The present volume provides detailed empirical studies on the development of Islamic education in the Soviet Union and its successor states. It aims at an overview of the development of Islamic learning in six regions or republics of the former Soviet Union with a predominant or at least significant Muslim population over most of the twentieth century. These are Tatarstan in the Central Volga region, Ukraine (with a special focus on the Crimean peninsula), Daghestan and Azerbaijan in the Caucasus, as well as Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan in Central Asia. Research for this project was conducted by regional teams of three to four researchers in each part of the former Soviet Union. In addition, Tim Epkenhans contributed a study on Islamic education in Tajikistan with a focus on the recent years. The omission not only of other Muslim areas of the Caucasus, but also of Bashkortostan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan, certainly limits the comparative value of our overviews. However, the regions selected comprise the major centres of Islamic learning in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. In addition, a volume on Islamic education in further regions of the former USSR is to appear soon.1
This book provides a comparative history of Islamic education in the Soviet Union and the post-Soviet countries. Case studies on Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan and on two regions of the Russian Federation, Tatarstan and Daghestan, highlight the importance which Muslim communities in all parts of the Soviet Union attached to their formal and informal institutions of Islamic instruction. New light is shed on the continuity of pre-revolutionary educational traditions - including Jadidist ethics and teaching methods - throughout the New Economic Policy period (1921-1928), on Muslim efforts to maintain their religious schools under Stalinist repression, and on the complete institutional breakdown of the Islamic educational sector by the late 1930s. A second focus of the book is on the remarkable boom of Islamic education in the post-Soviet republics after 1991. Contrary to general assumptions on the overwhelming influence of foreign missionary activities on this revival, this study stresses the primary role of the Soviet Islamic institutions which were developed during and after the Second World War, and of the persisting regional and even international networks of Islamic teachers and muftis. Throughout the book, special attention is paid to the specific regional traditions of Islamic learning and to the teachers' affiliations with Islamic legal schools and Sufi brotherhoods. The book thus testifies to the astounding dynamics of Islamic education under rapidly changing and oftentimes extremely harsh political conditions.