Politicizing Islam in Central Asia

In Politicizing Islam in Central Asia, Kathleen Collins explores the causes, dynamics, and variation in Islamist movements-first within the USSR, and then in the post-Soviet states of Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan. Drawing upon extensive ethnographic and historical research on Islamist mobilization across numerous post-Soviet Central Asian countries, she covers over a century and explains the strategies and relative success of each movement. Collins argues that in each case, state repression of Islam and ideology motivated and enabled Islamist mobilization.

Kathleen Collins is Associate Professor of Political Science and an Affiliate Faculty of Islamic Studies at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. Collins is recipient of the national Carnegie Scholar Award and the McKnight Land-Grant Professorship Award. Collins is also author of Clan Politics and Regime Transition in Central Asia (2006), which won the award for the best book in the social science fields from the international Central Eurasian Studies Society. She won the S. M. Lipset Award in a national competition for the best dissertation in Comparative Politics or Sociology. She has published two dozen academic articles in edited books and journals. Collins teaches doctoral and undergraduate courses on Central Asian politics, Russian/Soviet history and politics, Afghanistan's wars, political Islam, Islam and democracy, and religion and politics. Additionally, she has worked on projects with or consulted for the United States Agency for International Development, the United Nations
Development Program, the International Crisis Group, the National Bureau of Asian Research, and Freedom House. She has presented her work to multiple US government agencies, including the Helsinki Commission, the Department of State, and the Department of Defense.

List of Figures
List of Images
List of Tables
List of Maps
Acknowledgements
Technical Note
List of Acronyms
PART I
Introduction
1: Secular Authoritarianism, Ideology, and Islamist Mobilization
PART II: The USSR Politicizes Islam
2: The Russian Revolution and Muslim Mobilization
3: The Atheist State: Repressing and Politicizing Islam
4: Muslim Belief and Everyday Resistance
PART III: Tajikistan: From Moderate Islamists to Muslim Democrats
5: The Islamic Revival Party Challenges Communism
6: A Democratic Islamic Party Confronts An Extremist Secular State
7: The Attraction and Limits of Islamist Ideas in Tajikistan
PART IV: Uzbekistan: From Salafists to Salafi-Jihadists
8: Seeking Justice and Purity: Islamists against Communism and Karimov
9: Making Extremists: The Uzbek Jihad Moves to Afghanistan
10: The Attraction and Limits of Islamist Ideas in Uzbekistan
PART V: Kyrgyzstan: Civil Islam and Emergent Islamists
11: Religious Liberalization and Civil Islam in Kyrgyzstan
12: Emergent Islamism in Kyrgyzstan
13: The Attraction and Limits of Islamist Ideas in Kyrgyzstan
PART VI: From Central Asia to Syria: Transnational Salafi-Jihadists
14: Central Asians Join the Syrian Jihad
15: From Central Asia to Afghanistan, Syria, and Beyond
Appendix
Glossary
Index