Spirituality and anti-Western rhetoric in Uzbekistan in the early 2000s: the consequences of international misrecognition

Abstract

References to the spirituality-morality (ma'naviyat) of the Uzbek people increased substantially throughout the course of Islam Karimov's years in office as the President of Uzbekistan. Uzbek values were presented as qualities springing from the country's supposedly unique civilizational heritage, cast as something distinct from "Western" civilizational norms and practice. This source of distinctiveness, however, soon gave way to a type of exclusionary discourse in the early 2000s, centered on clearly differentiating Uzbekistan from the "West. " This essay provides a lens through which to understand the phenomenon, arguing that international recognition of status partly accounts for the rise in the particularly anti-Western variant of Karimov's rhetoric. Authorities in Uzbekistan, not unlike in Russia, built their foreign policy on the need to secure the country's (allegedly) important status in the international arena; anti-Western rhetoric arose as a response to misrecognition, as it evaded appeals to equality of status and legitimized growing isolationism. The essay reviews the origins of that rhetoric, the meaning of recognition, and the backdrop against which anti-Western moralizing rhetoric arose in Uzbekistan's international engagement. It also concludes with a brief assessment of how that rhetoric might affect (or not) the foreign policy of Uzbekistan's new president, Shavkat Mirziyoyev. Over Uzbekistan's 25 years of independence, President Islam Karimov referred increasingly to spirituality-morality (ma'naviyat-henceforth SM). By spiritual moralizing rhetoric, I mean talking or writing about the cultural/civilizational status of a certain people, their traditions, practices, and history, and especially how all those combined traits are a source of collective distinctiveness. Taken to the extreme, however, alluding to SM may reach a point where "unique" practices become not only a source of distinction, but also of exclusion. This is what happened to Uzbekistan in the early 2000s; Karimov set Uzbekistan, a country of the "East, " apart from its counterparts in the "West": [An] English intelligence officer said in his time that the East is the East and the West is the West. I will not go into details but he said something to the effect that the West and the East would never come together. It was said back in the 19th century. (quoted in BBC Monitoring International Reports 2005) For Karimov to have taken issue with the "West" in the early 2000s is hardly surprising in light of the international pressure to which Uzbekistan was submitted during the "