Despite being home to more than nine percent of the world’s 1.8 billion Muslims, the Caspian and Central Asia regions have remarkably tended to reject religious extremism. National governments have remained committed to fighting against religious radicalism, with some expected to pass laws banning studying abroad for religious education, wearing Arab-styled black clothing for women and growing long beards for men.
Kazakhstani officials announced earlier this month that they are drafting a bill to restrict students from traveling abroad for religious education. Once idea is to prohibit foreign study in religion unless a student has already obtained at least a bachelor's degree in Kazakhstan.
“Our goal is to make religious education [abroad] possible only after getting an education in Kazakhstan,” said Kazakhstan’s Minister for Religious and Civil Society Affairs, Nurlan Yermekbayev, during a press conference in Astana on August 3.
Should the restriction take effect, the government is contemplating only allowing study at pre-approved institutions.
Yermekbayev’s office is currently preparing a draft bill for consideration by Kazakhstan’s parliament, which it hopes to have passed by the end of this year. He added that the government is also contemplating a complete ban on religious education abroad in near future.
The minister further stressed that those who have acquired religious education abroad without special permission of the country's Spiritual Board of Muslims will not be hired by the organization.
Kazakhstan’s decision comes after the detention of six Kazakhstani students, all Arabic language student’s studying in Cairo, by Egyptian law enforcement agencies on the night of July 19. Egypt has since deported the six detainees at the behest of the Kazakhstani Foreign Ministry, although the reasons for their detention have not been fully disclosed.
Nearly 300 citizens of Kazakhstan are studying abroad at religious universities, mainly in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, according to the Ministry of Religious and Civil Society Affairs. Nurlan Yermekbayev, Kazakhstan’s Security Council Secretary, had stated in July 2015 that 400 Kazakhstanis were fighting abroad, including in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Some estimates put the number of actual fighters in Syria at 150, while another 200 accompanying them were family members.
Astana faced a serious threat after a series of terror attacks in June 2016 in the northwestern city of Aktobe, which resulted in seven deaths and 37 more injured. The Ministry of Religious Affairs and Civil Society was created as a result of the attacks , in an attempt to address the problem of radicalism in Central Asia’s largest and most ethnically diverse country.
With a population of nearly 18 million, Kazakhstan unites more than 100 ethnicities, including Kazakhs, who made up 63 percent of the population. Kazakhstanis also include ethnic Russians, Uzbeks, Ukrainians, Germans, Tatars and Uyghurs.
While about 70 percent of the country’s population identify with the Sunni branch of Islam, about 15,000 adhere to the Salafist school, an ultra-conservative movement that developed in Saudi Arabia in the first half of the 18th century. The Kazakhstani government sees Salafists as the main threat to state security, after President Nursultan Nazarbayev accused them in 2016 of the Aktobe terror attacks.
After the president harshly criticized religious movements and ideologies originating outside of the Central Asia region, leaders in Astana took steps to curb their influence, including banning groups like Al Nusra Front, a Salafist extremist organization fighting the Syrian government. Other groups banned from proselytizing or practicing in Kazakhstan include Islamic State, Al Qaeda, and the Al Qaeda-affiliated Jama'at al-Muslimin, popularly known as Takfir wal Hijra, which emerged in Egypt in the 1960s and has had members detained in Ukraine and Russia as late as 2013.
The government is also expected to pass legislation this fall that would ban Arab-styled black clothing for women and growing long beards for men. Other proposals include the bill require religious associations to be financially transparent, and demands that preaching does not promote extremism, incite violence, or inspire hatred.
Turkmenistan, another Caspian state lying south of Kazakhstan, has fully supported Astana in its fight against religious extremism. A series of agreements signed between the two countries in April are expected to increase bilateral cooperation in combating the legalization of proceeds from crime and terrorist financing.
The two countries were joined in June by three other Central Asian Republics, namely Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, all which adopted the UN’s joint declaration to strengthen regional cooperation in the fight against terrorism.
Turkmenistan has been closely collaborating with international organizations aside from the UN, including the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the Eurasian Group on Combating Money Laundering and Financing of Terrorism, in order to enhance its counterterrorism efforts and border security. Ashgabat also plans to join the Egmont Group, an international network of 154 Financial Intelligence Units to combat money laundering and terrorist financing.
In 2015, Turkmenistan’s government announced a large-scale mobilization of its reserve military forces, aimed at hedging any threat by IS forces gathering in neighboring Afghanistan.
"This is the first large-scale and serious mobilization of reservists in the nearly 24 years of the country's independence," Defence Ministry official Agamyrat Garakhanov told Central Asia Online in March 2015, without disclosing the number of reservists called to duty.
"We don't talk about [ISIS] aloud," said Soltan Botirov, a retired lieutenant colonel, "but the threat exists, and we must thwart it by any means available.”
Considered the second largest country in Central Asia, Turkmenistan, identifies its legal and organizational foundations in the fight against terrorism through legislation passed in 2003, which calls for ensuring the security of people, society, and the state, detecting, preventing and stopping terrorism and minimizing its consequences; identifying and eliminating terrorism’s causes and conditions.
Although no official data is available that provides reliable information about the level of religious adherence by Turkmenistan’s population, the majority is known to identify with Sunni Islam, including ethnic Turkmen, Uzbeks, Kazakhs and Baluchis. The country’s Council for Religious Affairs regulates the relationship between the state and religious groups.
Turkmenistan is said to be the Central Asian country least affected by Islamic radicals, because to date there have not been any reported illegal actions related to religiously motivated terrorism. Some say the reason for this is cultural, claiming that Turkmen people, for example, have never been persuaded by radical movements. But others argue that avoiding radicalism is a result of strict state control over the people.
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