In Their Words: "Folk" Islam

A lot of religious scholars like to talk about so-called “folk Islam.” Folk Islam is basically a term for people saying they are Muslims but doing a lot of things that aren’t in the Q’uran. I don’t really like the term, because it makes it sound like it is the exception. If you look at all of the Muslims in the world, folk Islam is the rule, not the exception. Actually, that’s true of pretty much any religion. The holy books give a justification for the existence of the religion, but a huge amount of religious practices—and an even larger amount of individual’s religious ideas—come from other sources. I know of no religion that doesn’t follow this pattern. The following quote is from the Dungan woman from Talas (see previous post). I asked her if she studied her religion.

No, I don’t study it. I mean, in my youth, maybe I didn’t recognize it, but I just now see that in my youth my grandmother read the Q’uran and taught us, when we were little. And my grandmother’s brother…he lived across from us and was a very important Mullah. They called him a great wise man. He healed people. They came from all over with all kinds of illnesses, came to his house. He healed a lot of people…they came…he killed a chicken and used the blood to [find out what was wrong]…but now there’s a lot of people like that. At that time he was…he died last year though…but at that time all of Kyrgyzstan, he was adored all over Kyrgyzstan. They even took him to Kazakhstan to heal children. There were always people at his place. He never took money for his services. Not once did he ever take money. But now everyone does it for money. He did it just because that’s what he did. He lived very
well. Very well. I don’t know how. I can’t even describe how he lived. He lived well and healed people…he was a very handsome person—even in his old age he was still handsome. We could explain everything so well, he spoke very well. He was always with us…always teaching us the Q’uran, prayers, Orozo, Ait. “You need to do this with your hands. You need to make this kind of food. You don’t have to do that…” Now everyone buys everything. I still have that habit from those times. They always came to him…they were always there, and imagine, he never once healed people for money. He just stayed home and helped people. He didn’t work. But he always had money. I’m amazed at that, that, first of all, he had that gift from God, and second, that he had that money...God probably helped him. Small children with tooth-aches, and he’d write something in Arabic on them and their teeth would stop hurting. It was amazing.