Bayram Balci
Director, French Institute of Studies on Central Asia, IFEAC, Tashkent, Uzbekistan
The Uzbek and Uighur refugees that fled the communist
regimes around the 1930s and 1950s in Central Asia formed cohesive
communities
in Saudi Arabia while their original identities
suffered a downward slide throughout the XXth century.
To appeal to Saudi sympathy on arrival in
Saudi Arabia, these refugees claimed either their regional identity as
Turkistani
or their ethnic identity as Kashgari, Bukhari or
Kokandi, as the Saudis were better acquainted with religious thinkers
and
eminent personalities from Central Asia than the
region or its peoples. It was after the collapse of the USSR, when these
refugees were able to revisit their countries of
origin, that they gradually started to reclaim their national identities
as Uzbeks and Uighurs.
For purposes of social integration, a
large majority amongst these refugees had given up typically Central
Asian mystical
Islamic traditions and converted to Saudi official
wahhabism or salafism. Since Uzbek independence in 1991 and China's
opening
in the 1980s, these recently converted returning
Central Asian refugees and their descendants contributed to the
reislamization
of their countrymen. Some initiatives were personal
while others were through more organized channels. Saudi religious
authorities
recruited and mobilized Uzbek and Uighur community
members as missionaries sent to the field to proselytize in Central Asia
and to encourage increasing numbers of pilgrims to
Mecca.
