A PRAYER FOR RAIN: PRACTISING BEING SOVIET AND MUSLIM

The history of secularization in the twentieth century is often described as the process of ‘driving religion out’ of the social and political domain, and confining it to private, peripheral and marginalized spaces. In this article, I explore how Islam fared in what was the most explicitly anti-reli...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of Islamic studies (Oxford, England) England), 2014-05, Vol.25 (2), p.178-200
Main Author: ABASHIN, SERGEI
Format: Article
Language:English
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Summary:The history of secularization in the twentieth century is often described as the process of ‘driving religion out’ of the social and political domain, and confining it to private, peripheral and marginalized spaces. In this article, I explore how Islam fared in what was the most explicitly anti-religious society in twentieth century, namely, the USSR. I argue that, even in this extremely controlled society, there was a certain recognition of religion built into the administrative structures and patterns of behaviour. Drawing on ethnographic interpretation of a number of Muslim rituals that I observed in Central Asia in 1989–91, I illustrate the ways in which religious identities and acts were legitimized under the Soviet regime, and the tools that made it possible to play the double game of revealing and concealing Muslimness.
ISSN:0955-2340
1471-6917
DOI:10.1093/jis/etu020