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| Caucasus |
| Why US Needs Uzbekistan & More Sufi Muslim Allies |
| 2004-03-29 |
| The Central Asian country of Uzbekistan, a former Soviet republic, has gotten a lot of attention in the United States lately - none of it enviable. In a recent TV sitcom, a teen-ager complained that not being able to find Uzbekistan on a map got her a low grade on a test. Flip to the "educational channel" and you hear a pitch for funds, with a free atlas offered as a premium, so that the next time the intellectuals who favor such fare hear about Uzbekistan, they’ll be able to locate it. But there are some people hereabouts who claim to know a great deal about Uzbekistan. The Washington Post on March 4 and an op-ed column by playwright Tony Kushner on March 8, assailed Uzbekistan and its ruler, Islam Karimov. The pretext in the first instance: a State Department judgment that "Uzbekistan is an authoritarian state with limited civil rights." Some might say that the real reason behind the rage at State and on the Post’s editorial board was the praise for Uzbekistan from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who recently visited the nation and thanked it for its "wonderful cooperation" with our side in the war on terror. When we turn to Kushner’s fit of pique, the context changes a bit. The writer is incensed that the Uzbek authorities allegedly have abused one of their citizens, Ruslan Sharipov, who has proclaimed his journalistic aspirations as well as his same-sex proclivities. According to Kushner, the Uzbek government was motivated to act against Sharipov not because the country is a remote, Muslim-majority land untouched by Western sophistication about the public declaration of out-of-the-ordinary affections. No, according to him, Uzbekistan was imitating an America whose "leaders deplore the overturning of sodomy laws and flirt openly with a constitutional amendment, the first ever, designed to restrict the rights of gay and lesbian citizens." Thus, the playwright warns us, "The world is listening." How absurd; rather like the science-fiction classic in which the death of a butterfly, caused by a time traveler into the distant past, leads to Adolf Hitler winning World War II. But neither the Post editorial nor Kushner’s tantrum mentioned a few words that normally should be included in any discussion of Uzbekistan and the terror threat familiar to all its citizens: the "Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU)" and "Hizb-ut-Tahrir (HT)." The former was a terrorist entity aligned with al-Qaeda. Hundreds of IMU members were killed defending the Taliban in Afghanistan. The second, whose Arabic name means "the party of liberation," is an ultra-Islamist conspiratorial movement illegal in most Muslim countries. The group calls Uzbek President Karimov a "Jew" and demands the overthrow of the Uzbek government. The Uzbeks have defeated both the IMU and HT, which should be cause for celebration in Washington. Instead, allegations by HT that Uzbekistan and its "Jewish" president are repressing ordinary Muslims are commonly heard among Western human-rights monitors, supplemented by horrifying atrocity stories. Here are some numbers that are never mentioned when far-off, hard-to-locate Uzbekistan comes under discussion: Uzbekistan takes pride in its seven Jewish communities, including the Farsi-speaking Bukharan Jews, who have lived in peace with their neighbors for 2,500 years. The country’s Christian population includes 62 Korean Protestant churches, as well as 24 Evangelical Baptist, 20 Full Gospel, four Lutheran and four New Apostolic congregations. It also has five Roman Catholic churches. These figures are slender when one considers that Uzbekistan is 88 percent Muslim, but eloquent when contrasted with the absence of synagogues and churches from the territory of Saudi Arabia, another ally in the war on terror. Is the U.S. State Department pressing the Saudis to allow religious freedom? Hardly. But Uzbekistan’s Islamic majority is also unique and important because, unlike the Saudi kingdom where the ultraradical Wahhabi cult is the state form of Islam, Uzbekistan is dominated by the Sufi tradition, which emphasizes inner cultivation and seeks to avoid conflict. Devotion to Sufism, as much or more than repression by the authorities, has helped Uzbekistan defeat the IMU. The State Department declares that if Uzbekistan continues to receive U.S. military aid, Karimov must implement "a far-reaching democratic transformation." But what other country in the world has managed such a feat overnight or by fiat? Rumsfeld is correct in praising Uzbekistan for its cooperation, which is indeed wonderful. He and others in Washington also should praise its victory over the IMU and its determination to protect its moderate Islamic tradition. The world desperately needs Muslims of the Uzbek kind, as much or more than the United States needs an ally on the borders of Afghanistan. |
| Posted by:Super Hose |
| #3 Thanx Shipman, first I laugh my tush off, now I have to go to confession for laughing. It was so much easier when I was a |
| Posted by: Super Hose 2004-03-29 11:46:25 PM |
| #2 Praise God (he want's it bad) there is room for my church. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2004-03-29 7:19:40 PM |
| #1 Ah, I get it. To State, if you fund their retirement, you can be as repressive and backwards as you like. Don't give 'em a dime and you gotta reform. Who sez this foreign policy stuff is hard? |
| Posted by: Pappy 2004-03-29 7:17:37 PM |