How has Central Asia's Religious Revival shaped Gender Relations?

As religious persecution rescinds, Central Asians are heading mosques, subscribing to YouTube imams, travelling to Saudi Arabia, learning Arabic, hosting sex-segregated ‘Islamic weddings’, and re-veiling.

Central Asian feminists are alarmed.

Is Uzbekistan becoming more patriarchal?

Unfortunately, we do not have nationally representative longitudinal data. So I cannot speculate about attitudinal change over time. The best I could do was interview a socio-economic range of people, across multiple generations and geographical regions, and invite them to share their life histories. [Click here for my Methodology].

Let me suggest some important causal mechanisms (which may hold for different degrees for different communities):

• Central Asian Muslims are increasingly expressing religosity and seeking religious knowledge - often from patriarchal Saudi-trained imams;

• Pious conformity may be heightened by fear of hell, close-knit kinship, and concern for social approval.

• Now that these ideologies are widespread, they are often taken for granted and signal ‘goodness’.

• Religious revival thus seems to reinforce cultural persistence.