In Their Own Words: Are People Becoming More Religious?

Everyone is worried about increased religiosity, maybe because they associate it with extremism. Let’s point out the obvious fact that if a person becomes more religious that does not mean he becomes a fanatic. There are plenty of very devout people in the world, in all different religions, who don’t do anything weird or violent. They just live good lives and are generally very pleasant to talk to. Pretty much everyone—outside scholars as well as locals—agree that people in Central Asia in general, and Kyrgyzstan in particular, are becoming more religious. The man in this post, who is also the man from the last post, disagrees.

We should get one thing straight. People are not becoming more religious right now. They’re just devoting themselves more to religious rituals. I’m talking about saying the prayers and things like that. But becoming more religious—no. Here’s a simple example from real life. We talked about why people get married. That question can only be answered by religion and no one else, because people don’t know, really, why they need to get married. There are a lot of divorces. We went to the universities and asked students the question of why they are supposed to get married. Some said that you get to an age where you get married. Others said they get married so their wife will do the washing and cooking. Others said it was to have children. Others just said that you just needed to get married. There’s no education given—people get married for those reasons and bring children into the world for the same reasons. People aren’t becoming more religious, because they still don’t know the purpose of getting married or having children and things like that.

So why are people devoting themselves more to religious rituals?

People always have needs. If you don’t eat for a day, then the next day you want to eat. Even if you go half a day, around lunchtime we start to search for the food. A person is made up of two parts—a physical and a spiritual. During Soviet times we didn’t feed the spiritual portion. We had the ideology of the government, the communist party. We filled our spirit with that ideology. When the Union fell apart, we were deprived of that spiritual food. So our spirit started to search for something that would satisfy its needs. So there are a lot of cases where people join sects and other things, because the spirit has to be fed.

If people aren’t really becoming more religious, why are we seeing more extremist groups?

Who joins [extremist groups]? As a rule, it’s ignorant people. They join this religion [Islam] because of their spiritual needs, but they fall prey to those groups’ agitations because of their ignorance. If we would have lessons about religion in the schools and universities—not lessons about Islam, but just lessons about what religion is, what different religions say about themselves, is religion right or wrong, what extremism is, then they wouldn’t join. It’s all because of religious ignorance.

In Their Own Words: Misunderstandings about Islam

This is a selection of an interview I took in Osh. This man runs a religious school for women. He and the other founders of the school spent a lot of time searching through different religions after the fall of the Soviet Union. They finally decided that Islam was correct, but they felt that very few people knew anything about Islam, so the opened the school. Here, he explains why people in and out of Islam misunderstand the religion.

The thing is that people in the world today don’t understand Islam correctly. There area a lot of bad representatives of what Islam is and what it is like. Islam isn’t there to do bad things to people. Besides that, the majority of people, when they hear the word Islam, only understand a few limited things, like saying prayers, giving charity, going on the hajj. We tell people that that is not Islam, that those are just duties given to man.

So what are some examples of misunderstandings about Islam?

Terrorists, for example. People connect that with Islam. Or places where there are attacks, people connect that with Islam. Or take our society. We don’t know how to build family relationships. The exploitation of women, for example, forcing her to just do housework. People assign that sort of thing to religion, say it’s part of Islam. That’s not the way it is in Islam. We want to explain that. Also, when it comes to the question of who is supposed to run the family, a lot of people say, of course, it’s the man. That’s not what is says in our religion. It says that Shari’a is the head of the family: that husbands have their own duties and so do wives. We take a look at what Shari’a says about who ought to go grocery shopping, who out to do the washing, make the food. Everyone says that that’s for women to do. That is absolutely not what it says in Islam. Just the opposite: it says that a man is supposed to go buy groceries, that he ought to carry the heavy things, that he ought to help with the washing, with the cooking.

Why do those misunderstandings exist?

It just so happens that the majority of mullahs and imams up to our current day are uneducated. When you say they’re uneducated, it really hurts them. They know how to read the Qur’an, they can open the book and read it, but they don’t understand the meaning of what they are reading, they don’t grasp it. They didn’t learn how to do that—they weren’t taught religion on that level. During the Soviet Union, the only religious school was in Bukhara (Uzbekistan), and there they taught people how to read the Qur’an and recite prayers. They’re wrote the Qur’an into people’s brains like with a parrot or a tape recorder. If you tell them to read they open the book and read, but they didn’t teach them to understand the meaning, the point of what they read. They’re still ignorant in that sense. If you take doctors for example, you can divide them up according to specialty: surgeons, eye doctors, therapists. The same thing happens in Islam. When they teach them to become imams, they teach them how to read the Qur’an correctly, how to recite a prayer, how to answer simple questions that people often have. It’s like preparing teachers for elementary school. Besides that there aren’t any specialists equivalent to middle school, high school, or higher education.

In Their Own Words: Not-So-New Converts

People who have been in their religion longer and have had to spend more time explaining why they believe what they do tend to explain their belief differently than the people in the last post. Take, for example, this Russian woman who converted to Islam with her husband. She is explaining why she believed in life after death, even before she converted.

I had doubts [about the permanence of death], even though with my mind I understood that we are all mortal and that we will die. In my heart I still felt that the soul doesn’t die, even though the body dies, you bury it, and it turns to dust. I always wondered where the spirit went. The body dies, but what about the spirit? I always looked for answers to the question. I’m a doctor, and I read in a journal that some American researchers did an experiment. When they weigh a body after it’s death, it suddenly looses about 30 grams, and they took pictures of the body with infrared and they saw these beams over the body and they thought that might be the spirit. And plus when people are clinically dead and then they come back, they all tell the same thing, that they saw a path, a tunnel, and that there was a light at the end of it. And the closer they got to the light the more they felt that they were loved, and they felt such happiness at the moment. Those people lived in all different countries, didn’t know each other, but they all tell the same thing. At that time, it helped me to understand what happened to the spirit, but where does it go after that? What happens to it? We found our answers in the Qur’an.

Not-So-New Converts use these kinds of stories a lot. Why is alcohol forbidden in your religion? Well, look at all of the evidence about what alcohol does to people, to their health. Why don’t you eat certain foods? Look at the health consequences of those foods. Why do you believe in your scriptures? Look at this archaeological or scientific evidence that fits what the scriptures say. And the scriptures were written hundreds or even thousands or years before anyone knew about the scientific evidence.

In Their Own Words: Proof of Faith (New Converts)

People who believe in something—it could be a religion, a political ideal, a desired social condition—will give reasons why they believe if you ask for them. I’ve noticed that people who have more recently dived into their new belief system tend to give similar kinds of answers. Here is a person who recently (a few years ago) became active in the Russian Orthodox religion. When I asked him how he knew that God existed, that his religion was correct, he told this story:

In 1991 my parents lost their jobs, and then we moved to Russia because conditions here were very hard and we didn’t have anything to eat. There was no work, and my parents with their higher educations were very hard workers. It was the first time in my life that I remember my mother crying at night because we didn’t have anything to eat. There was absolutely nothing to eat. All of a sudden they got their hands on some money and we moved to Russia. Life was hard there as well. We lived in a really rural area. After some time we moved back here, but there were still moments…for example, my father was a businessman, he transported gasoline to different places, and his partners set him up and he ended up being brought to trial. I was starting to realize more at that age and I realized there was nothing we could do. People in high-up places in the government were trying to send us to jail. My mother and I went out onto the street and prayed really loudly so everyone could hear. We prayed all night, and at about 4 o’clock in the morning they let my father out of jail. My soul started to take a turn for the better right then.

I saw something similar from my participation in an Evangelical Christian meeting here in Bishkek. The meeting was mostly singing with a few time-outs for prayer and testimonies (short talks on religious topics). One man got up and told a story about how prayer had helped him. He drives a large truck for a living, carrying different loads to different places, depending on who hires him. He was pulling out into the street one morning when a car appears on the cross street, coming right at him. Because of his heavy load, he know he would not be able to stop his truck in time. The words “Oh Lord” came out of his mouth, which he says was a kind of a prayer—he didn’t have time to pray for anything specific, so he just called to God. At that moment, a pigeon flew down from a tree and hit the oncoming car’s windshield, causing the car to swerve and miss him. Therefore, he said, he has proof that prayer works.

Now, the question of whether or not God actually got the first man’s father out of jail or whether or not God actually had that bird fly into that windshield is not a questions for science to try to answer. They aren’t empirical questions—I can’t test to see if the answers are right or wrong. Science is just the wrong tool for that sort of thing. The fact is, there are a whole lot of things that can happen in your life that you can attribute to the power of your beliefs if you want to. People who write horoscopes and fortune cookie messages stay in business because of this. People who are newer converts tend to explain why they believe in terms of those kinds of self-fulfilling prophecies. By newer convert, I don’t just mean someone who hasn’t been a member of the religion or political party or social network for very long. You can be a member your whole life but just not devote a whole lot of time and effort to explaining why you believe what you do. Those people would also qualify as new members. Maybe I could call them shallow members, but that seems a bit judgmental. Whatever the term, this pattern seems to hold true for all of the people of this type that I have interviewed.

In Their Own Words: What Makes a Person an Activist

This is from an interview from a former member of KelKel, a youth movement that was one of the players in the 2005 demonstrations that resulted in the ouster of Kyrgyzstan’s president, Askar Akayev. This woman is no longer a member of the movement, and has been off the social radar for about a year now. She’s now preparing to return to activism by starting her own NGO. I wanted to post the following portions of the interview because they prove a point that ought to be obvious but usually isn’t: we tend to look at people who demonstrate in protests, try to change their governments, or are just generally socially active and ask, “What makes them do that?” And then we want a single answer. There is no single answer, not even for a single person. A lot of things combine to make a person take action in their society. I think this interview shows that.

Before...I didn't really participate, but I always cared. Earlier, when I worked here in the university, I had academic responsibilities--just taught and taught. I learned a lot of theory, I went to summer school, that was all great. Then I started to rethink life. It became boring to me. I decided to...I worked on a lot of different projects in administrative positions. I would coordinate things, stuff like that. Then I understood the whole picture. The NGO sector, the international people doing things, the government doing something else, and then there are other people--unemployed people, the market. Later, I went back to teaching in 2005, and then I made friends with one NGO. They work with self-help groups. They help people in very real ways. They give them money, they teach them how to clean things up, save money, get out of poverty. I saw that and it seemed very applied to me. I liked it, because it connected me with regular Kyrgyz people, with rural people. I saw what kind of natural homes they live in. They live a very natural life, and they have a different understanding. I come here, and there's a totally different understanding. People here live like in America, and there it's a different world.

I paid attention to that, and then in 2005 there were the parliamentary elections, and that exacerbated the conflict. There were all kinds of injustices, they were repressing certain people--maybe you heard of Rosa Otumbaeva. We supported her. They refused to register her, but they let the president's daughter register. It was a reason to get involved. It pushed what was already ready. I met other people who were already involved--the NGO sector, businessmen, mostly young people who opened their own NGOs. It was interesting to me. It made me feel young again. Not like a professor, but like a young girl. It liked it. I was an actor. And I really liked that role.

Then as the first protests started, I saw how the political science I was teaching, how it all really happens. How we could be actors, feel what it was like to be persecuted, and things like that. It was interesting to me to see both theory and practice, and just be a participant. I came and taught students in the morning, and in the lecture I was talking about the political system of Kyrgyzstan, the constitution and all the branches of government, and I was always giving examples from Kyrgyzstani life: there are so many NGO's in Kyrgyzstan, some of them work, some of them don't, to what extent it is all artificial, to what extent it isn't and so on. It was really interesting to the students, and I invited them to the protests as well. A few of them, 2 or 3 of them, actually came to the protests.

Later, I gave my first speech. There was a really large meeting on February 5th 2005. Elections were in March, so it was one month before. Before that, there had been a lot of pressure from the government. They physically pushed us around. We were so angry that we gave some speeches. I was giving a speech, and I used this quote from Margaret Mead: "Never doubt that a small group of people can change the world." We said that, and then I started to feel some responsibility. I said that. People saw me. And one day they would say, "You just talk and talk and talk and you don't do anything." We decided, "Ok, we'll go all the way." There were about 15 people in KelKel, all of them very active. I saw that there were a lot of very different kinds of people. Not just academic smart, there was one person who joined because his father suffered because of the regime. Some people came because they were really authentically patriotic. Another person just wanted to get experience.

Later, I started to see...even after all of this, after the revolution, I started to see where we were. I started to get interested in agriculture, and I went as a researcher to all of the southern provinces--Batken, Osh, Jalalabad. Then to Chui province. It was for the Asian Development Project. I saw how people live in the rural areas. Five som [about 12.5 cents] are really important to them. They talk about how kerosene has become expensive—really vital kinds of needs. It was essential. Information itself—a computer was important for them. It brought me into real life. After that, I wrote all kinds of reports, that was all fine, but I received a lot for myself. I learned how the Kyrgyzstani people actually live. Not just in Bishkek--everything here is warm, hot water, that's wonderful, the Internet, the whole world, we have money here. Then I worked as a researcher on the issue of education. It was the Save the Children Project. I traveled around to learn how it worked in both the North and South.

After that...I have a lot of friends who are academics--they're westerners. Talking with them, it started to become really interesting to me. They study real life, living in Batken and things like that. I understood that they were raising serious questions about identity, some kinds of paradoxical questions in our society. And all of those issues are mixed up in one another. They changed my identity. I was taught in all the theories, so I asked myself: why not use that? I can't just be somehow...in some narrow area. I need to use it. So now I'm in the process of doing that.

I also noticed poverty, migration, a lot of people—even my own sister works in Alamaty [Kazakhstan]. She was a teacher but made a very poor living. 300 som a month [less than a dollar]. They had children. She and her husband moved to Almaty. And now when I go to visit them and then return to Kyrgyzstan, I go through the border and I'm so happy that I've come to Kyrgyzstan. It's not blind patriotism. It's because I see how [Kyrgyz] people are tormented in Almaty--they don't have rights. They have to speak Kazakh in order to sell something. Some people demand a lot but don't do a lot themselves. I see that a lot and when I come back here I feel that our people are somehow simpler—I start to love my country. I pay attention to a lot of things just generally. We had a big surge in this country after the Soviet Union--it happened in all of the republics--where it was popular to get married to a American or some other Western person. It was a way of saving yourself. it was popular for some people. When I came back here, everyone said, "Oh, you're so smart. You only have one thing left to do--get married to a foreigner!" I said, "Well the most important thing is that he's a good person, no matter where he's from." I not married, but I went through those feelings in our society. But now I've decided that it really is just important what kind of person he is. It's not important where he's from. I don't think that our people are bad, we're poor, I'm tired of them, that I need to look for a good life somewhere else. Sometimes you can make a good life here, if you believe. I believe.

There are people who want to change. But I also understood that there is corruption in the NGO sector as well. It's in the government too. I saw all of that, but I didn't know where to search for change. Even change in myself. I was an un-mobilized person. Now I've gone through some course on mobilization of personality, positive thinking, and things like that. It's really helped me. And I've found like-minded people among the human right activists. They are my close friends. There is a women's center...it doesn't matter who they are, but their personalities have changed me. Now we want to make a living and do some social projects at the same time. Everyone should do what he or she is capable of doing, what their soul asks for. I am a social person. I can't just sit at home without any kind of interaction. I had a crisis moment--I stayed at home for a long time. I worked as an interpreter, and I'm still doing that. But I've felt that without participation I don't feel actualized.

Translations--the Bane of My Existence

I’ve taken 66 interviews total. There might be a 67^th this next week, but I’m pretty much done with the interview phase of my work. Now I have to translate everything. The translation is really rough going. Every once in a while I run across one of my interviews that only ran about 20 or 30 minutes. Those are heaven. I usually translate all of my questions first (I don’t have to be very accurate—just convey the basic meaning so I can understand the context of the answer), and then I can usually quickly translate the answers. Then I hit one of my hour-and-a-half interviews. Those go forever. The real kicker is that the long interviews are almost always more useful. The short ones just kind of confirm what the longer ones say, so I can have an idea of how widely shared certain ideas are. Most of what ends up on the blog comes from the large interviews, and most of those quotes will end up in my dissertation.

The interviews also get harder to translate depending on who transcribes them. If Tynara transcribes, she’s careful to double check everything she writes to make sure she got it right, and she knows grammar and punctuation rules better, so the transcriptions are really easy to read. It gets tough when one of my research assistants does the transcription. They often are actually better at writing in English than in Russian (thank you, internet), and I often have to read their transcriptions twice before I know what to write in English, just because each paragraph is in fact one long sentence. It’s not entirely their fault—people usually don’t speak in complete, grammatically correct sentences—but the purpose of punctuation is to approximate the effect of pauses and intonations and the students just don’t know how to do that.

Oh well. The fact that I don’t have to do the transcriptions myself makes my research infinitely easier than it would have been otherwise, so I guess I shouldn’t complain. I expect to have everything translated by the end of the month.

Happy New Year!

Ok, so I know I’m not posting this on New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day. I haven’t had the chance to write anything since I got home.

New Year’s here is basically equivalent to American Christmas. People put of trees, give presents, have a Santa Claus-like figure :Grandfather Frost, accompanied by Snegurochka (that’s basically a play on the word ‘sneg’, meaning snow. It usually translates as Snow Maiden.) Actually, the Kyrgyztani government has gone a little Santa Clause-crazy this year, ever since some Scandinavian scientists used data on population distribution, air currents, and time zone differences to determine that if Kyrgyzstan would be the most efficient starting point for Santa’s Christmas-eve flight around the world. There were all kinds of people dressed up as Santa and they government even named a mountain after him.

I spent a fairly quiet Christmas Eve. Tynara’s sister, Chynara, is an administrator at AUCA, and they invited me over to her house. We at a whole lot (Olivie salad—kind of like American potato salad but with carrots and peas and no bacon—and manti—meat dumplings that are featured at almost any Kyrgyz meal) and watched a whole lot of New Year’s specials, most of them transmitted from Moscow.

The only not quiet part was the fireworks. Kyrgyzstan is on the border with China, and fireworks are pretty cheap here. The whole city lit up at 12:00, and the fireworks didn’t start to die down until about two hours after that.

We actually watched those Russian specials until almost 4:00 in the morning. They were still going when I went to sleep (at Chynara’s house—it was too late and too cold to try to find a taxi).

It’s very cold right now. Historically, from about the 26^th of December to about the 5^th of February everything is brutally cold. Besides one exceptionally warm day a couple days ago (I could just barely see my breath), the weather has been following the pattern. Most roads don’t get plowed and the sidewalks are never shoveled, so walking around the city is always an adventure. Most of the shoes men wear are similar in style to American dress shoes—they don’t have much traction on the bottom. In the winter, people skate around as much as they walk.

Back from the South

I flew from Bishkek (in the North—look at the map on this site) to Osh (in the South) on December 24^th. I went down there with Tynara, my colleague from AUCA, and Mirlan, one of my research assistants. The plan was to stay in Osh for three or four days to collect about 6 interviews, then down to Isfana, if the very southernmost corner of Batken province in between Uzbekistan and Tajikstan for another 7-8 interviews, and then north to Jalalabad, the third southern province, for another 7-8 interviews.

It didn’t really work out that way. Osh was great. I had a wonderful contact down there who helped me find people to interview. I took about 9 interviews. I interviewed more people than I originally planned because we got a huge snowstorm the day after Christmas (western Christmas, that is, the Russian Orthodox church celebrates Christmas on January 7^th). There are two roads into Batken province. The better of the two roads goes through Uzbekistan, and I don’t have an Uzbek visa, so that wasn’t an option. The other road is basically a dirt road, and the prospect of driving that in the snow was unappealing. Not to mention dangerous. It’s not that it would be incredibly slippery—that’s the road through Uzbekistan. It would just be very likely that we would get bogged down in rocks and mud.

I decided it wasn’t worth the risk. My contact in Osh was kind enough to inform me about a couple people from Batken province who had come up for a meeting, and I was able to interview two of them. That means I only have three interviews from Batken. That’s unfortunate. But not the end of the world. In the end, it’s my surveys that really absolutely need to be distributed in certain geographic areas, although I really would have like to have seen Batken province. Maybe I’ll go down again once the weather clears, just to see it. It would be too late in my research schedule to do more interviews.

So we stayed to extra days in osh to allow the roads to clear up and to regroup. I actually go a few really good interviews during that time, so I’m glad I stayed. We then went up to Jalalabad and got another 9 interviews. That was to make up for the lost interviews in Batken—I’m already going to have more interviews from the north than from the south, and I didn’t want the difference to be too drastic.

We flew home on New Year’s eve. It’s very cold.

Busy--Going to Be Out of Town

Hey. I'm in the middle of the last part of interviewing, which means I'm crazy busy. I'm trying to get transcriptions of the interviews I've already recorded, translate the transcriptions, and talk to the last few people I need to in order to get the fullest pictuer possible of what is happening here.

I'll be in Yssyk Kol this weekend for a few more interviews. I go down to the southern provinces on the 24th of December. I plan to get about 20 interviews in Osh, Jalalabad and Isfana over a 10-day period or so. I'm not sure how long I'll be down there. It all depends on how quicky I can get the interviews. I have to take into account that I will be there over New Years, which means the majority of people will be drunk (and therefore un-interviewable) for a 5-6 day window.

I'll try to post something next week, but I cant' make any promises. Then I'll be off the map for two weeks or so. I'll start posting regularly again in January.

Happy Holidays!

Election Time

Kyrgyzstan had a popular referendum about a month ago to revise its constitution. I talked to several independent observers who said there were a lot of irregularities and that the voter turnout was pretty low. In fact, I heard the following joke the day after the referendum:

An electoral official goes to his boss and says, “The results of the referendum are in. Eighty-one percent of the population voted.” His boss gets really angry and says, “What are you talking about? We agreed that the number would be 80 percent! Why did you change it?” The official apologized, “It’s just that one percent of the population actually came. We thought we ought to count them.”

Parliamentary elections are coming up December 16^th. Maybe I’m an eternal optimist, but I have greater hopes for these elections than for the referendum. During the Akayev administration (President Askar Akayev was ousted in March 2005), there was really widespread corruption in the legislature. People were basically installed in those positions instead of being elected to them. Most of those people are still in those positions. I think (I hope) that will change in a couple weeks. There are now over 100 political parties in Kyrgyzstan, and that’s growing every day. That much competition means there is a much better chance that people are going to have to form coalitions after they get elected, which means it will be harder to push through bad legislation or to just not do anything.

That is, assuming, that the larger parties just don’t buy up people’s votes this time around. They’ve done that in the past.

Close to Finishing the Interviews

I have to apologize for just putting up other peoples words on the blog lately. I know that is interesting—probably much more interesting that what I have to say—I did promise that I would try to talk about all of the aspects of my fieldwork.

The interview phase of my fieldwork is coming to a close. Right now, I’m in the middle of translating the interviews I have already taken. I’ve recorded 39 interviews so far, and I have at least three more scheduled for this week so far. Interviewing is an interesting thing. You never know how many interviews you’re going to need. I started out estimating that I would need about 100. That moved down to 70 shortly after I got here. Now, I’m thinking between 50 and 60. What you do with interviews is make a list of different topics that you want to understand. When you start interviewing a person, you start with the first topic and ask him or her everything you can about that. When that person has said everything he or she can about that topic, you move onto the next topic that that particular person will be likely to know something about. In an average interview (about 1 to 1 ½ hours long), you cover three or four topics.

After a number of interviews—you can never be sure how many—the first topics on your list get full. New people stop giving you any new information. That’s when you know you’ve probably filled in your understanding of that topic enough to stop asking about it. Then you move onto the topics that people are still saying interesting things about, or to topics you haven’t covered yet. In fact, as you interview people, they will mention a lot of things you never thought of. Those will become new topics to ask about. You just stick them at the end of your list.

My list is now about gone. I stopped getting new information about people’s everyday lives over a month ago. I stopped getting new information about groups like religion, ethnicity, and country about a week or so ago. I’m now just trying to understand social participation: no matter what religion you belong to, why do you decide to give your time, effort, and/or money to it? Why do people decide to sacrifice for their country? Engage in a protest? Become independent observers for an election? The new material for those questions is starting to get slim. Comparatively speaking. I’m still getting a lot of new information, but not as much as I got in the beginning.

I’m going down to the southern provinces of the country (Osh, Jalalabad, and Batken) at the end of this month. I plan on getting about 20 more interviews while I am there, and most of those are going to be with people who are socially active. I think that will finish my interviewing needs.

My next phase is to create a survey based on the information from the interviews. I don’t even want to think about that until I at least have all of my interviews translated.

In Their Own Words: Islam in Kyrgyzstan

This is the Uzbek student again. He takes his religious very seriously. He actually gave better explanations of Islamic doctrines than anyone else I have talked to so far. He feels that there is a big problem with Islam in Kyrgyzstan.

What’s the problem? Islam here in Kyrgyzstan…we [the younger generation] didn’t grow up in the Soviet times. Our parents lived in it for 70 years. The regime was atheistic. They were categorically opposed to any religion. It was all communism. When they achieved independence—the USSR fell apart, so they got independence whether they wanted it or not—Turkey set up an embassy here and other countries too. That’s when Islam started to grow in Kyrgyzstan. But the problem is we have a lot of stereotypes—misinformation about Islam. People aren’t ready…that’s a really big problem right now. Even if you were to go to an imam right now and want to learn about Islam, he’s not going to start with the ABC’s. He start with, “Don’t do this, don’t do that…don’t smoke, don’t drink.” It’s fine to do that, but a person should start with the basics. People here haven’t even held a Bible in their hands, for example. If you ask if they’ve ever even held a Bible, they tell you no. Or the Torah, for example. We just don’t have a dialogue with other religions. Everyone is the same. So I think we need to change that somehow in Kyrgyzstan.

I pointed out that many Muslims had told me that it was a sin to even hold the Bible in their hands.

Do you understand what they think that? It’s because a lot of imams don’t know much themselves…. That’s not what Islam is about. When people in Kyrgyzstan say that it’s sin even to hold the Bible in your hands, that’s not written anywhere. The Bible, the Torah—we’re all children of Abraham. And religion and all of that—we all have one God. It’s just that Christians interpret the Bible one way, Muslims a different way, Jews a different way. What they say here—that’s just hearsay. If you ask them why, they can’t tell you, because there are no facts in support of it. That’s the problem.

We have another problem in that a lot of people aren’t answerable for what they teach. They say that something is not right, for example, that it’s a sin to drink. Yes, everyone knows that, but why? They can’t answer, because they don’t dig deep into the matter, you see? That’s the problem. Because we…the imam says don’t do that, it’s a sin, but we don’t ask why. We don’t ask them to explain in more detail.

The thing that interests me about Islam is why I am a Muslim. It’s not because my parents are Muslims or because someone affected me. It’s because you can find an answer to any question in Islam. What do we do first? If we have a question, we look in the Qur’an. If we can’t find it in the Qur’an, we go to the hadith [the sayings of the prophet]. As long as you take the earlier forms of the hadith. And then after that the 3^rd step is…I forget what it’s called in Arabic…it’s like consensus. Scholars gather and they issue a fatwa. A lot of people don’t know who any of those scholars are. They don’t know why we look at what they said and not at what others have said. Why do we do that? Because some contradict themselves and others have been accepted by the whole world. We have a problem when it comes to sources. A lot of people don’t check their sources. For example, if you go to the mosque here, there’s a lot of book stores. A lot the books have a Tashkent copyright. A lot of people who really understand Islam, they don’t read those books, because Tashkent books are unreliable sources. Karimov’s regime [in Uzbekistan] and a lot of imams in general distort information.

So we have that specific problem right now. Another problem is that we aren’t even on the first step and those people [the reliable sources] are already on the 10^th or 20^th floor, so we can’t understand them. The first step is the creed—the foundational principles. Who is Allah, what are his qualities, why are we Muslims? What is the confession of faith? [“There is no deity except Allah alone, and Muhammad is his messenger.” Saying this is the first, and technically the only, thing that one must do to become a Muslim.] What is that? We don’t understand anything, but we already know what’s forbidden and what’s not. Why is that? Those are very difficult questions with difficult answers. That’s why a lot of people… I talked to a lot of Imams. I asked them if there was any place in Kyrgyzstan where I could find the foundational principles—specifically the foundation stuff. They don’t know, because a lot of Imams can beautifully explain things, but they get mixed up when it comes to basic things. There are a lot of different interpretations of the Qur’an here.

In Their Own Words: Islam and America

This person gave perhaps the best interview I have taken so far. He is an Uzbek from the southern city of Osh. He is now a university student at AUCA. He studied for a year in America. The following is about his experience in California—especially his experience regarding people’s attitudes towards Islam.

In the beginning I was in the southern part of California, because my classes were supposed to start September 27 but we got there on August 14^th. I spent a week in Washington, then we went to southern California. It was really hard for me there—culture shock, first time in America. That’s understandable. Well, I was interested in going to a mosque, but my host wouldn’t let me go. As you know, there’s a problem with transportation in America. Especially in California [you need a car to get anywhere]. I didn’t even know that I could…the town I was in isn’t a big town, but because of the lack of transportation, I had a problem. My host parents refused to take me to a mosque. I asked if I could just go once, just to see the architecture, see American Muslims. They said September 11^th was coming up and they didn’t want there to be any conflicts. They said maybe they’d take me later. I was in shock. I said, “This is America—that land of the free. Why would there be a conflict if you take me there? It seems that’s actually a good thing. You’re showing me how Muslims in America live.” They categorically refused. I said, “Welcome to America.”

I thought I wouldn’t be able to go to a mosque for the whole year. I was really disappointed. But then I went to the North. East Bay is in the bay area. I fell in love with it. That place isn’t similar to any other place in America. I told a lot of Americans about that region and they said I was lucky that I lived there, not because there are a lot of Muslims, but because the people there are different. If you compare north and south California, the north has more Democrats. The south has more Republicans. They think differently about a lot of things. In the north, it was still hard for me for about a month after I arrived. There were classes, a new location, the credit system. Some time in October, during the month of Ramadan, I started to keep the fast. I didn’t know that the university had a Muslim Student Association. It turns out there’s one in every university. I didn’t know, I just fasted. I didn’t know anyone else who was. We have a tradition that when you break your fast, you do that with your friends. They [the other Muslim students] did that on campus in the student union building. There was only about a week of Ramadan left when I happened to meet some guys that were also fasting and one of them was the president of MSA. They told me to come to the union building. I came and there were a lot of Muslims there. I hadn’t known.

After that my life started to get totally better. My life was perfect from October to June. I went to a lot of mosques. When I had been in southern California, I thought that after 9/11 there was now a lot of discrimination against Muslims, like after Pearl Harbor with the Japanese in California. I thought it was the same thing with Muslims, not at the same level, but that there was some indirect discrimination going on. When I came to the north I really saw that any religion is welcomed. You have freedom of choice. Life in America changed me, in that I became more aware, and in relation to my religion…the Islam I found in America was more real than the Islam here in Kyrgyzstan.

In Their Own Words: Why People Engage in Corruption

This is a student in Bishkek. He’s from Batken, the southernmost—as the poorest—of Kyrgyzstan’s seven provinces. We got to talking about corruption. Nearly everyone I have talked to here says that people in general, and especially government leaders, are corrupt. It’s just a widespread assumption that people take bribes, get their relatives and other supporters into powerful positions, and generally act dishonestly. This student was unusually honest about how he, personally, relates to all of that.

I want to be honest, fair, but that’s going to be hard, I think. I could be lying to myself. I’m afraid I’m lying, that I’m saying right now that I’m going to be honest and fair, but then some situation will come up where I’ll have to lie a little or…but I’m going to try not to do that, because…I don’t know. I just that people—and maybe I don’t understand the ins and outs of it—but if I understood, maybe I’d talk different. Maybe I’d say that I could do this little dishonest thing and get a lot of money from it. I just know a lot of people who say if you do certain things you can make a lot of money—through corruption or something else—you can do that. I’m afraid with time I will change. People always change in the face of other people’s influence. First of all they see the opportunity to make some money. It pulls them, attracts them. They make an excuse, “Ok, I’ll do it this time, but not any more.” And then, the gradually come to like it. Then they have some kind of need. They want to fulfill that need, but they can only do it that way [through corruption]. These are obvious things. They’re everywhere. Honestly I’m afraid. You become more aware of things, maybe I’ll have some things I really need. I don’t know, I don’t want it to be that way. I’d like to have enough without that. I’m just afraid that if I don’t have enough of something, I’ll start looking for a way to…I can’t say I won’t look for way, if they offer to…I don’t know. One side says take it. The other side says “No, stop.” I’d make myself feel better by saying, “Oh, but look how many other people do it. I’ll do it too.” That’s how you feel when you go along with the majority—that’s how it is with corruption—a lot of people are doing it. How are they going to find out about me? I’m not alone. There are hundreds of people doing it.

In Their Own Words: Religion and Ethnicity

This is the girl from the last post--the one who converted to Islam. Here, she talks about how people view religion and race, and how they often mean the same things in people's minds.

When people find out I am a Muslim, they don’t understand it. Right away they…as if…“how could you accept it? You’re not part of that religion.” For them, to be Muslim means to be Asia—that is, your physical appearance should look Muslim. For a lot of people that’s a really strong stereotype. One time I went to the bazaar and bought some clothes. The vendor was Kyrgyz and his nephew was standing there—he was probably my age. I had little Muslim pendant on. He looked. I live here, so I naturally understand Kyrgyz. He says, “Look, the Russian is wearing a Muslim pendant.” His first thought was that I was some unconscionable Russian that was wearing a Muslim pendant. His uncle hit him and said, “Get out of here.” He understood that I understood, and apologized. I said don’t worry about it. I called the nephew over and said, “I’m a Muslim. Don’t think that I wear this pendant just as some kind of jewelry.” He said he thought I didn’t know what it meant. I said he should just assume things like that about people. I talked to him a little about it. A few people think things like that and they want to say it. Some do say it. And I often don’t wear that pendant. On public transportation people often see it and think its so out of the ordinary and strange. It’s hard for me. I can’t say anything to them. I walk up to every other person on the street and say, “I’m a Muslim…I’m a Muslim…Don’t stare at me…Don’t stare at me…” It’s hard to say that to everyone. You walk around and think, “Do I need to make a sign that says I’m a Muslim? Leave me alone.” But, you know, it would be hard for me to live either way. On one hand I feel on the inside that I am a Muslim, but on the other hand to be a Christian so people just calmed down and looked at me like any other Russian girl—I can’t do that either. But to walk around in a headscarf or hijab…although like I already said that’s not a problem for me. I’m a Muslim. I can do that. But to have everyone point their fingers…it’s hard.

In their Own Words: Islam, Conversion, and Ethnicity

This is a long entry, but I think it's worth it. This is a Russian university student who converted to Islam. She also married an Uzbek who is a devout Muslim. She talks about some of the challenges she has faced because of her decision to convert. Oh, and she's only 18 years old. Notice that a lot of her challenges come from her nationality. People have made her decision difficult for her because she is now Muslim and Russian. I've noticed this a lot. Many people say that being Kyrgyz and being Muslim are the same thing. If you are one, then you are supposed to be the other.

First of all, my socialization took place in a Muslim society. In our country the religion is Muslim. I was born here and grew up in this environment, and in general I only interacted with Muslim children. Throughout my childhood while growing up I didn’t know a single Russian tradition. Although my passport says I’m Russian, my father was a Tatar and my mother was Greek. I didn’t know Russian traditions at all. More than anything I learned about Muslim traditions. So I grew up in that kind of space. It is easier for me to understand this culture than the one that really relates to me. In time, I started to understand that it was a lot easier for me to live in this religion than in the Christian religion.

But that’s just one reason why I converted to Islam. It’s easier for me to live in this Muslim society and keep Muslim traditions. Second, I married an Uzbek. For the present time, things have worked out that I needed to accept Islam. Well, it didn’t just work out that way…I decided for myself. I accepted Islam for him. But the problem is, he’s from Osh. Muslim traditions in Bishkek are very different from those in Osh. Here, people are more loyal—they deal with things more liberally, more simply. A Russian girl and an Uzbek guy are normal here. But there it’s different. There, the traditions are kept very strictly. Wavering from the traditions is like death. His parents have been tormenting us for two years. They don’t want to accept me. They don’t care that I’ve accepted Islam, or that I pray five times a day. It doesn’t mean anything to them. They need a pure-blooded Uzbek girl, no impurities, nothing. That’s the biggest problem. They have very strong prejudices when it comes to Russians. They’ve never interacted with Russians and they have big stereotypes based on what they see on television. To be Russian means you drink a lot.

They haven’t even seen me. They don’t want to. They don’t allow me to come to the door step. They think I’m a girl of easy virtue, because I’m Russian. And no matter what anyone says, it’s all the same…they don’t have any reason, they just think reasons up. They just want to protect the purity of their nation. If you compare Uzbeks who live in Osh with Uzbeks who live in the capital of Uzbekistan, they are completely different people. It’s the same think with Kyrgyz in Bishkek. They try to improve themselves. Here, Kyrgyz try to speak in Russian. But in the villages, they try to keep the traditions more sternly, because that's their way of life. Here people try to improve themselves and strive for more cultural growth. The same thing in the capital of Uzbekistan—they speak in Russian there too. It’s different with the people who live in Osh. They are very religious. That keep their religion so firmly that it just shocks me.

For example, for my husband, religion is a big part of his life. He pays special attention to it. And it’s really a problem because he can’t go against his parents. That respect is important for him. If they say something, that means there’s wisdom in it. Although he knows that they don’t have any particular reasons. That’s the problem. And I didn’t change my religion in the first place just so they would believe me. I converted because…I personally feel better this way. My father was a Tatar and I ought to be a Muslim. During my socialization I realized that that was my culture.

I asked how she met her husband.

That’s a different story. I was studying here as a freshman. We have a free internet here, and I met him over the internet. He studied for a year in Turkey. He was in Turkey and we met here. We corresponded for five months, found common interests. Later, when he flew home to Osh, he came to Bishkek first. There are no flights directly to Osh. We met and started to get to know each other. But I only saw him about five times during two years. He came here two times, I came to Osh two times…just for 2 or three days at a time. That’s how it worked out. In reality, we had some really big problems. We tried to break up, because the moral pressure from his parents was really hard. And it was hard for him because, no matter how much he tried to convince them, no matter how many times he begged, they were against it. His parents still don’t know that we’re married, because it would be a terrible blow for them. But they don’t do anything to even try. They have that one point and that’s it, there no going on from there. He left home, said he was going to Turkey. But he was actually here. We got married, but we hide it. Right now he’s gone home, as if he’s just come back from Turkey. But they…I mean, he called me on his second day there and said, “I don’t fit in here. No one understands me. It’s as if I was a criminal, they keep asking me if I was in Bishkek. I’m public enemy number one. It’s like world war three.” It’s a tragedy for them. I don’t know. Their family isn’t…well he has an older brother too…oh, we can use his older brother as an example. They married him off according to tradition. According to their traditions, the mother goes and chooses a wife and he marries her. That’s how they married off his brother. I wouldn’t say that he’s very happy. Basically, his life isn’t working out for him that well and he’s very cold toward his family. That a resting their hopes on the younger son, on my husband, that he’s act like a true Uzbek and do everything his parents say. Because he respects his parents above anything else, but it won’t do any good for him or his parents. They don’t understand how many people they’re ruining. And not to mention that girl that they would marry him to—that would just be hard. And especially when…I know that they talk about me a lot there. I know they have stereotypes and they can’t get away from them. They don’t want to meet me, they feel that I’m a girl of easy virtue, and that’s it. They don’t want to think any more about it. They lived their whole lives in their religion, in their circle, in those borders. They haven’t ever gone any place—they’ve never seen a different way of life. They feel that, if their ancestors lived like that, then they should live just like they did. My husband for example…none of them has gone anywhere, but he went to Turkey. He wants to make something of his life. Just to sit in the provinces and marry a girl he doesn’t want to marry—that’s a problem. He calls me and says, “I’ve become a foreigner. They don’t understand me here and they don’t even try.” His parents say, “We’re your parents. That means we know what’s best for you.”

I asked her what she would do it his parents suddenly called him and told him that they had found a wife for him.

Oh. I don’t know, to tell you the truth. We’ve tried so many times to break up, but it just didn’t work out. I don’t think it will happen. We’d make it for three months, and that’s it. I would go to him or he would come to me. Personally, I think his mother is going to do that. She’s sick of me being in his life, that I haven’t disappeared. She thinks she’ll find someone and that’s it. She’ll do that, go and personally find a wife for him. I don’t want to ruin anyone’s life either, if he decides that’s best. Right now he’s just torn between me and his parents. And he can’t betray his religious principles of respecting his parents. But just to give up and live like his parents say, to put him in that box…he can’t win either way. But if he decides to marry that other girl, he knows that won’t lead to anything good. It may be easier on his parents, but it won’t be easier for him or that girl.

I asked how she would feel if it happened.

How could I feel? It would be hard, of course. I don’t know. Naturally, it would be a big blow for me. But because of all of these worries I took a break from school last year. I just couldn’t take it, I laid in the hospital with a nervous disorder, with depression. It was just really hard in general. I broke down my health and everything else. My mother loves [my husband] and it was really hard for her too, he’s like another child in the family. I’m her only child and she naturally wants me to be happy, so it was hard. And because of all that my studies aren’t going too well right now, although as a freshman, when I still hadn’t met him, I was a very good student. Now it’s really hard, and the problems are still building up. And this biggest problem is that I tried, through my husband…I said, let me meet your parents, get acquainted. I’m not against that. Maybe I can try to break the stereotypes they have of me. They don’t know me at all. They should understand. They look, and all they see is Russia. Everyone drinks there. First of all, I wasn’t born in Russia. I was born here, I grew up here, I’m a Muslim. For me, those kinds of behaviors that I see in Russian, they aren’t acceptable for me either. But that fact that I’m not really Russian, they don’t care.

I asked if her decision was worth all the problems it had caused.

They all talk that way. People who know me well say that it’s not worth it. Those two years that I went through, everyone said that it’s not worth it. They always say that, “Oh, you’ll find someone better.” That’s even harder to take. Why would I live through two years of this just to give it all up and say, “Oh, well. I’ll throw it all out and start again.” Why did I start it all then? Of course, when I first met my husband, I said, “I know your traditions. It’s going to be hard.” He agreed. But then you see what happened. Now he can’t decide anything—I basically decide everything. I try to do something. The most offensive things was when he left, he had to pretend that he had just come back from Turkey. He literally left on Monday. We had to go buy some gifts. All of fall break I went around and bought gifts for them. I basically bought gifts for people who don’t like me. And then I call and ask, “Did they like the gifts?” “Of course,” he says. I think, yeah, they like the gifts but they don’t like me.

I asked her why she did all of this--went through all of this.

You have to understand, I know how my husband was raised. His parents raised him very well. In fact, they should be proud that they taught him to be such a good person. And if you are a Muslim, and you feel you are a Muslim, you have to keep all the traditions and do not only as you have to, but as you feel. For example, he never goes to mosque just because he is supposed to. He does it from his heart. They raised him very well. I understand his manners, from the way he acts, that they have a very good family. I analyzed all of this, and I don’t have anything I can say against them. Of course, it would be strange for me to suddenly meet them and start a conversation. It’s really hard to convince people of the opposite of what they have been convinced their whole life. If they think that I’m that way, I don’t understand how to change their mind. But I don’t feel anything really bad towards them. For me, if he’s my husband, then they are my relatives. I’m not used to just feeling that way about people. If I don’t know a person, then he’s a stranger to me. I really enjoyed buying them gifts. I imagined how his nephew would like a toy, so I bought it. It was actually really enjoyable for me.

I asked her why she was willing to sacrifice so much for her husband.

Well, I just sacrifice. For me, it’s not entirely a sacrifice. It’s part of my life. I sacrifice in that I know that we won’t get past their prejudices. I don’t know. I do a lot for my husband. I know how hard it is for him. I try to make his life nicer, I try to help him. There’s not a lot of ways I can help, of course, but I try.

And finally, to give you an idea of just how far she would go to be accepted into her husband's family, and just how unwilling they are (and why they are unwilling):

We didn’t solve the problem by getting married. We may not be able to solve one our own, just by asking and trying to convince them. Those feelings aren’t solvable. I was always convinced that you can solve any problem, even if you can just find one way. There is a way, but the only way I’ve found they won’t accept. I’m ready. I told them I wouldn’t ask their son to live away from them, here in Bishkek. I’m wiling to move to Osh and live with them. I’d do anything they want. If they want me to look more Uzbek, I can go to a tanning salon and make my skin darker, I can die my hair black, I can make my eyes look more Uzbek, I can wear a hijab…it doesn’t make a difference to me. The most important thing for me is that they believe me. If it’s important for me to look Uzbek…but the most important thing for them is to not mix the blood. And the problem isn’t just in their family. They’re afraid…they’re all relatives. All of their neighbors are related to them as well. Everyone says that…Uigurs, Uzbeks, they’re all relatives. The opinion of other people who know them is very important. “They’ll lose all respect for us.” It’s not just their stereotype, its belongs to everyone who lives there. In their Mahallah [an administrative region] everyone knows everyone else. They’re afraid if they allow our marriage, everyone is going to judge their family and their decision. New spreads so quickly there. Everyone would know and everyone would remember, point their fingers, judge. And then no one would accept our children there. Even if I take on their entire culture, live with them, sooner or later even my children…if I agree that my daughter also needs to marry an Uzbek, no one would take her. And our family would suffer because of that. Everyone would stop respecting us, because they all have the same opinion. It’s one thing to convince their family, it’s a different thing to convince the entire city. It’s just not right. The problem is that they demand that you live that way and don’t think—don’t even imaging—that they could be another way. I don’t know.

In Their Own Words: How People Know It's the Government 's Fault

People blame a lot of their ills on the government. Here is a college student explaining how she knows that the government is to blame for many of the bad things happening in Kyrgyzstan. Notice that she can't give a clear connection between social ills and government. It's an assumption, not evidence.

Researcher: In your opinion, what do you need in this country to maintain a minimum standard of living?

Informant: In my opinion, you would have to change the government first.

Researcher: Why?

Informant: Because if we had a president like Putin—as far as I’ve noticed, Putin raises teachers’ wages every month, raises the pensions. Here, they say they’re going to raise it, and then they don’t do anything.

Researcher: Why don’t they do it?

Informant: Because they just say that they are going to do it. They take money from other countries, and then say they’re going to give it to the teachers, raise pensions. Then they put it in their own pockets.

Researcher: How do you think this country will change in 10 years?

Informant: I think you need to change the government.

Researcher: Have you always thought that, if things are bad in a country, that it is the government’s fault? How did you come to have that opinion?

Informant: If the government wasn’t as bad as it is, why would recent graduates all go abroad? If the government set good wages, people would stay here. They would improve this country. But, for example, teacher’s, doctors—they have a very low wage. They are all going abroad. I have an aunt who is a pediatrician, she lives in Cokuluk—not far from Bishkek. Last year she went to Almaty to work. The worked there, and then came back. Now she’s getting ready to go again.

Researcher: Do people do that often?

Informant: Yes. Even school teachers often go to Russia to sell things.

In Their Own Words: What it Means to Be Kyrgyz

This girl is a university student in Bishkek. I knew from previous conversations that she only used to speak Russian. She is now studying Kyrgyz more and more. I asked why.

If you look at the very beginning, from my childhood, I went to a Russian kindergarten, but I didn’t know Russian. My natural language was Kyrgyz. Everyone in my family, and all of my friends spoke Kyrgyz. I went to kindergarten and everything was in Russian. They sent me to that kindergarten because they were looking after my future, because people who don’t know Russian can’t get a job, or it gets hard for them later on in school. So they wanted me to learn Russian as a child and sent me to a Russian kindergarten. It was hard at first, but after a while I learned it and went to a Russian school. All of my friends spoke Russian. Maybe it was just the cool thing to do. Everyone spoke Russian, and little but little…I just kind of…I know everyday Kyrgyz well and I can speak fine, but I don’t know the grammar. All of my classes were in Russian and my friends all spoke Russian. And I just kind of as a reflex started speaking Russian at home. I made it all the way to the 11^th grade using Russian. At that time, Kyrgyz only existed for me when I went to the villages, talked with my grandparents, and in Kyrgyz classes. But even in classes, if you don’t remember how to say something in Kyrgyz, you just say it in Russian. But then I started to think….I heard someone say that there’s no nation without a language. I’m Kyrgyz, so I ought to know Kyrgyz. Because of that, I started to talk in Kyrgyz more. Even my mom and dad started to say things like, “Don’t you know Kyrgyz?” I said, “If you want, I can talk in Kyrgyz.” I started to talk in Kyrgyz and after two words I changed into Russian. Then I understood that I really needed to work at Kyrgyz. It just seems stupid to me. Even though we have to national languages, it seems to me that we need to know both languages the same—Russian and Kyrgyz. As far as Kyrgyz goes, it’s not fair that I know Russian better. Even more so since I’m Kyrgyz, I ought to know Kyrgyz.

I asked her if it was important to her personally that she is Kyrgyz.

Technically, I’m not entirely Kyrgyz. My mother is part Uzbek, part Kyrgyz, and my father is part Kazakh, part Kyrgyz. The Kyrgyz look at the father’s line. Going just by my father’s line, I’m Kazakh. My great-great grandfathers lives in Kazakhstan. But there was a famine there at one time, and they moved to Kyrgyzstan, and my father was born here. My grandfather say, “My son was born in Kyrgyzstan, is going to live in Kyrgyzstan, he doesn’t know Kazakh, but he knows Kyrgyz.” So when they filled out the documents, they wrote Kyrgyz. So according to the government documents, my father is Kyrgyz, so I am too. But if you don’t look at the documents, I’m a Kazakh. But I still consider myself Kyrgyz. Just like in America—and American of Kyrgyz origin, right? Even though I am of mixed lineage, I was born in Kyrgyzstan, I live here, study here. So I consider myself a Kyrgyz.

She said she never got interested in her Kazakh history. Only in Kyrgyz history. I asked her why.

I don’t know. I know that my great-grandfather was a Kazakh. Besides that, I don’t even know the history of Kazakhstan. I never read it. Kyrgyzstanis closer to me, native. I don’t know. My homeland is Kyrgyzstan. Kazakhstan was just the homeland of my ancestors.

In Their Own Words: Corruption

You can't read about Kyrgyzstan without hearing about corruption. Everyone talks about it. I interviewed an official in one of Kyrgyzstan's many political parties and asked him about it. If his ideas sound a little disjointed, that's because they were.

For a good life…regular people just need to have conditions were they can work, and reasonable distribution of wealth. Everything they earn…and then, as everyone says right now, we’re fighting corruption. So getting rid of corruption and creating normal working conditions. If you look at the history of the Kyrgyz, we are divided into clans. There are larger clans and then…it’s in our blood. For example, I become a director, I pull in my brothers, relatives, my clan. It’s in our blood. I don’t know sometimes it...trying to stop it doesn't seem to work, so...

Researcher: If you were put into such a position, would you do that? Put your own people in places of power?

Informant: I probably wouldn’t be able to. There’s a new generation—the goal of our party is to attract the youth. We have a goal to get the youth into this work. Right now everyone in the government, in high positions, they’ve been there for 15-20 years. The people who were working during Akayev’s administration [Akayev was the former president, ousted in 2005] are still working for Bakiev [the new president]. The youth have a very different view. But we [the older generation] have it in our blood.

Researcher: You’re used to it.

Informant: Yes, we’re used to it. If only the youth can fix that.

Researcher: Why do you think the youth have a different opinion, different views?

Informant: First of all young people…there’s so much progress..the have command of such a wealth of information, not like us. We were raised in a very narrow environment. Nowadays even from a young age they know so much. Also, and this is just my opinion, they just aren’t as interested in their relatives. That’s all.

In their Own Words: Islam, Individual Needs, and Getting Past the Standard Answers

This is from an interview with a devout Muslim householder in Talas. He said that Mulsims are obligated to help the less fortunate. I asked him if he would not help the less fortunate if he were not Muslim.

If I weren’t a Muslim, only God knows, maybe a little just, as people do, just to be able to brag, I would do it. Just because I would want other people to see it. We don’t have that kind of attitude. Just the opposite, we want God to see it and God to be pleased. Out hope is to go to paradise. Every person is duty bound to do good deeds. We are all Muslims. God created everyone Muslims. Everyone should worship God. That last book…we argue a lot about religion now, say that this religion is good, or that one. No. All religions are good. Everything comes in it’s own time. There was the Torah during the time of Moses, and during the time of Isaiah, and Jesus. Now the last book is the Qur’an. God sent it to earth. Now we should all obey it. The last prophet is Muhammad. There isn’t a practice of saying, that’s an American, that’s an African, that’s a Russian or a Kyrgyz. Because we should all obey the surahs [chapters in the Qur’an] of the prophet, obey God, should obey the Qur’an, that God sent. Therefore, we’re all Muslims. We should all pray. Our dream is that God would give holiness to America, to the whole world. We ask God that he would give everyone the chance to pray the way we do, so everyone would pray and ask God to help them keep from the wrong paths. God gave us the last book, sent it to us. And we have the word of God that if we will live according to the Qur’an, we will be happy. So whoever prays five times a day—prayer is our duty, that’s what the prophet taught—will go to heaven. If you keep Orozo [a fast during the holy month of Ramadan], live according to the Qur’an, pray five times a day,
don’t miss, then paradise is prepared for you. If you don’t do that, is says that God will not make any promises with you. We are all duty bound. Before God there are no differences—American, Russian, things like that—he doesn’t differentiate. Before God we all need to accept that. What God has commanded, that we must do. Pray five times a day, keep Orozo one month a year.

This is a standard kind of answer that you get when you ask people about Islam. I’ve taught classes on Islam and have studied the history of the religion fairly in-depth. It doesn’t matter if I tell people this. They will usually give the above information anyway. I asked this many why he personally believed these things.

It’s now…this isn’t just a plain book. It’s a holy book. Allah sent it to the Arabs. If he had wanted he could have sent it to the Kyrgyz, the Russians. But by the will of God this book was sent to the Arabs. It was according to the desires of the last prophet. Isaiah the prophet said that a final prophet would come. But no one knew who the last prophet would be. It was all according to the will of God. He said that the last prophet would come, but he did not say who, where, and when he would
come.

Again, standard answer (and not really answering my question). This seems to be very common. He wasn’t being evasive—as far as I could tell, he really felt he was answering my question. I asked him to tell me about the first time he prayed.

The first time, I don’t know. I don’t remember it well, but I seem to remember God gave me a sign. I prayed that God would free me from my bad deeds. I drank vodka at the time. I participated in unholy actions. I prayed that god would save me from those things. There was guy who rode nearby on a bicycle. He suggested that I start to pray. I said that if God granted it, I would start to pray later. But somehow his advice stuck with me. Later I went to him and started to go with him to pray and I started to read. I used to drink, I fought, I sometimes said bad things to others. But then the next day I suddenly had this great fear. I prayed to God to help me stop drinking. I didn’t pray to Allah. I just prayed to Kudai [one of the traditional Kyrgyz words for God]. I prayed that he would help me stop the bad things I was doing.

Better answer. It gave me some insight into what was going on in his life at the time that he decided to take Islam more seriously. I asked him if it was difficult to learn how to pray (the five set prayers that Muslims are supposed to pray have specific wording. They aren’t just plain talking to God—that’s a different kind of prayer).

No. At that time, there weren’t any books that you could use to learn to pray. There are a lot of them now. At that time, books about Shari’a [Islamic law, based on the Qur’an and the words and actions of the prophet Muhammad], about how to pray—there weren’t any. At that time, I went to that guy’s home for about a month—to the Mullah [someone who has studied and knows more about the Qur’an than your average person]. I went at night. He said, “Come at night, come in the morning.” I went to his house early, before sunrise, to pray. We didn’t have mosques then.

I asked him how his life had changed since he started doing these things.

It’s hard for a person to just live a plain life. I used to always think about my plans, wonder what I was going to do tomorrow, how to find things. I always had those kinds of questions—how I am going to live, how can I get more money, how can I feed my children. Flour just got more expensive, and people are fearing about their lives. But we rely on God. God won’t forget us. Whatever we need, we ask God for it in prayer. We don’t have fear. If we fear, we rely on God and the fear goes away. I feel like there is someone who helps me. I don’t ask help of anyone else.