Tashkent Hopes to Profit by Promoting Sufi Pilgrimages to Holy Places

Paul Goble

            Staunton, December 13 – Last month, the Uzbek government hosted in Bukhara 170 adepts of the Naqshbandi Sufi order from around the world hopeful that they will represent the first wave of Sufi pilgrims to holy places in that Central Asian country, pilgrimages that the authorities believe they can make money from.

            For those who remember Soviet times when officials in Uzbekistan and other Muslim republics did everything they could to prevent Sufi activity, including such pilgrimages, as the late French specialist on Soviet Islam Alexandre Bennigsen most prominently documented, this program represents an amazing turnaround, from persecution to profit.

            Bukhara resident Kuvandik Kutliyev told EurasiaNet that he was thrilled so many Naqshband Sufis had been able to come to his city where he helps look after a mausoleum of a Sufi wise man that is a pilgrimage site (russian.eurasianet.org/узбекистан-рассчитывает-на-дивиденды-от-возрождения-суфизма).

            One of the most distinguished visitors to Bukhara last month was Abdul Karim ben Said Haland, the founder of the World Sufi Center in Kuala Lumpur. He said that there are more than 40 million followers of this trend within Islam around the world and expressed his gratitude to the Uzbek authorities for opening the city to them.

            Relations between the Sufis and the Uzbek authorities have varied over time. Under the Soviets, the authorities persecuted the Sufis. Then, after 1991, they supported them as a counterweight to Islamist radicals; but after the Andizhan uprising in 2005, the authorities again moved against this trend of Islam.

            Over the last year, the current president of Uzbekistan, Shavkat Mirziyoyev, has again reached out to the Sufis: last month’s conference in Bukhara is only the latest example of that.  In December 2017, he signed a decree creating an Islamic Academy and specified that the Naqshbandi order of Sufism would be “the subject of special study.”

            Part of this turn to Sufism is the product of Mirziyoyev’s efforts to attract more tourists and thus more money to his country.  But part of it reflects his calculation that if Uzbeks become Sufis, they are less likely to become Islamist radicals who will fight against his government.

            According to Uzbek Islamicist Said Arifkhnov, however, this latter reason may be based on a misapprehension.  In fact, he says, “in the ranks of the Sufis are radicals as well.” Just promoting Sufism will not inoculate Muslims against joining the radicals.

            At the present time, the largest communities of Sufis in Uzbekistan are in the Fergana valley and in cities like Andizhan, Kokand and, of course, Bukhara.