Word: tashkent
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Officials in the capital of Tashkent turned a blind eye to the growing power of the Islamic revivalists in Namangan, until they openly challenged the authority of President Islam Karimov. Last month police sealed off the city and whisked at least 80 activists away to prisons outside the region, deeply offending city residents. An enraged party member in Moscow warned, "A revolution is imminent. We have learned something from the Algerian experience...
...flight from Cairo taxied to a spot between two El Al jumbo jets that were already disgorging onto the tarmac a profusion of joyous, exhausted humanity. Standing in line for customs, I was engulfed by a sibilant jabber that I recognized from other journeys -- to Moscow, Minsk, Kiev, Tbilisi, Tashkent, Baku, Irkutsk...
...group is more delighted with the new religious liberty than the mullahs who nurtured the Islamic faith during decades of persecution. "They used to shoot us," says a mullah at Tashkent's Tokhta Baitvacha mosque, which was closed in 1937 on Stalin's orders and reopened a year ago. "Now they don't interfere with us. A lot of young people come here these days...
...major mosque just opposite the Tashkent headquarters of the Muslim Religious Board for Central Asia and Kazakhstan, a gaggle of Uzbek teenagers fidget through 2 p.m. prayers while their elders scowl at a visiting photographer. At an elegant medieval-era mosque just outside town, young construction volunteers stop for a farewell word from mullah Kasemi Bey after a Saturday morning of restoration work. Says Kasemi Bey: "The number of believers is growing. Everybody wants to go to Mecca...
...languages. The Cyrillic alphabet was forced on the Central Asian republics by Stalin in 1939 to cut Muslims off from their rich cultural heritage and to exacerbate relatively minor linguistic differences among the four main Turkic groups of the area. Today, privately run Arabic-language schools are flourishing in Tashkent and other major cities, while Tashkent's five Arabic-language middle schools are crammed to capacity. At the Tashkent No. 22 Middle School, 2,200 students from Grades 2 through 11 -- the highest -- attend Arabic-language classes taught by 24 ( full-time instructors. Says teacher Asia Ismarava...