The State and Islam in Soviet Central Asia

This study explores the relationship between Islam and the Soviet state from World War II to the 1980s. The Spiritual Administration of the Muslims of Central Asia and Kazakhstan SADUM, a centralized Islamic institution in Central Asia, played a key role in this relationship. SADUM represented an attempt to harmonize the contradictory worldviews of Islam and socialism and promote a new vision of Islam to the domestic and international Orient. The Soviet state's interaction with Islam and its institutional basis follow the trend of modernizing Muslim states in the Middle East. Secular states like Turkey and Egypt had been experimenting with modern institutions similar to SADUM to promote state-controlled Islam. SADUM's exchanges with these counterpart institutions from Middle Eastern countries and its domestic role in Central Asia as a religious authority highlight the Islamic image of the Soviet Union.