Kazakhstan

Islam in Kazakhstan

Islam disseminated into central Asia and Kazakhstan in the seventh and eighth centuries from the southern areas. It became the state religion in 960, during the period when the Karakhanids governed the territory of what would later become modern Kazakhstan. In the early 13th century, the spread of Islam was slowed under Mongolian conquest, but later Mongolian conquerors turned to Islam and adopted the Turkic language.

Sunnā Islam was approved as the official ideology of the Kazakh Khanate in the 15th century. Islam also influenced the political and cultural lives of the different Kazakh tribes that would form the basis of Kazakh ethnicity and statehood.

The Russian Tsarist administration tried and failed to turn Kazakhs to Orthodox Christianity. Later, Christian politics was replaced by support of Islam. The Tsarist administration supported Tatar mullahs with salaries and provided finances for building mosques and Muslim schools (Medrese). The migration of Uighurs and Dungans from China (east Turkestan) influenced the growth of Islam in southeastern Kazakhstan during the 1870s and 1880s.

After 1917, the adherents of Islam were severely persecuted by Soviet authorities. In 1929, the teaching of Islam was prohibited in Kazakh schools. Thousands of mosques were closed in the Soviet Union, including Kazakhstan, in the 1930s. Under the official policy of atheism, the Soviet bureaucracy controlled Islamic institutions: During the period from 1960 to the late 1980s, the number of mosques in Kazakhstan was only 22–28.

Since then, Kazakhstan has witnessed a significant growth of Islamic institutions. Muslim communities from 1991 to 2009 increased from 68 to 2,488. The number of mosques increased from 296 in 1993 to 2,441 in 2008.

The Kazakh-Egypt Islamic University Nur Mubarak was opened in Almaty (the former capital of Kazakhstan). The number of pilgrims to Mecca increased from 228 in 2001 to 4,300 in 2007.

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