Russian and
    Eurasian Studies, University of Minnesota; Dr. Emil Nasrutdinov,
    Associate Professor of Anthropology, American University of Central
    Asia; and Dr. Edward Lemon, DMGS-Kennan Institute Fellow at the Daniel
    Morgan Graduate School of National Security.

        Mr. Price. Good afternoon. Thank you--we're very glad to have you
    here. My name is Everett Price, and this is my colleague Nathaniel
    Hurd. On behalf of our chairman, Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi,
    and co-chairman, Congressman Chris Smith of New Jersey, we would like
    to welcome you to this Helsinki Commission panel entitled ``Mosque and
    State: Can Religious Freedom Coexist with Government Regulation of
    Islam?'' Nathaniel and I will be moderating this panel together, he in
    his capacity as a Helsinki Commission senior policy advisor for
    religious freedom, and I in my capacity as senior policy advisor with
    responsibility for Islamic affairs in Central Asia.
        The gravity of the situation facing religious freedom in Central
    Asia is underscored by the U.S. State Department's decision just last
    week to redesignate Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, alongside eight other
    countries, as countries of particular concern, or CPCs, for engaging in
    or tolerating systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of
    religious freedom. Turkmenistan and Tajikistan have appeared on the
    list for the past 3 years. A third Central Asian country, Uzbekistan,
    had also appeared on the State Department's list since 2016, but was
    upgraded this time to a special watchlist, reflecting modest
    improvements in its respect for the religious freedom of its citizens.
    Uzbekistan's positive trajectory of incremental reforms began following
    the death of the country's longtime strongman leader Islam Karimov in
    2016.
        Since that time, Karimov's successor, current President Shavkat
    Mirziyoyev, has demonstrated his interest at opening the country to
    increase foreign investment in part by loosening some of the Karimov
    era's strictest regulations on public and private life. One element of
    this reform plan includes amendments to the national law governing
    religious affairs and institutions, which we understand the government
    is currently drafting and preparing for public comment. Nathaniel and I
    traveled to Uzbekistan last month to hear from Uzbekistani officials
    and civil society about the changes taking place there, particularly in
    the religious sphere. Despite the government's professed desire to
    enact more permissive regulations on religious life, the arguments
    opposing far-reaching reforms are cast in terms of national security
    and regime stability--namely, that the ebb of government control over
    religion will inevitably cede territory to religious-based political
    activism and potentially violent extremism.
        Indeed, the terms of this argument are familiar in Central Asia,
    not to mention in other parts of the Muslim world, where Islam
    simultaneously occupied a revered position in national, social, and
    private life, while also preoccupying national security agencies and
    regime loyalists who fear its potential to catalyze political
    opposition and terrorism. These concerns have some merit. In one of the
    most recent and dramatic incidents of Islamic extremist violence in
    Central Asia, this summer an ISIS-linked terrorist cell in Tajikistan
    carried out the horrific murder of four cyclists, including two
    Americans, in the southwestern Danghara District. Such incidents only
    reinforce the inclination of all five Central Asian countries to
    prioritize national security and their administration of religious
    affairs, in particular by strictly regulating and often outright co-
    opting and controlling Islamic belief and practice.
        In a statement for the record submitted today to this briefing, the
    renowned international religious freedom monitoring organization Forum
    18 underscored how Islamic institutions are subject to particularly
    invasive state interventions, compared with minority faiths,
    effectively controlling Islam not just from the outside, but also from
    within. The statement reads: ``These states have effectively subsumed
    the only permitted Islamic bodies into the apparatus of the state. The
    regimes control all clergy appointments, especially at senior levels,
    and remove clerics as they see fit. Some of them even dictate the
    sermons that imams are allowed to preach in the mosques they do permit
    to exist.''
        Yet such a heavy-handed and security-minded approach violates the
    religious freedom of individuals that is enshrined in the national
    constitutions and international commitments of these states. The
    resulting dilemma begs the question that serves as the subtitle to this
    briefing today: Can religious freedom coexist with government
    regulation of Islam?
        To help answer this question, we have convened a superb panel of
    Central Asia experts who have studied these matters from numerous
    angles and over dozens of years. Their remarks will help us to
    understand the reality of state regulation of Islam, and the intended
    and unintended consequences of this heavily centralized policy. They
    will also help us understand the terms of the policy debate between
    religious freedom and national security, and hopefully suggest ways to
    escape this binary that appears to propose a zero-sum tradeoff between
    the two.
        I'm sorry to say that our fourth panelist, Peter Mandaville, has
    taken ill and will not be able to participate. We will genuinely miss
    his contribution, which was to focus on policy lessons from other
    approaches to state regulation of Islam elsewhere in the Muslim world.
        First this afternoon we'll hear from Professor Kathleen Collins of
    the University of Minnesota, who will provide a brief overview of her
    extensive research and of the mechanisms and consequences of state
    control of Islam in Central Asia. Next we will hear from Professor Emil
    Nasrutdinov of the American University of Central Asia in Bishkek,
    Kyrgyzstan. Professor Nasrutdinov will describe key conclusions from
    his research into radicalization, particularly in his home country of
    Kyrgyzstan, the only semi-free country in the region that applies
    somewhat less draconian approaches to Islamic practice when compared to
    other regional states. And finally, we'll have Dr. Edward Lemon DMGS-
    Kennan Institute fellow at the Daniel Morgan School, who will explore
    the case of Tajikistan, where he's conducted extensive research into
    the state's harsh counterextremism policy.
        I will refer you to your audience folders for their full
    biographies, which are impressive, which goes without speaking, of
    course. And unless my colleague Nathaniel has any comments, I will turn
    the floor over to Dr. Collins.
        Thank you.
        Dr. Collins. Thank you very much. Good afternoon. Thank you for
    coming. And thanks especially to the Helsinki Commission and to Everett
    and Nathaniel for organizing this panel.
        I will focus my brief remarks today on three points. First,
    religion in the Central Asian states, particularly Islam, continues to
    be the target of aggressively secular government policies. A few years
    ago, a young man I interviewed in Kyrgyzstan characterized the
    government as atheist oppressors even worse than the Soviet Union. The
    post-Soviet states are not any longer seeking to eradicate Islam, the
    way the Soviet Union was. However, despite some concessions to
    religious practice, government elites generally view any manifestation
    of independent Islam as inherently political, radical, and a threat to
    their survival.
        Two caveats are in order, one of which Everett just talked about.
    One is that Uzbekistan has, over the past year or so, made some
    significant improvements under President Mirziyoyev, and things seem to
    be in process there to ameliorate the situation in terms of religious
    freedom for Muslims as well as Christians.
        Second, there is also some variation, certainly regionally, de
    facto and de jure. My comments to initiate this panel are somewhat
    broad, sketching out the situation in the region. Turkmenistan still
    remains the worst-case scenario, as it has long been, and Tajikistan is
    still the best. And yet, many Soviet-style laws and practices on
    religion severely regulate Islam. The Soviet attitude of a sort of
    atheist suspicion of Islam I think still pervades the views of many
    government elites. These governments ban any political Islamic activity
    as extremist and terrorist, including not only violent organizations
    such as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, but also the pro-democratic
    Islamic Renaissance Party in Tajikistan and the extreme, but
    nonviolent, party Hizb ut-Tahrir. Those accused of membership are
    subject to torture and lengthy imprisonment.
        The governments also severely restrict or criminalize many
    ordinary, everyday religious practices, including religious education,
    even at home; possessing the Koran on one's cellphone, or one's laptop,
    or even in hard copy; possessing other religious literature; certainly
    proselytization; and various forms of Islamic dress. Furthermore,
    security services control or monitor imams' sermons, and even videotape
    mosque attendees. Unregistered mosques are frequently raided and
    closed. States have threatened, arrested, and occasionally killed
    popular imams who either preach an unsanctioned version of Islam--such
    as Salafism, Shi'ism, Tablighi Jamaat--or who raise a voice on
    political issues, whether it's about corruption or about the right for
    women to wear a hijab. Family members of accused or imprisoned
    extremists are also regularly threatened. As in the Soviet era, it's
    not just radicals but ordinary believers who become the victims of
    state oppression.
        Second, religious oppression has fostered a widespread sense of
    injustice. In addition to corruption and other political and economic
    abuses, people are angered by unjust attacks on their identity and
    beliefs. I've seen this interviewing people across the region with a
    team of Central Asian colleagues. For example, one of our respondents,
    Tahir, believed that a free Islamic practice was essential to justice.
    He said, ``Justice is necessary. And for there to be justice, people
    must live in faith.'' Another man, Alisher, linked the lack of justice
    to state secularism. He said, ``There are many atheists. And they treat
    us believers badly. There is no justice. The situation is very bad.''
    Shukrat exclaimed, ``Everywhere justice is a problem. We need justice.
    Where there is no justice, evil things happen, like here. Justice is
    every person's demand!''
        A man from the Ferghana Valley explained: ``Now the religious
    schools are gone. There is only one imam for 9,000 people. The mosque
    can't even teach people anymore.'' An older Uzbek woman, Nodira,
    observed that banning home religious teachers for women, otinchas, had
    been awful because now instead of them there are only a lot of
    extremists. Her colleague added that forbidding education caused youths
    to be drawn to radicals. ``They use religion as a weapon and lure
    children to their movements,'' she said. Likewise, one man noted that
    in government those who work in government cannot participate in the
    mosque. This is also generally true of schoolteachers, and students,
    and university students. One young woman even complained that she was
    given a warning merely for carrying an Arabic language textbook in
    public. She had been trying to teach herself Arabic so that she could
    read the Koran.
        Some link such forms of repression to politics. Abumalik from
    Dushanbe complained, ``These officials who are preventing Friday prayer
    are also those who are opposing Muslim unity. If people would work
    according to the Sharia, then many problems in our country would be
    resolved, including corruption.'' He was not an Islamist, but his words
    suggested that he saw repression of Islam as a fundamental political
    problem. Islamist propaganda clearly appealed to some. One man,
    attracted to Hizb ut-Tahrir's ideas, said, ``We want to live in a just
    and fair society. Nowadays there is no justice. But the caliphate was a
    just system.'' And Erkin proclaimed, ``There is no justice, not in
    Kyrgyzstan and not in Uzbekistan! They only talk about democracy. They
    oppress Muslims more now in comparison with the Soviet times, even
    though they talk about freedom of religion. It's because of this that
    we should become an Islamic State!''
        Third, repression of Islam has spawned opposition movements
    centered around politicized Islamic ideas and identity. Islamist
    movements target those angry at injustice. Their ideologies advocate
    Islam, whether an Islamic nation-state, the caliphate, or simply jihad,
    as the solution to injustice. We have seen this pattern take place
    across Central Asia for over three decades now. The latest wave of
    Islamist extremism involving Central Asians is the flow of foreign
    fighters to Syria and Iraq since about 2014. Overall, estimates of
    foreign fighters from Central Asia number from about 3,000 to 5,000.
    The number on the whole seems low, but on the other hand, this is up to
    20 percent of foreign fighters documented there. This is striking for a
    region far from Damascus, where transnational militant Islamism was
    almost unthinkable a decade or two ago.
        On a per capita basis, from 2015 to 2017 Kyrgyzstanis and
    Tajikistanis were particularly high state contributors of jihadist
    fighters. In both countries, religious oppression has escalated
    significantly over the past 10 years as each state has reneged on its
    commitment to democratization and, with that, to religious freedom. The
    case of Kyrgyzstan is telling. There, religious policy was liberal from
    the late Soviet era through the early to mid-2000s. During that time,
    Kyrgyzstan did not have a serious problem with radicalism. Yet, since
    about 2006, there has been a steady increase in repression of Islam,
    both legally and extralegally. This is particularly so amongst ethnic
    Uzbeks in the south. The killing of Imam Rafiq Kamalov and the arrest
    of his son, Imam Rashod Kamalov, both Salafis, generated extreme
    discontent at religious and political injustice. Kyrgyzstan
    subsequently became a significant source of recruits to Syria.
        As of 2017, over 1,300 Kyrgyzstanis had joined militant groups
    there and, according to Radio Free Europe, about 30 percent of these
    jihadists came from the southern region where the Kamalovs lived and
    preached. About 90 percent of those recruits are also ethnic Uzbeks.
    Over the past few years, ISIS and multiple Central Asian battalions,
    affiliates of al-Qaida, have all put forth radical anti-democratic
    ideologies which propose Islam as a solution to political and religious
    injustice, corruption, and the torture of Muslims. They specifically
    endorse violence. They deride Muslim democrats who have sought to work
    within the system, like the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan.
    Their propaganda videos call Central Asians with slogans such as, ``Do
    not be afraid to fight in jihad,'' or ``The path of honor is jihad.''
    In one video, the leader of the Unity and Jihad Battalion, an ethnic
    Uzbek from southern Kyrgyzstan preaches, ``Nowadays, Muslims face lots
    of hardships. Women are forced to remove their hijab. Having a beard is
    now a crime. Some Muslims say there is no need for jihad now, but who
    will defend Muslims in Palestine and Syria if there is no need for
    jihad?''
        Hundreds of such messages on social media lure Central Asians to
    fight.
        In short, oppressing religious freedom is a major contributor to
    radicalism. When the state indiscriminately represses many or most
    expressions of Islam, some will inevitably turn to Islamist messages
    and solutions for a just life.
        Mr. Price. Thank you very much.
        Dr. Nasrutdinov.
        Dr. Nasrutdinov. Thank you. Thank you, Everett and Kathleen.
        I would like to continue the discussion that has been started by
    Kathleen. Notwithstanding the criticism, I would still suggest that
    Kyrgyzstan remains the best country in the region, with regard to the
    freedom of religion, with the most liberal religious policy in Central
    Asia. At the moment, we have nearly 4,000 mosques in the country, and
    more than 100 madrasas. This is double the size of the number of
    madrasas for all other Central Asian countries taken together.
        Research shows that madrasas which are governed and regulated by
    the special board of Muslims in Kyrgyzstan have a positive influence on
    reducing vulnerability of people to radicalization, since the curricula
    is standard. It teaches moderate, traditional Islam, which is very
    critical of the radical movements, particularly of the Salafi influence
    in the region. Perhaps the only area where madrasa education is lagging
    is in regard to Russian-speaking madrasas. For nearly 100 madrasas in
    the country, there is no single one that would teach subjects in
    Russian. Thus, we observe a large number of Russian-speaking Muslim
    population in the north of the country, including ethnic Kyrgyz and
    ethnic minorities who are more vulnerable to influence of radical ideas
    because they often cannot simply understand the message given by imams
    on the mosques.
        Yet, there are several influential religious groups, such as
    Turkish Khizmet, Nurjular, Sulaimanchiler, Southeast Asian Tablighi
    Jamaat, and several moderate Salafi groups, which are legal in
    Kyrgyzstan, while they have been banned in other Central Asian
    countries. This relative freedom of religion applies not only to
    Islamic groups, but also to other religious communities as well. There
    are nearly 400 Christian groups which are registered with the state
    committee on religious affairs. Once they are registered, they do not
    experience significant pressures. The only Christian organization that
    is banned in Kyrgyzstan is the Church of Mormon. There are 90 names in
    the list of banned organizations that are all Muslim.
        Kathleen rightly pointed to the complications of relations and more
    pressure on the religious communities from 2006. Yet, approximately
    from 2013-2014, we see a bit of a reversal in the trend. This is caused
    mostly by the change of leadership on three levels. First of all, the
    president himself, the director of the state committee on religious
    affairs, and the sort of grand mufti of the country. In the past there
    were major conflicts between the latter two, the state committee and
    mufti. But since 2014, most of these conflicts have been resolved and
    we observe quite a lot of collaboration. A third actor in this
    collaboration are international organizations, which successfully
    engage with the state and the religious communities in various projects
    on CVE [countering violent extremism], gender, conflict resolution, et
    cetera.
        I would also maybe have a debate with Kathleen in regard to the
    high representation of Kyrgyzstani fighters in Syria, particularly the
    engagement of ethnic Uzbeks. I--as well as our experts--believe that
    figures for Uzbeks might be exaggerated, particularly by the Kyrgyz
    security officials who are mostly homogeneous ethnic Kyrgyz. A lot
    depends on what we look for as a source of information; therefore,
    these kinds of numbers mostly represent the outcomes of a specific
    security project [inaudible] which targeted only Uzbek communities in
    the period of 2013 and 2016, the exact same period when the statistics
    on Uzbeks went up. I agree that Uzbek communities in the south are
    significantly persecuted until nowadays, since the conflict of 2010,
    but there are a number of reasons why you should perhaps take the
    official statistics with a grain of salt.
        But, the big question of ethnic Uzbeks being very important, we
    still see the Kyrgyzstani model as the most progressive and the most
    productive. This peaceful model of groups can function freely. They do
    not see the state as an oppressor. They play an important role in
    drawing the practicing Muslim community away from the more radical
    influences. Yet, with all that, there are still many questions to
    consider, and issues. So last year we conducted research, a nationwide
    study of young people's vulnerability and their resilience to
    radicalization. We conducted this analysis across five major domains of
    young people's life--grievances, politics, religion, socialization, and
    psychology. Our research shows that the grievances are the most
    important factor of vulnerability. Young people who experience
    discrimination have the highest vulnerability score.
        These scores are particularly high for young people who experience
    discrimination from the state officials and from the police. Such young
    people are much more likely to have strong desires to avenge others and
    justify violence for various purposes, including religious ones. Young
    people in Kyrgyzstan grow up seeing a number of social and state
    injustices, and very high levels of corruption around them. They name
    corruption and amorality as the biggest problems of Kyrgyz society.
    They see the state institutions and actors as predatory agents who use
    their privileged positions to make money from the rest of society. The
    theme of corruption and state predation make the core of many young
    people's radical ideas. Members of radical organizations can exploit
    such perceptions to recruit young people, by promising them the just
    Islamic alternative.
        Young people also report a high degree of injustice and
    discrimination, particularly from police, toward practicing Muslims.
    For young women, it is often related to their Islamic attire.
    Nonetheless, young people believe the situation with religion freedom
    and conditions for Muslim populations in Kyrgyzstan are better than
    they are in the neighboring Central Asian countries, Russia, Western
    countries, and China.
        Mr. Price. Professor, can I ask you to summarize the other elements
    of the vulnerability that you're talking about, just in the interest of
    time?
        Dr. Nasrutdinov. Young people's political ideas become more and
    more connected to their religious views. Nearly one-third of the survey
    respondents would support a more religious candidate, and even
    introduction of a Sharia law instead of a constitution. So, we see that
    in regard to the geopolitics, there is a very positive evaluation of
    the influence of Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, but negative
    evaluation of the influence of United States, Europe, and Iran. China
    is somewhere in the middle, with one exception, in regard to the
    evaluation of the Muslim in their own country.
        The important role of religion is that religious leaders, religious
    imams, and religious scholars have a positive influence. Young people
    who obtain knowledge through personal, face-to-face communication are
    less vulnerable than the young people who obtain information on the
    internet. Socialization is important, and I can talk about this later.
        Mr. Price. Thank you.
        Dr. Lemon.
        Dr. Lemon. Thank you, once again, to Everett and Nathaniel for
    inviting me to speak on this panel. I'm going to focus particularly on
    Tajikistan, which reflects many of the dynamics that Dr. Collins
    introduced in her opening remarks. Three things may separate Tajikistan
    from the other countries within the region, maybe with the exception of
    Turkmenistan. First is the sort of severity of the state secular
    campaign against Islam. As Everett mentioned in his opening remarks,
    Tajikistan has been classified as a CPC for the past 3 years. And like
    the other countries in the region, counterextremism is not really about
    addressing security issues--although that is obviously part of it--but
    it is more sort of about the dynamics of authoritarian politics within
    the region. Effectively, it's a tool for the governments of the region
    to crack down on potential opposition to their role, and effectively
    secure their regimes. Obviously, some of these policies have the
    potential to counter extremism, but that's maybe a secondary objective.
        So what have we seen in Tajikistan? We've seen particularly a focus
    on the visible signs of piety: the forced shaving of men with beards;
    campaigns against women wearing hijab; both official and unofficial
    campaigns. Women have been not allowed to wear hijabs in schools since
    2007--both students and teachers. There have been a series of campaigns
    against men with beards. If there are 100 madrasas operating in
    Kyrgyzstan, every single madrasa in Tajikistan--the 19 that to my
    knowledge operated around 5 or 6 years ago--was closed by 2016.
    Students have been banned from studying Islam abroad since 2010.
        And according to the official statistics issued by the Committee on
    Religious Affairs, last year alone, in 2017, 1,938 mosques were closed
    in the country for not meeting with government regulations. In viewing
    this in some ways as being post-Soviet, the official statements said
    that these were turned into cultural centers, youth clubs--reflecting
    some of the policies that have been seen under the Soviet Union. So I
    think that the first difference is really the severity of this, which
    takes a higher level than in other countries, with the exception maybe
    of Turkmenistan.
        Second, as Dr. Collins mentioned in her opening statement,
    Tajikistan, until 2015, was the only country in the region with a legal
    faith-based party--i.e., the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan,
    that emerged in the south of the country in the 1970s, became an
    officially registered party right before the fall of the Soviet Union
    in 1990, and participated on the opposition side during the civil war.
    The party was legalized as part of the peace deal of 1997 and held a
    sort of symbolic two seats in the country's 63-seat assembly. But
    particularly since 2010, the party came under pressure and ended up
    being declared a terrorist organization. And I can address during the
    Q&A the effects of that, but obviously the closure of the party which
    had--or claimed to have--at its height 50,000 members, was viewed many
    observers, including myself, as potentially detrimental to countering
    violent extremism in the country.
        Third, as Dr. Collins mentioned, Tajikistan within the region is
    the highest per capita exporter of foreign fighters. The latest figures
    from a few weeks ago from the security services--which, again, need to
    be taken with a pinch of salt as Dr. Nasrutdinov has said--are 1,900
    fighters. That would be a significant portion from the 3,000-5,000 or
    4,000-6,000 fighters that are coming from the region. So, I think if
    Kyrgyzstan is maybe the best example of sort of model of state
    secularism in the region, Tajikistan is potentially the worst, maybe
    with Turkmenistan.
        So is counterextremism productive? I think my research, along with
    Dr. Nasrutdinov's research and Dr. Collins' research, has indicated
    that grievances do play a key role. And I think not only in the
    messaging that extremist groups have been portraying the governments of
    the region as an enemy of Islam by citing specific examples of their
    policies: closing mosques and preventing men from growing beards,
    policies against the hijab, et cetera. These have definitely been
    picked up by extremist organizations, and specific experiences of
    grievances does seem to be one of the only underlying conclusions for
    much of the research on extremist recruiting within the region; the
    other being the importance of social networks, both personal and
    online, in sort of drawing people into these extremist organizations.
        But I think another aspect in which state secularism in the region
    can be counterproductive is its sort of logic. Given that it's highly
    authoritarian, it's creating this false binary in many ways between a
    good, state-sponsored Islam that's local, and a bad foreign extremist
    Islam, that should be repressed. Its very logic is authoritarian, and
    it really does stymie critical thinking amongst the citizenry. This is
    part of a broader politics of authoritarianism within the region. The
    main effect of this authoritarianism is to try and create docile
    citizens who are secular, apolitical, and as Dr. Nasrutdinov mentioned,
    not only apolitical, but also potentially even anti-political who view
    politics, particularly when mixed with religion, as being a
    particularly dangerous thing. The governments of the region point to
    the Arab Spring as an example of this.
        And effectively, what's being created are citizens--young people in
    particular, who form huge segments of society within the region--who
    lack critical thinking skills and lack a critical and deep
    understanding of religion. Some of the examples from my research,
    particularly amongst Tajik labor migrants in Russia in 2014 and 2015,
    which was the height of the recruitment drive by Islamic State and
    other terrorist organizations in Syria, indicated that it's often these
    informal, community-based approaches that are much more effective in
    countering extremism than the heavy-handed approaches of the
    government.
        One example from a number from my sort of fieldwork, particularly
    in 2015, is Sadriddin. He came to Russia, I think, in 2013. He was a
    young labor migrant, had few opportunities in his home village in the
    south of Tajikistan, had a very limited knowledge of religion. He
    didn't pray growing up; didn't particularly take an interest in
    religion. But eventually in Moscow, he came under the influence of
    Islamic State recruiters who began to draw him into the fold, talking
    about the need for the religious obligation to conduct jihad.
    Eventually Abdulrahmon, who was one of my interlocutors in my research,
    invited him to dinner.
        Abdulrahmon was a Koran reader from the west of Tajikistan who
    studied in a madrasa in Pakistan and held an informal prayer group
    within the bazaar where he worked on the edge of Moscow. And he staged
    an intervention by pointing to specific examples within the Koran, the
    Hadith, that demonstrated that violence is only justified in very
    specific circumstances, and the contemporary circumstances we're seeing
    now perhaps do not justify violence. And eventually, through this
    process of communal intervention, he was brought away from that path,
    and decided not to join an extremist group.
        So speaking to Nathaniel's original question of pointing to
    policies and different ways things could be done differently, this
    focus on the community level and using communities as a tool not of
    authoritarian consolidation, as the presidents tend to use them, but as
    a tool in genuinely countering extremism, is something that would be
    very productive, along with trying to create citizens who can actually
    think critically about the simplistic messaging that they're getting
    from these extremist organizations.
        Mr. Hurd. Thank you. We'll now move into a period of discussion.
    It'll be a mixture of our panelists having the opportunity to respond
    to each other, to some of the points that have been made, some of the
    questions that have been raised. Everett and I will also have some
    questions for the panelists. And then we'll open it up to the audience.
    We'll start with those of you that are here in the room, and then we'll
    move to our Facebook viewers. So those of you that are watching online
    can type your questions there.
        I'll start with Dr. Collins, whether or not you have any sort of
    initial responses to some of the points that were raised by Dr.
    Nasrutdinov.
        Dr. Collins. Thank you. Thank you for your remarks, Dr.
    Nasrutdinov. I don't think I fundamentally disagree with anything you
    said. As I mentioned at the beginning, I was speaking broadly about
    major trends and problems in the region. Kyrgyzstan is a tough case to
    characterize, I think because there's a lot of regional variation
    within the country. So, the situation in the south of the country--in
    Osh, in Kara-Suu, in Jalal-Abad, Batken--is significantly worse than
    the situation in the north of the country. As you agree, the situation
    for ethnic Uzbeks is significantly worse along a number of dimensions,
    including ethnic repression and exclusion, and problems with the
    largely Kyrgyz police force and the ethnic Kyrgyz-dominated government
    in the south of the country, which the north of the country has
    problems controlling.
        The labor migrant phenomenon is largest in the south of the
    country. Remittances are highest for Osh and Jalal-Abad in the southern
    regions of the country, making that particular population the most
    vulnerable, whether they're in Moscow, or St. Petersburg, or
    Kazakhstan, or Turkey, to the recruiting and calls and networks of ISIS
    and other radical groups. So, there are many reasons for the ethnic
    Uzbek population, including religious repression as well as economic
    and ethnic repression, that lead them, I think, to be more a more
    vulnerable population at the call of ISIS.
        I particularly highlight the religious phenomenon, the religious
    repression here in large part because the ethnic Uzbek population in
    the south, particularly followers of Rafiq Qori and Rashod Qori, are
    seen as Salafis. Salafis, while not banned and mistreated in the same
    way in Kyrgyzstan, are still not given the same sort of equal rights in
    Kyrgyzstan as mainstream Hanafi Islam. So, I think they face greater
    levels of persecution. And certainly, both the killing of Rafiq Qori
    and then the arrest and 10-year sentence of Rashod Qori have
    exacerbated the problem in the south of the country--ironically because
    Rashod Qori had actually openly spoken and has multiple videos out
    available on social media condemning ISIS. So he's a Salafist on the
    one hand, but on the other hand he has very specifically called on this
    following not to join ISIS.
        Just a couple of other points--I think we all agree that the
    numbers, in terms of those who have actually gone to Syria as foreign
    fighters, are difficult to pin down. Certainly 1,300 is not a hard
    number--it's the number that I draw from the Soufan Group. I think to
    some extent it's corroborated by media reports by Radio Free Europe's
    data. And they've found similar disparities in terms of ethnic Uzbeks
    versus ethnic Kyrgyz who have joined, also primarily from the south of
    the country, facing these broader issues of religious and political and
    economic injustice, like corruption.
        The one other element that I would mention that I think gives some
    credence to the numbers is that the largely ethnic Uzbek battalions
    that have been fighting, and continue to be located in Syria today, the
    Imam Bukhari Battalion and Tawhid wal Jihad Battalion, are led by
    ethnic Uzbeks, one from southern Kyrgyzstan originally. They put out
    prolific media-social media propaganda on various social media
    channels--whether it's Telegram, or YouTube, or Turkish social media
    platforms. They use those platforms to disseminate their message,
    largely in the Uzbek language, and to some extent as well in Russian.
    This gives some credence to the fact that they're drawing on those
    networks in particular, but I agree that the numbers are problematic,
    and we should not take the regime's numbers without questioning them.
        Mr. Hurd. Dr. Nasrutdinov, do you want to add anything?
        Dr. Nasrutdinov. Well, I agree with Dr. Collins. And, again, I was
    not critical of the points that you were making. I was suggesting that
    we should take a bit more nuanced approach to this. The situation with
    the Uzbeks in the south of the country, as I said, right until now
    remains very, very problematic, and it is a major issue. But there are
    issues that the grievances of the Uzbeks might have developed due to
    this very difficult situation, which might be one of the major factors
    contributing to their vulnerability to radicalization.
        There is no equal sign, between the two. This still needs further
    and deeper exploration, because what we are doing right here, pointing
    a finger at the very specific ethnic group without really strong
    evidence and without deep discussion, can have consequences for the
    group itself. This is the only thing that I've been pointing out--that
    we have to take a little bit more care and consideration. That's all.
        Thank you.
        Mr. Hurd. Before I initiate our moderator questions, were there any
    other points that were raised by fellow panelists that any of you want
    to respond to?
        All right. I'll start our line of questioning by focusing on the
    topic of secularism. And it's something that several of you have
    already alluded to. In particular, government campaigns against or
    forcible removal of visible signs of piety--the hijab and beards--would
    be two evident examples of that. Debates about secularism, what it is,
    how it should be manifested in government policy, law, regulation,
    practice, is not something that's unique to Central Asia, of course.
    We're having debates and discussions about that in North America and in
    Western Europe. I immediately thought of the French amendment to its
    code of education back in 2004. The key line there was in public
    primary schools, middle schools, and high schools, the wearing of
    symbols or clothing by which students ostensibly manifest a religious
    affiliation is forbidden, which sounds more akin to what we've seen in
    some of the Central Asian countries.
        Two initial questions for all of you: Is there a kind of secularism
    that would be compliant with the international obligations that the
    Central Asian countries have made on religious freedom that might also
    match the Central Asian context? And second, as you look more globally,
    more broadly, are there models of secularism that you would commend to
    the consideration to the governments of Central Asia?
        Dr. Lemon. I guess I can take that one. No. I think the form of
    secularism we see in Central Asia is a more extreme version of laicite,
    as you say, the French form of secularism. It's been called by Ahmet
    Kuru a sort of assertive secularism whereby the state sits above
    religion and the state has the right to intervene in religious affairs,
    including personal and private settings, as well as public settings. So
    that's maybe a more extreme version than the sort of French model that
    talks about religious symbols in public places. So, it's a more extreme
    version of that.
        I'm not an expert on different models of secularism outside of
    Central Asia, but I think some sort of model by which religion is
    afforded or religious freedom is tolerated--the actual words of the
    constitution come before the more restrictive religious laws that have
    been adopted within the countries, and that that takes precedent and
    people are able to practice religion freely in their own homes and in
    public places, would be a model that would be preferable.
        Mr. Hurd. Dr. Collins? Dr. Nasrutdinov?
        Dr. Collins. I actually think that the model that Kyrgyzstan had
    more or less adopted prior to the 2008 religion law was actually
    working pretty well. There was an enormous amount of pluralism within
    the country. Salafis, Tablighi Jamaat, Shia, multiple different
    Christian groups participated publicly, and were able to freely
    worship. They were not facing the type of fear and restrictions and
    repression that they have subsequently, which was initiated by the
    Bakiyev regime, but has been continued despite the change in government
    after 2010, and arguably has actually worsened, particularly in the
    south of the country, as we were talking about.
        This has been, of course, in the context of the growth of ISIS,
    talk about counterterrorism measures, et cetera. But, as I suggested
    before, I think the adoption of a much harsher version of secularism
    modeled on laicite, but also modeled on Soviet ideas of atheism, in
    fact has exacerbated the problem with religious extremism within
    Kyrgyzstan. If Kyrgyzstan were to go back 10 years, I think they
    actually had a relatively good model not just for Kyrgyzstan, but for
    the region more generally.
        Mr. Price. Dr. Nasrutdinov, I'd like to hear your thoughts on this
    as well. But if I can just add one other question that I'd appreciate
    your help clarifying is, what exactly--and you alluded to it a little
    bit, but I was wondering if you could delve into it a little bit more--
    what prompted that change in the policy from I think it was 2006-2008
    and then afterwards? And then you also said that it flipped back and
    headed, again, in a little bit more of a positive direction after 2010.
    What accounts for those changes back and forwards in terms of the
    trajectory?
        Dr. Nasrutdinov. Okay. I think when we talk about Central Asia and
    we talk about the states, we cannot talk about the states in isolation
    from the discussion of specific leaders of the countries. This is all
    about personalities, including what is happening in Uzbekistan. This
    slightly positive change that is developing, again, is a reflection of
    a change in the personality of the leadership.
        And, what has been happening in Kyrgyzstan in regard to religious
    freedom is exactly that in many ways. Askar Akayev, the first
    president, was very open-minded, democratic, and really didn't care
    about religion at all, so this was not on his agenda. That's why so
    many religious communities, both Muslim and Christian and other
    communities, were able to develop and flourish in such large numbers.
        Then Bakiyev's regime really was the first regime that actually
    started repression by the government of religion. And the first law
    that Bakiyev introduced was the law on religious freedom, which in fact
    was actually in many ways limiting the freedoms of citizens. But again,
    we see that when Atambayev came to power, Roza Otunbayeva didn't do
    much. When Atambayev came to power, in the first couple of years he was
    still trying to figure out what to do. One kind of positive thing that
    can be said about Atambayev was that he was open to the discussion with
    the expert community. He had the Security Council, and he created a
    number of groups of experts who had been working on these issues and
    have been advising him on these specific issues.
        Particularly as a result of this collaboration, there was this
    positive change that began evolving in 2013 and 2014. As I said, the
    formal State Committee on Religious Affairs director was removed and
    replaced, and the mufti was replaced, and the two started collaborating
    much better. And then what we see, while this positive change was still
    evolving, Atambayev was quite critical of the hijabs and Muslim attire,
    and he produced quite a lot of negative remarks in regard to religion.
        Now the new president, Sooronbay Jeenbekov, is believed to be
    himself a practicing Muslim who prays five times a day and generally
    supports Islamic communities in many ways. He has organized a number of
    interesting conferences and invited a number of interesting
    international experts and speakers to talk about these issues. At the
    moment we really are seeing very little pressure, and he's also a
    distant relative of our present mufti, which is a big thing in Central
    Asia. So, at the moment, we see this positive change.
        One last thing I would like to mention besides these personality
    styles at the top level, is the important role played by civil society.
    For example, one of the main groups that lobbied and very actively
    promoted the right of girls to wear hijab in school is the group called
    Mutakalim. This is a female organization that fights for the right of
    Muslim women. I can suggest that whatever has been achieved in regard
    to this freedom--and Kyrgyzstan today is the only country in Central
    Asia which allows girls to wear hijab to schools, right; no other
    country allows that--is not the product of the specific politicians or
    the president, or even the muftiate. It is the outcome of the many
    years of struggle that this feminist organization put into this. They
    took the minister of education to court a number of times. They have
    protested in front of the Ministry of Education. The civil society has
    contributed quite a lot to that kind of form of secularism, which is a
    bit distant from French laicite but closer to a more American version
    of secularism.
        Mr. Hurd. Underpinning a lot of what we've discussed already today
    is the fundamental question of meaning. So people, whether they're in
    Central Asia or Western Europe or elsewhere, have big existential
    questions once they hit the age of reason.
        This intersects, I think, with two things. One, state control or
    branded Islam, where the imams are state funded, state trained, state
    approved, where the content of their sermons are in some cases
    literally provided by the governments. So what people are receiving
    when they go to the mosque is, as some of you already noted,
    effectively government propaganda. It doesn't have a particularly
    strong religious character and doesn't necessarily address these big
    existential questions that people have about themselves and about life.
        This also brings us to education, and all of you have touched on
    the lack of healthy, vibrant religious education in the countries of
    Central Asia. Broadly, what would healthy religious education look like
    in the Central Asian context? What would it look like at the private
    level? What should the government's relationship be to it?
        And then a version of the question that I asked earlier: Are there
    models, including outside of Central Asia, where you think there are
    large Muslim communities and the religious education looks like the
    kind of thing that you would hope to be replicated, or at least
    considered, in Central Asia?
        And a third question is: Can you perhaps say a bit more about the
    lack of substance that people are receiving at school, that what
    they're receiving at mosque in response to these big existential
    questions they have, which in turn makes them perhaps more vulnerable,
    more susceptible to the allure of what they might encounter from more
    extremist individuals or groups, particularly when they travel abroad
    for work to places like Russia?
        This is a question for all the panelists.
        Dr. Lemon. Three questions for each. I guess I'll go with the first
    and the third.
        So, as I mentioned, before 2010 I think there were almost 3,000
    Tajiks studying Islam abroad, and there are a number of madrasas
    operating in the country, and there still is an Islamic university I
    think with 2,000 places. There's certainly much more demand for Islamic
    education than there is supply. There are still, from my understanding
    and from some reports, some sort of unofficial underground--although
    that's a misleading term that dates back to the Soviet Union--there are
    still unofficial lessons, and, certainly in some villages within the
    country, the government views that as a potential security threat
    within Tajikistan.
        I think a model would be, obviously, providing more Islamic
    education, providing some--I know that in the past they introduced in
    high school, I guess middle school--some sort of theology and Islamic
    morality classes. That may be a good opportunity. But as I said,
    speaking to the third question, education within Central Asia in
    general, Tajikistan in particular, is about producing citizens who are
    not critical and will not resist or question authority and power. I
    think there's a genuine view that Islam and Islamic morality poses a
    threat to regime security, so I think it's trying to persuade the
    government that Islam isn't necessarily anti-state and it's not
    necessarily anti-status quo; and that they can loosen the reins on
    religion and promote religious education, and it doesn't ipso facto
    mean that their power will be threatened. In fact, if they opened up to
    a more pluralist system like Kyrgyzstan has, it would reduce the
    pressure and reduce some of the injustice that's existing within
    society, and maybe even allow Islamic civil society to develop and take
    on some of the roles that the state's incapable of doing as we've seen
    sort of through processes like kashar in Kyrgyzstan and is already
    existing in Tajikistan.
        Dr. Nasrutdinov. Yes, and in Kyrgyzstan the major problem faced by
    students of madrasas is the lack of certification and licensing.
    Because Kyrgyzstan is a secular country, the Ministry of Education
    refuses to give licenses to religious institutions. What we have as a
    result is that students usually go to madrasas after completing the
    ninth grade of school. Then, having completed the degree at the
    madrasa, they are not able to obtain a certificate of secondary
    education, and thus they cannot continue their education into the
    higher education institutions. This has been a problem for all madrasa
    graduates. And the madrasas themselves are open to collaboration: They
    want to introduce secular subjects into their curriculum just to get
    that secondary education certificate for their own graduates.
        Yet, the state is still kind of lagging behind on these issues and
    not really working properly. So far only one institution has been
    granted a license: the Islamic University of Kyrgyzstan, one of the
    eight higher education madrasas. There is one more pilot project that
    was introduced by the State Committee on Religious Affairs, and that is
    kind of a theology college on the basis of one of the universities,
    where students who obtain a degree in religion also obtain a
    certificate in secondary education. I think resolving this issue would
    help a lot the graduates of Islamic educational institutions to
    integrate better into life, and to have both professional careers and
    religious careers developed together, where they would not be isolated
    only to religious life.
        In regard to introducing religious subjects into secular schools,
    this also has been on agenda. This is already the second year that the
    Ministry of Education is piloting a project on introducing a subject
    called the history of world religion into the curriculum of regular
    secular schools. The results are yet to be evaluated and seen, but
    there is this initiative, and hopefully it will take proper ground.
        Dr. Collins. Thank you for pointing to that issue--religious
    education, as well as education more broadly, I think is an enormous
    challenge for the Central Asian states to deal with. In approximately a
    hundred focus groups that my Central Asian colleagues and I did across
    the region over the course of several years, the vast, vast majority of
    participants pointed to a desire for any religious education, better
    religious education, and religious education within the framework of an
    otherwise-secular school system. So, they're not talking about a desire
    to send their children just to madrasas, something along the lines of
    what we've seen in Pakistan or Afghanistan emerge over the past several
    decades. They want their children to get basic theological instruction
    within the context of the school system.
        Given that there are no religious schools that also teach secular
    subjects for the most part across the region--again, Kyrgyzstan has a
    few minor exceptions, but across the region it's something that's
    broadly banned and seen as threatening to the governments of the
    region--I think that is a key area in which we can think about looking
    at models elsewhere. And I actually would propose the U.S. as a
    relatively good model in this respect. Religious education, religious
    schools, religious institutions that run, own, and teach religion as a
    theology together with the whole range of secular subjects have been
    something that have been part of the religious and civil system in the
    United States since our founding.
        The Catholic school system, of which I'm a product, is actually a
    quite healthy example in this regard. And I think it would be very
    interesting to see Central Asians and directors of Central Asian
    schools come and have a dialog with teachers and administrators in the
    Catholic school system here to see how it works. Ninety percent of the
    school day goes toward secular subjects, but religion is also taught as
    a theology.
        And on that point, I just want to emphasize that what people are
    not looking for is for their kids to go to study Islam in the secular
    state-run, state-controlled school system as a science, as the study of
    atheism in the way that it was during the Soviet period, in the way
    that quite frankly still is across much of the region. To the extent
    that religion has been introduced in the school system, it's been
    introduced in this very Soviet-style fashion. People want their kids to
    learn morality and they want them to learn their beliefs, but they want
    them to learn those beliefs within a sort of healthy, otherwise secular
    context. That's what the vast majority of the population I think wants.
        Mr. Hurd. I think just another example from the U.S. system--you
    mentioned the Catholic school system, but in addition there are
    families here in the United States that send their children to public
    schools, but then their own religious community has something set up to
    sort of supplement that. So, they're certainly getting religious
    education at home, but they're also getting it from a community entity
    that supplements whatever it is that they're receiving in the public
    school system.
        Dr. Collins. And it's not encumbered by all these restrictions that
    have been put in place across Central Asia in terms of how you have to
    get permission on who can teach, and whether or not teaching religion
    through the churches or through the mosques or in the home is actually
    legal or illegal. So, at the current moment across much of the region
    for one to teach--to send one to a grandparent or a neighbor or an
    atinga is actually extraordinarily risky when most of us would agree
    that that's just sort of a normal, healthy part of the moral upbringing
    of a child.
        Mr. Price. I think all of you have talked about the post-Soviet
    legacy that heavily influences the state's approach to religion. I was
    wondering what you make of the generational shift that seems to be
    impacting all post-Soviet republics these days of a generation of kids
    who are now adults who have grown up without any living memory of the
    Soviet Union. Is that impacting attitudes toward religion at the
    popular level? And will that have an impact on the way that government
    and administration relates to those issues?
        Dr. Lemon. As an anecdote, I was at a wedding in 2013 in the Vanj
    mountainous district in Tajikistan, and there were separate tables
    between the young guys, many of whom were labor migrants. They were
    back from the summer, and they would not touch alcohol, and they were
    on one table. Then there were the sort of bad young guys, as they
    labeled them, who sat next to them, and they were all drinking. And
    then there was the sort of old Soviet generation sitting on the third
    table, and they were, again, drinking.
        And I think that certainly that's an anecdote, but we are seeing
    especially among the younger generation an increasing interest in
    religion. I think that's, in the case of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan in
    particular, mediated through these processes of going to Russia, where
    ironically, religion is more free and they are able to meet practicing
    Muslims from a broader community, and they're able to with fewer risks
    either register for official religious training in Russia or convene
    informal prayer groups, a number of which I attended in Moscow in 2014
    and 2015.
        I think there is this societal Islamization. From the view of the
    governments this is inherently political, and it's linked to a
    political radicalization and seen as a threat. But I think there is a
    genuine demand amongst the population, as shown through Dr. Collins'
    surveys in religious education, in morality. And that is in part
    mediated by this move from a Soviet to a post-Soviet system.
        Dr. Nasrutdinov. I totally agree with Dr. Lemon. For many purposes
    of convenience, I tend to oversimplify matters by categorizing this
    sort of debate into difference between several generations. And again,
    I think this is like oversimplification, but still it's easier to
    perceive a larger picture this way.
        I distinguish the older Soviet generation--this would be the
    generation of my grandfathers who were born before the Soviet Union or
    in the early Soviet years when religion was still free, right--they
    were the ones who, like my grandfather, went to madrasa, learned to
    read and write in Arabic, memorized a portion of Koran, before the
    things going bad in 1920s and 1930s and religion became prohibited. So
    the elderly community were among the first ones who in the 1990s, as
    soon as religious freedom returned, went back to their religious
    practices. For example, my grandfather became a mullah, imam for the
    Tatar community in the south in Kyrgyzstan.
        And then the second generation, I call them the Soviet generation.
    This is the generation of my parents. These are the ones who were born,
    brought up, raised, and matured into this Soviet atheist, anti-
    religious propaganda. They were already in their 40s and 50s when the
    Soviet Union broke up, and having spent their entire life believing
    that religion is a prejudice and a fairy tale--something which is but a
    negative--they were among the ones who had the most difficult time
    returning to religion, or going to religion. This is the generation
    that is really missing in churches and in the mosque nowadays.
        And then the third generation--this is what I refer to myself--is a
    transitional generation. We went to school in the Soviet time, but then
    we're still young enough and still open to ideas when the Soviet Union
    broke up--I was 17. And many in my generation came to religion via a
    detour of the bad 1990s with the drugs and alcohol addiction, criminal
    engagement, et cetera. So for many of representative of my generation,
    those who survived 1990s, right, they--for them religion was a
    salvation from all these difficult and bad habits.
        And then you have the independent generation. These are the kids
    who grew up in the 1990s or late 1980s, so the ones who were not
    brainwashed with the Soviet propaganda at all. So for them religion was
    really their choice. The parents did not impose it on them, but it was
    one of many choices in regard to this new kind of forms of identities
    that suddenly became available after the breakup of the Soviet Union.
    For them, they see religion as a choice and they respect it as a choice
    of others.
        And then you have the new Millennials--my children. For my children
    I try to teach them and I try to raise them with the sort of religious
    perspective on life.
        It's kind of a cycle that goes back in some ways is the
    observations. That's my perspective.
        Mr. Price. Dr. Collins, maybe you could also address from the
    bureaucratic standpoint how entrenched these practices are from the
    Soviet Union's legacy and whether they're subject to change with kind
    of generational evolution.
        Dr. Collins. Yes, thank you.
        Well, it's an interesting question. Nathaniel and I were having a
    conversation earlier about some comments that are still made by the
    older generation who tend to still dominate amongst government elites
    and within the bureaucracy. This mentality of Soviet atheism and fear
    and suspicion of religion, I think, still pervades those who are in
    positions of power. And that, I think, continues to influence policies
    such as Tajikistan's sort of public campaign against the hijab. You see
    a milder version of this taking place in Kyrgyzstan, where government
    elites seem to feel the need to speak out against the Arab version of
    the hijab invading our country versus the sort of traditional Islam and
    the traditional way that Kyrgyz women are supposed to dress. These
    statements coming from government elites, I think, reflect that very
    Soviet sort of bureaucratic atheist understanding and suspicion of what
    religion is actually all about.
        As both the previous speakers have said, there is this growing gap
    between the elites and the youth, particularly those who were born in
    the post-Soviet era. Something that's not always taken into account in
    much of what is written about Islam in the region, is that we now have
    an entire generation who was born after the Soviet Union collapsed. So
    we've seen significant generational turnover in terms of youth's views
    about Islam, about politics, and about corruption. It's the younger
    generation who've grown up entirely in a system where the educational
    system is pervaded by corruption, and I think that's across the
    region--one of the issues where there isn't a whole lot of variation.
    That pervades how they view the world. I think, not for everybody,
    certainly, but for quite a number of people, it causes them to see
    Islam in some way as a solution to a lot of their problems, as a
    solution to injustice, and as a solution to political/economic
    corruption and repression of many sorts.
        Another point which I would emphasize that Dr. Nasrutdinov
    mentioned earlier is the access to social media. This is, again, more
    so the case in Kyrgyzstan than in some of the other republics, where
    access to social media is higher. But youth, since they can't receive
    religious education or there's not enough access to sort of normal
    religious education, they're going online. This is happening across the
    region. It's happening in Russia. It's happening in Azerbaijan. So, to
    get their questions about Islam answered, they get online and they
    listen to various forms from the moderate to the extreme that are
    posted online in their languages--in Russian and Kyrgyz and
    predominantly in Uzbek. And this is affecting how they're viewing the
    world, how they're viewing their social and political problems, and how
    they're coming to view--at least a certain percentage of them--religion
    as a solution to that.
        Again, I don't think the youth perspective that religion should be
    part of the public space and civil society is not something that should
    be seen necessarily as threatening. It can evolve in a healthy and
    pluralist way, as it had in Kyrgyzstan prior to the Bakiyev
    administration and their adoption of a new law on religion. But
    unfortunately, by government elites it is still seen as something
    that's very threatening that needs to be controlled and repressed.
        Mr. Hurd. Thank you.
        Everett and I have many more questions and I sure could be here all
    day with a fruitful conversation with our panelists, but we want to
    make sure that we give our audience members an opportunity to ask
    questions. I have a colleague here with a mic. If you could tell us
    your name and affiliation, if you have one, and then please ask your
    question. Thank you.
        Questioner. Thanks. I'm Alex Tiersky, also of the U.S. Helsinki
    Commission.
        As the policy advisor with responsibility for counterterrorism, I
    want to tell you how instructive I found this discussion. I've really
    learned a tremendous amount from your presentations and the discussion.
    Thank you very much.
        I have two questions. The first actually derives from the set of
    questions that my colleague Everett just asked you about the Soviet
    legacy that we've talked about for a while. What we haven't talked
    about is any kind of active Russian engagement with the elites in
    Central Asia. Obviously, the Soviet legacy is one thing, but the
    Kremlin seeks to take a mantle on counterterrorism internationally, and
    I imagine that's the case in Central Asia as well. I'd love to hear
    from you a few thoughts on the Kremlin's perspective on sharing what we
    might call worst practices in the regards of this conversation.
        The second question I would like to ask is, you've made it quite
    clear that from the expert perspective that the governmental view or
    the governmental repression of the free practice of Islam and the free
    practice of religion in Central Asia is counterproductive from a
    counterextremism perspective. But what none of you have said is whether
    the governments believe that they are doing something that is being
    effective or not; in other words, if they think they're winning and
    pushing extremism beyond their borders, it makes it much more difficult
    for us to convince them to take a different approach.
        Thank you.
        Dr. Lemon. Well, on Russia, obviously, there's a shared
    understanding of this problem, I think we can say, between the security
    services in particular. And they're the ones, really, who are often
    driving the more interventionist policies, certainly within the Tajik
    case, along with the Ministry of Internal Affairs and, obviously,
    Committee on Religious Affairs and other institutions. I think there's
    a shared understanding of this problem: there's a good and a bad Islam,
    and Islam is something that needs to be regulated because it, like
    other parts of civil society, poses a threat to regime security.
        But I think there's also a practical dimension to this, and this
    operates both multilaterally and bilaterally, formally and informally.
    Through things like the RATS--the Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure--or
    through the SCO [Shanghai Cooperation Organisation], which is based in
    Tashkent. There's a CIS [commonwealth of independent states]
    counterterrorism center, and they share lists. They're like a sort of
    Interpol-lite in that they have lists of wanted extremists and
    extremist groups, and they participate in extraditions both formally
    and informally of accused extremists, many of whom are opposition
    members residing within different republics within the region. I think
    there's certainly cooperation there.
        And the second question was on counterextremism as being
    counterproductive?
        Questioner. Whether the regimes believe that it is.
        Dr. Lemon. Oh, whether the regimes believe it. Well, in my research
    I find it very difficult to have meetings, and I had some very early on
    in 2010 with some people from certain structures within the Tajik
    Government on this issue. I think it's difficult to glean intentions
    here. We all want to say that there's nefarious intent. It's difficult
    to say and disprove whether these people genuinely believe what they're
    doing or not. I think, from my conversations with various Tajik
    officials through the years, there is a genuine belief that Islam does
    pose a threat and that the steps they're taking--whilst they may not be
    ideal--are the best way to sort of keep a lid on the problem.
        Dr. Nasrutdinov. Perhaps I could answer the two questions together
    on the example of Kyrgyzstan.
        All the repressive politics, particularly in regard to banning
    specific religious groups, have started with Russia. Russia has been
    thoroughly open until the late 2000s, and it was in 2008 when they
    started banning basically all groups. There are only four versions of
    religion that remain: Orthodox Christianity, traditional Islam,
    Buddhism, and Judaism. Everything else was to be banned.
        Besides banning, one illustrative example is the banning of
    Tablighi Jamaat, the Southeast Asian group. Russia was the first one to
    ban it. Then it made the recommendations to the CSTO--Collective
    Security Treaty Organization--to ban them as well.
        And the first one to follow was Tajikistan. It banned them in 2009.
    Immediately on that year 60 members of the movement were arrested, and
    since then the persecution has started.
        Kazakhstan kept thinking until 2013. And after the events in Atyrau
    in 2011 they decided to ban it as well.
        Kyrgyzstan today remains the only country where Tablighi Jamaat is
    still legal. It's still withstanding the pressures from the other
    members of the CSTO, including Russia. Particularly illustrative are
    the remarks of our former President Almazbek Atambayev suggesting that
    we are keeping everything under control and at the moment, we see a
    more of a positive influence of the group rather than the negative;
    that's why we keep it legal.
        Same can be said about the Turkish groups, such as Nurcular and
    Hizmet. There is quite a lot of pressure from the Turkish Government to
    ban them after the coup attempt in Turkey. And yet, Almazbek Atambayev
    also said that we are keeping everything under control, and to the
    degree we believe that these group has more positive influence for us.
        So it's hard for me to tell for the governments of neighboring
    countries, but at least in Kyrgyzstan the government is kind of
    listening. For example, on the questions of Tablighi Jamaat, they have
    taken serious consultations with international experts including Alexey
    Malashenko, for example, and many local community experts--whereas in
    neighboring countries it's more authoritative decisionmaking as to just
    banning everything.
        One more influence that comes from Russia is through propaganda and
    media. Again, there is a specific age group, like the Soviet
    generation, like my parents--like my father, who retired 2 years ago.
    And since then he's been hooked on Russian TV and Russian propaganda
    completely. So this is the group that is brainwashed by this continuous
    Russian media and Russian propaganda, and a lot of that anti-religious
    sentiment also comes via that channel.
        Dr. Collins. I would certainly agree with all that's been said so
    far, so I won't add too much to that.
        I would note that I've had conversations with members of the State
    Committee on Religious Affairs in Kyrgyzstan for about 10 years about
    Tablighi Jamaat, and they constantly feel as though they should ban it.
    They haven't quite done it yet. They've resisted the pressure from
    Russia and across the region to brand this religious community as a
    terrorist and extremist organization, thankfully, so far.
        Jehovah's Witnesses are another example. The repression started in
    Russia, and you subsequently see the adoption of similar policies
    toward the Jehovah's Witnesses across the region. So Russia, I think,
    is a particularly nefarious influence within the sphere of religious
    affairs across the region.
        Do the governments believe they're winning? It's difficult to say.
    I strongly suspect, though, that given the changes that we are starting
    to see within the Uzbek regime, that there are at least some
    significant players as well as many of the younger generation who are
    starting to come up through the ranks within the Uzbek Government who
    were in graduate school with me in the 1990s. And they increasingly, I
    think, believe that the repressive policies of President Karimov's
    regime were, in fact, counterproductive. And it will be interesting to
    see whether or not the changes in Uzbekistan have any sort of ripple
    effect across the region.
        Mr. Price. I think that's very interesting because anecdotally I've
    certainly heard from some Uzbek interlocutors that they feel that these
    examples that people point to of Uzbek nationals who have committed
    acts of terror abroad have been radicalized while abroad in Russia and
    think that they were not radicalized within Uzbekistan, and they take
    that talking point to kind of underscore the efficacy of their domestic
    policies. But I don't know how to square that with what we've discussed
    today.
        Mr. Hurd. Yes, please.
        Questioner. Catherine Cosman, formerly Helsinki Commission a
    hundred years ago and more recently U.S. Commission on International
    Religious Freedom.
        My questions also have to do with Russia. I would not say that the
    policies of Russia toward freedom of religion are all that much better
    than that of the Central Asian countries, sadly, especially after 2014
    and that series of laws that they passed, and the types of Russian
    Orthodox radicals--I think is a fair way of characterizing them--who
    are, many of them women, in important positions of power, including,
    unfortunately, the Ministry of Education. But that's another question.
    I think Russia has a very important influence on many levels in what's
    going on in Central Asia.
        Also, vis-a-vis migrants, of course, the overall picture of their
    treatment is pretty bad, but I have heard that in some cities in some
    areas in Siberia, and oddly enough in Chechnya, there are some Uzbek
    migrants who are imam khatibs, so in other words in influential
    positions. One of Kadyrov's chief advisors on religion apparently is an
    Uzbek. Whether that's something to be proud of is another question.
        Also, because I think it's important to ask, which religious figure
    or Muslim-related religious figure in Russia is admired by the millions
    of Central Asian migrants? And I've heard, unfortunately, that it is
    Kadyrov who is the most-admired figure. I hope I'm wrong and I hope you
    can contradict me on that.
        So, in short, the picture about freedom of religion in Russia is
    very complicated. I would end my little disquisition with saying that
    we should also look at the international instruments for a good
    definition of freedom of religion; i.e., the U.N. and the OSCE. I think
    that should be mentioned, especially at a setting like this.
        Thank you.
        Mr. Hurd. Do any of the panelists want to respond?
        Dr. Lemon. No, when I said that Russia is better, I didn't mean in
    terms of the legal framework, which I agree is just as bad. I think for
    certain Central Asian migrant communities that I spent time with,
    perhaps because they were away from home communities where surveillance
    networks are very extensive--mostly informal through local mahallas and
    informants and family members even--that they felt that the state
    wasn't quite as interested, perhaps, in them, and sort of as pervasive
    in its sort of surveillance networks. But I certainly wouldn't say that
    Russia should be upheld as a beacon of religious freedom. That would
    not be the case.
        In terms of who the Tajik migrants who I spent time with admire,
    he's not an Islamic leader, but Putin himself is obviously revered
    amongst many of the migrant community as the archetypal strongman. I
    think Kadyrov--there's a lot of sympathy amongst the migrants who I
    know toward him as being, again, an effective leader who's brought
    stability to Chechnya.
        I think within my experience within Moscow there's certainly a
    tension between the mosques and the muftiate, which is Tatar-led,
    although there are some North Caucasians in the administration, and the
    Central Asian migrant communities. I know a lot of people were turned
    away or no longer enjoyed attending or wanted to attend the very few
    mosques in Moscow because often parts of the service were in Tatar and
    they didn't understand. Some of it was in Russian. But they preferred
    often to have their own informal prayer groups, as opposed to going to
    the official institutions that they viewed as being less welcoming to
    them.
        Dr. Nasrutdinov. In regard to Kyrgyz practicing Muslim population,
    I think the religious authority is constructed along ethnic lines,
    significantly. So the most popular and famous religious scholars are
    all ethnic Kyrgyz. The most well-known scholar is Chubak Ajy Jalilov,
    who is a former mufti, and he is followed by Abduskhonar Matev, who is
    a former rector of the Kyrgyz Islamic University. The two are very
    active inside Kyrgyzstan. They are very active with lectures in their
    own mosques and in other mosques, and produce a lot of visual materials
    on CDs and online. They are also very popular among Kyrgyz migrants in
    Russia, and they regularly travel. The muftiate organizes trips for
    them, and you have gatherings in City Crocus Hall in Moscow where it
    brings together up to 6,000 Kyrgyz labor migrants just to listen to the
    two.
        Surprisingly, another interesting figure who is popular in
    Kyrgyzstan is Shamil Alyautdinov, who is a Tatar modern Islamic scholar
    from Russia. He's been coming to Kyrgyzstan with lectures almost every
    year, he and his wife. She is also quite popular among the female
    community particularly. They gather large crowds, and have a fairly
    strong fellowship in the country.
        Dr. Collins. Yes, I certainly agree. The situation with Russia is
    very complicated, and we're talking about millions of migrants who are
    living there. They're broken into different ethnic communities. They
    live in different cities of Russia. Some of them have greater access to
    internet than others. And even within Central Asia itself, it's
    interesting that so many people express both popular views of Russia,
    in large part based on the Russian media that they have access to, and
    correspondingly very negative views of the United States, increasingly
    so, over the past 10 to 20 years.
        At the same time, they also have expressed in both focus groups as
    well as my survey research, a desire to introduce various elements of
    Sharia into the legal system, or to have some sort of Muslim democracy,
    or to model their system on Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, which they
    see as pure and less corrupt and a good Islamic form of life.
        So those views often seem very contradictory: how can one admire
    Putin and at the same time want a government based on what they see as
    the Arab model, which, of course, many people have not had any
    particular experience with? So it is certainly something very sort of
    difficult to pin down.
        I agree with the comments that the other panelists have made. I
    just want to address your question as well, Everett, about the Uzbek
    Government's talking points. I think those are the talking points
    across the region as well, that to date we've kept the lid on extremism
    within our country by the policies that we've had in place over the
    past decade to two to three decades.
        I'm not sure that these governments are quite as naive as all that.
    Certainly there're some people who firmly believe in repression. But I
    do think that there are others--and again, it's probably the younger
    generation--who are attuned to what's being disseminated in social
    media, whether it's Gulmurod Khalimov's video where he defects from the
    OMON [Special Purpose Police Unit] in Tajikistan and says that one of
    the reasons of his defection is because of the abuse and torture of
    Muslims and religious repression in Tajikistan. That's central to the
    reason that he left Tajikistan and joined ISIS.
        Following his departure, you start to see the numbers of Tajiks
    peaking as fighters in Syria. Certainly, dozens and dozens and dozens
    of videos that are put out by other primarily ethnic Uzbek, or mixed
    ethnically, but led by ethnic Uzbeks in Syria also continually harp on
    that same message. It's not all about Syria. It's about both Syria as
    well as the religious repression and the situation for Muslims at home.
        So, it's hard for me to believe that the Central Asian elites are
    completely naive to the problems that have been created by religious
    repression at home. I would hope that that is underlying some of the
    changes and push for reform within Uzbekistan today. Tajikistan might
    be another matter. I'm not sure that they're convinced yet.
        Mr. Hurd. Do we have any more questions from the audience?
        Questioner. Jeff Bell, National Endowment for Democracy.
        I was very interested to hear Professor Nasrutdinov talk about the
    role civil society has played in encouraging better attitudes toward
    religious freedom in Kyrgyzstan. And I would just be curious to hear if
    the panel could talk about perhaps what both religious and secular
    civil society could be doing better or is doing well in all the
    countries.
        I understand, of course in Tajikistan there's very little leeway to
    do much. But it would still be interesting to hear.
        Thank you.
        Dr. Nasrutdinov. Well, I think the question was addressed mostly to
    my colleagues, like whether this is happening also in other countries.
        Dr. Lemon. It was also to you about what civil society has done.
        Dr. Nasrutdinov. Oh, civil society. I'll give you specific
    examples.
        For example, one of the leaders of this group, Mutakalim, the
    leader is Jamal Frontbek-Kyzy. What she did is that she, at the
    beginning, she established her organization specifically with the
    agenda of hijabs in schools and workplaces in mind. It took her 2 years
    to get it registered, through a lot of hurdles particularly even from
    the muftiate, which were making obstacles for her. Yet they succeeded.
        Since they've registered, they've been taking school directors,
    ministers of education, to court regularly, and they've provided legal
    assistance and continuously supported these cases. Over a number of
    years, this has accumulated. Eventually, there's this big story where a
    minister of education did ban hijabs completely in school. They took
    him to court. They won the case. His ban was removed. He himself was
    fired. It was 2 days ago that the law was introduced that allows girls
    to wear not a hijab, but kind of a veil.
        Another interesting case was when Jamal was invited to attend a
    U.N. meeting in Turkey. And when she was passing by customs at the
    Manas Airport in Bishkek, the customs officers asked her to remove
    hijab because on the ID, she was without hijab, and said you can remove
    it, pass it, and then put it back. And she said, no, I'm not removing
    it. So they wouldn't let her pass the customs until when she said okay,
    you're free not to let me pass, but I will make it such an
    international scandal, so you will be sorry about it.
        Eventually they did let her in. What she did, as soon as she came
    back, was she started collecting signatures, because in order to change
    the law you need to have 300,000 signatures. She collected 300,000
    signatures in the country. She initiated the law. Everybody signed
    except for one. This was a minister of international affairs--he
    categorically refused to do that.
        So she waited. And it was 2008, I think, when we had SCO meeting--
    Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting--in Bishkek, where the
    leaders of all these SCO countries were supposed to come. She made a
    call for all Muslim women to come out and block the main road from the
    airport to the city. This would be such a big scandal that everyone
    became really, really concerned. The Ministry of International Affairs
    wrote to her, saying, Okay, I will sign the paper; just call the
    meeting off. And she said, no, until I see the paper with the
    signature, I don't call it off. She receives the permission with his
    signature in the last moment, and she calls the protest off.
        This is how they've struggled--it didn't come nicely. It didn't
    come easily. These are just a couple of examples.
        Dr. Lemon. As you say, in Tajikistan the space for civil-society
    engagement in religious policy debating secularism is limited. In the
    mid-2000s, the OSCE actually sponsored this sort of religious-secular
    dialog at the time when the opposition was still legal. This was an
    ongoing series of conferences organized in Dushanbe, but also in
    Germany, between religious authorities, members of the government,
    members of the opposition, and scholars, and those sort of debates
    around policy actually took place then. That was a different time.
        Sort of moving back toward that would be certainly something that
    would be welcomed. But I think, under the current circumstances, the
    government would be reluctant. And, the only sort of civil-society
    events and programs was obviously focused on CVE and violent extremism.
    Even though, as we've mentioned, in terms of the radicalization
    process, perhaps secularism is more to blame than religion in terms of
    many of the recruits not being particularly religious before being
    recruited. That seems to be one of civil society's only in to this
    issue, but it's obviously from a negative perspective.
        Dr. Collins. I'll just add that two countries where Christian-based
    groups were actually quite active in civil society until more recent
    restrictions have gone into effect are Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. And
    there you saw, over the course of the 1990s and 2000s, the
    proliferation, especially in Kazakhstan, of groups with a Christian
    basis to them, affiliated with churches or sometimes independent of
    churches, that did a whole range of basic civic activities, including
    set-up centers for individuals with drug addictions or alcohol
    addictions, for homeless women. These dealt with that whole range of
    what we would consider faith-based organizations and those sorts of
    activities until many of them started to fear new government
    restrictions on proselytism and on children participating in religious
    organizations or activities.
        There's now, I think, quite a bit of fear, particularly on the part
    of minority Christian groups, particularly Protestants--Baptists,
    evangelicals and others--in Kazakhstan, and to some extent in
    Kyrgyzstan as well, that by engaging in those sorts of activities, by
    having children present, for example, at youth camps or summer camps,
    that they will be banned by the state or sort of come under really
    quite crippling fines from the state.
        In one case in Kazakhstan, I believe it was a year or two ago,
    there were Christian women who were simply providing sort of hospice
    services. But they had Bibles present at the scene, and they were
    charged with proselytism and then were given crippling fines.
        So I think there's a failure on the part of the governments to
    realize that religious organizations, whether Christian or Muslim, can
    engage in a healthy range of civic activity that society as well as the
    state would actually benefit from.
        Dr. Nasrutdinov. Let me just quickly add the clarification that the
    law that she initiated, Jamal Frontbek-Kyzy, was on allowing women to
    take photos for passport with a hijab. That was now supported.
        Mr. Hurd. Thank you for the questions and thank you for the
    interesting responses. Everett and I will ask one question apiece and
    then we'll wrap things up.
        My question is particularly for Dr. Collins and Dr. Nasrutdinov.
    We've talked about some of the differences between Kyrgyzstan and the
    rest of the region. But I'm wondering if, in the areas of law, policy
    and regulation, whether one of the primary differences is that of a
    lack of full implementation, as opposed to the actual substance of the
    law and the policy and regulation. For example, in the area of
    registration, all religious groups and religious schools are required
    to register with the State Committee on Religious Affairs.
        There are a number of groups that continue to have problems gaining
    registration--the Ahmadiyyas, Jehovah's Witnesses, et cetera. I'm
    wondering whether or not you think, at least at the level of sort of
    law in particular, it's more a matter of the government just making a
    decision to not as fully and comprehensively apply the law as in some
    other countries, as opposed to the law itself.
        Dr. Nasrutdinov. Well, in case of Kyrgyzstan, the latest amendment
    to the law on religious freedom was in regard to proselytization in
    public spaces, which is, I think, now almost supported and passed
    through the parliament, which bans proselytization or any kind of
    religious propaganda outside in the street, at houses, and in public
    places. What is interesting is that in the informal discussions that we
    had with the State Committee on Religious Affairs, we as an expert
    community always were against this kind of amendment, and we battled.
    We have discussed this with the state committee on a number of forums.
        One of the informal kind of justifications that the members of the
    committee gave is that this is really a law that's supposed to work
    against conversion. They see conversion from Islam to Christianity as
    one of the major issues, and they see these leading to kind of social
    conflicts evolving at the level of the village, community, and even
    families. This is how they perceive the conversion from Islam to
    Christianity.
        Therefore, they suggested this law is mostly targeting specifically
    groups like Jehovah's Witnesses, who knock the doors and proselytize
    actively on staircases. But while suggesting that this is against
    Christian groups, it is also affecting Muslim groups such as Tablighi
    Jamaat, who also knocks the doors. Therefore I said, well, if they
    simply invite people to the mosque, then this is okay? If they do not
    proselytize and if they do not preach at the door, this is fine?
        So, it's a policy that is targeting everyone, but specifically
    addressing the Christian community. In some ways there is this bias: it
    is not open, and it is not specifically explicitly stated. Yet it is
    there, right? And as it has been mentioned, particularly in regard to
    registration, there are now nearly 400 organizations which are
    registered--Christian organizations--with the state committee. Yet
    Mormons, for example, struggle. They still did not register themselves.
        Numbers are important. The law works in such a way that to register
    an organization, you have to have a certain number of followers in a
    particular settlement. That is very difficult to have somewhere in the
    village in Kyrgyzstan, in the remote area. This way, the government
    creates these artificial obstacles for the communities to register and
    be legal and function properly.
        Dr. Collins. Thank you.
        I would add to that that in some cases, Kyrgyzstan's law on
    religion, which is actually quite harsh including the more recent
    amendments and restrictions on proselytism, don't necessarily
    distinguish it from the rest of the region.
        On the other hand, Kyrgyzstan historically is sort of laissez faire
    in actually implementing the law. Often this works to the benefit of
    believers. So, for example, you pointed to another issue, which is
    registration. Registration of religious communities is not easy in
    Kyrgyzstan, and the law seems to be designed to prevent particularly
    new religious groups, whether Christians or sort of non-mainstream
    Muslims, from actually registering their churches or their mosques.
        On the other hand, implementation is often quite weak. So you see
    house churches existing across the country where people gather and
    worship in private within sort of small churches that exist behind the
    walls of particular houses on small streets. It's incredibly hard to
    find them, which speaks to the fact that they're doing so in fear, even
    though they can exist. There are really sort of two sides to the coin.
    The legal framework is not very good. The implementation is generally
    quite bad. But people still exist and believe in practice in a certain
    amount of fear, because they know that the situation could become
    harsher.
        I think the same is true with the case of the Hizb ut-Tahrir Party,
    which was banned as extremist. The legislation is not terribly
    different from the legislation on extremist organizations elsewhere in
    the region, and yet the implementation is typically much softer in
    Kyrgyzstan. It's gotten worse, I think, under President Bakiyev and
    since, but Hizb ut-Tahrir members are typically arrested. Perhaps
    they're fined, briefly detained, and then released, as opposed to
    thousands of them being arrested and given 15- to 18- to 20-year prison
    sentences, the way they are in other countries in the region.
        Mr. Hurd. Dr. Nasrutdinov, I especially appreciated your comment
    about the government sort of seeing itself as an arbiter of harmony and
    that part of its responsibility was to prevent discord. It was very
    striking in the meetings that we had with government officials in
    Uzbekistan--there was a very similar theme. There didn't seem to be, or
    at least we didn't hear, a recognition and acknowledgement that in a
    multi-religious country, where people have strong views about theology,
    the nature of reality, morality, et cetera, there are going to be
    disagreements and disputes. This is just a normal thing that comes with
    a multi-religious country, but that there isn't this sort of
    inevitability that it will result in violent conflict, and that
    nonviolent conflict is actually not something to be afraid of; but
    anyway, appreciated those comments.
        Mr. Price. I wanted to ask about another caution that we heard
    during our trip and that many of you have alluded to, and that is about
    the specter of political Islam. I was wondering to what extent you all
    see this as a present or a prospective threat that the regimes of the
    region perceive. Are there currently political Islamic movements that
    are popular and salient within societies? Or is this just a concern
    about if there were an opening, that there would be an easy coalescing
    around Islamic themes in terms of political opposition?
        Dr. Lemon. I guess you need to understand sort of what they mean by
    political Islam. Do they mean sort of officially registered Islamic
    parties, or do they mean sort of the influence of Islam within
    politics? I think they take quite a broad definition of political Islam
    that sort of any ways in which religion can have an effect on politics,
    be it sort of formal or informal, is potentially a threat to their
    security.
        Obviously, within the Tajik case, they had an Islamic party till
    2015, and gradually conflated the Islamic Renaissance Party with groups
    like ISIS, said they were a conveyor belt to extremism, merged the two
    categories together, and eventually blamed the organization for a coup
    and banned it.
        Now, constitutional amendments 2 years ago, in fact, now prohibit
    the re-establishment of religious party in Tajikistan. So, at least
    under the current administration, it's difficult to envisage the re-
    emergence of the faith-based party. I think that would be probably the
    case across the whole region, maybe with the possible exception of
    Kyrgyzstan, and that's maybe again viewed through the lens of regime
    security. And if there were to be an Islamic party, then it would be a
    potential threat, although you could maybe envisage the setting up of a
    pseudo-party, as we've seen in other parts of the region where each
    parliament is filled with parties, but they're all effectively sort of
    constructed by the regime. So, we may see in the future the
    construction of an Islamic party, but it may be sort of in non-
    oppositional terms.
        Dr. Nasrutdinov. I think it's important to look at the specific
    influences and groups that's popular in the country. In Kyrgyzstan, the
    most popular group is the Tablighi Jamaat, and it's by nature
    apolitical. It's one of the reasons why it is legal and popular in many
    other parts of the world, including the United States. Non-engagement
    with politics is one of the core principles--a kind of a pacifist
    attitude where you just accept the government. It is the belief that
    through your own religious practice that you change the world, not
    through direct engagement with the politics.
        The Turkish groups see engagement in politics also in a slightly
    kind of long-term perspective. A number of representatives of Fethullah
    Gulen movement who work in Turkish [inaudible] schools in Kyrgyzstan
    stated in their interviews that they see their graduates as the future
    elite of the country because it is not cheap to study in such schools.
    Therefore, it's mostly higher/middle-class-income communities who can
    afford them. Thus, these are the ones who will be the future
    bureaucrats, the future state officials, the future kind of businessmen
    of the country, and they will have this kind of more pro-Turkey, pan-
    Turkic vision.
        The Salafi groups that we have are also predominantly moderate,
    classical, and also apolitical Salafis. Yet there are a number of more
    active political groups, but few of them are banned, but also in
    numbers they're not as popular as just kind of moderate Salafis. Here
    they also claim not to be engaged in politics.
        The way they see the religion interfering into the politics is
    through the practices of people who are already politicians. And we
    have a number of parliament deputies, such as Tersimbai Bekirulou [ph],
    for example, who regularly made kind of pro-religious public statements
    in parliament and lobbied certain laws, such as allowing two wives and
    legalizing second marriages, et cetera.
        Finally, we see kind of the engagement with the politics is through
    just generally wider appreciation of a more religious approach to
    politics. As I've mentioned, one-third of our respondents stated that
    they would support a candidate with stronger religious views. Another
    third suggested that they would support the introduction of Sharia law.
    One of them might not even understand what Sharia law means, but this
    whole sentiment is there. More and more young people believe that
    religion should be a part of politics. But again, this is not a part of
    any specific group or ideology that is being presented.
        Dr. Collins. I'll just add that, yes, I agree in general that
    governments do exaggerate the threat of political Islam, which they
    tend to equate with radicalism, violent extremism, across the region.
    It's a convenient way of labeling all potential political opposition
    and maintaining very strict control over the country.
        Political Islam of any stripe is extremely weak in all of the
    countries. Certainly in Tajikistan, where it was most vibrant with the
    Islamic Renaissance Party, since that party was banned, it's virtually
    nonexistent, at least openly, there as well.
        I would also add that I think, again, the repression has led to the
    growth of extremism. And it's this conjunction of repression, otherwise
    extremely difficult political economic conditions, pervaded by
    corruption, and the exposure, whether it's in Russia, as being a labor
    migrant, or through the internet to these social-media videos that are
    spreading, disseminating the message that political Islam of some
    stripe is the solution to your problems.
        So, I think there is a growth in sympathy for--or attraction to--
    these ideas of radicalism, whether as ISIS or some other variant of
    that. The numbers certainly are small. I don't think they're in any way
    a threat to the Central Asian regimes themselves. But small numbers,
    even several thousands, going to Syria or to Afghanistan or a handful
    of individuals coming back and waging attacks like we saw in Tajikistan
    in July, or in Moscow or in Istanbul or New York, are still a problem
    that I think that we should be concerned about. At the moment, I think
    they're primarily likely to stay within Afghanistan or Syria and not
    return home, in large part because the security services at home are so
    restrictive.
        The third point I would add is that I do think that there has been,
    with this generational change, a growing sympathy for ideas of sort of
    soft political Islam, or sort of the normal public presence of
    religion, Islam in particular, in public political life, whether that's
    through support for having some form of a religious party, as we saw
    was just banned in Tajikistan. I think that sentiment is broader. It
    exists in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan as well for adopting some ideas of
    Sharia, again, with not necessarily knowing what Sharia means, but
    equating Sharia with justice and with a lack of corruption and cleaning
    up the corruption in the country.
        I did surveys in Kyrgyzstan and Azerbaijan, as well as the focus
    groups across the region, and that was sort of a persistent theme. And
    mine were probably a few years before yours, Dr. Nasrutdinov, but I
    think at the time we found close to 20, 25 percent, depending on the
    question, of support for certain ideas of Sharia being implemented
    within the political system; not necessarily calling for an Islamic
    state, certainly not calling for a caliphate, but calling for the most
    part, for a sort of broader, healthier role for religion, Islam in
    particular, within society.
        Mr. Hurd. Thank you.
        Thanks to our panelists for a very rich and educative discussion.
        Thanks to our audience members, those of you here in person and
    those of you watching online; as well as thanks to some of our
    colleagues behind the scenes who make events like this possible, in
    particular our hearing and other events coordinator, Jordan; Stacy, our
    communications director; and Alexa, our intern.
        Thanks very much, and have a good evening. [Applause.]
            [Whereupon, at 5:01 p.m., the briefing ended.]

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