Islam as a Power Resource: Instrumentalization of Religion in Central Asia

with Mariya Y. Omelicheva, University of Kansas

How can Islam play multiple and contradictory roles as a source of violence and peace, and a marker of identity differences and national unity? This presentation will explore an argument that religion, as a system of beliefs, manifests itself through discourses, which serve to convey religious meanings but also project interests and identities of governments, Muslim communities, and religious organizations. Religion, in other words, can be instrumentalized by stakeholders interested in accomplishing distinctive political aims. The study offers an empirical analysis of instrumentalisation of Islam by governments of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan and uses this evidence for developing a framework linking various discursive representations of religion to their political uses.

Mariya Y. Omelicheva is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science and Director of the Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies at the University of Kansas. She holds PhD (2007) in Political Science from Purdue University and JD in International Law (2000) from Moscow National Law Academy. Dr. Omelicheva’s research and teaching interests include international and Eurasian security, counterterrorism and human rights, democracy promotion in the post-Soviet territory, Russia’s foreign and security policy, and terrorism/crime nexus in Eurasia. She has published on these subjects in Terrorism and Political Violence, Europe-Asia Studies, International Journal of Human Rights, Central Asia Survey, Cambridge Review of International Relations, and other journals. She is the author of Counterterrorism Policies in Central Asia (Routledge 2011), which received an Outstanding Academic Title award by Choice, and Democracy in Central Asia: Competing Perspectives and Alternate Strategies (University Press of Kentucky 2015), and editor of Nationalism and Identity Construction in Central Asia: Dimensions, Dynamics, and Directions (Lexington 2014).