
B. Balcı – Islamic Renewal in Central Asia
Bayram Balcı, « Islamic Renewal in Central Asia » in R. Isaacs and E. Marat (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Central Asia, Londres, Routledge 2021, pp. 411-421. DOI: 10.4324/9780429057977 The Central Asian republics’ break from the USSR was significant in religious terms.While the communist authorities had claimed to be atheist at least in theory, or non-religious, the new states on the other hand adopted a wholly new approach to religion, not opposing it but linking it with and incorporating it into the new political identity of state, nation and society.Thirty years after the end of the USSR, the renewal of Islam is a matter of history and does not in truth derive from the sociology of religion and the place of religion in