Sacred Boundaries: Navigating Faith and Control in Kyrgyzstan
(ANALYSIS) Strolling through the streets of Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, one easily gets the impression of walking through multiple cities at once.
Bazaars, residential neighborhoods, school complexes and sprawling parks feel like autonomous worlds, loosely connected by a network of dusty roads stretching across the city. Taste, smell, appearance, lifestyle and ethnicity diverge significantly across districts, many of which are dominated by specific communities. This is especially evident in the city’s diverse religious sites.
During my recent stay as a volunteer, I visited four very different religious spaces: the Russian Orthodox “Holy Resurrection Cathedral” in the city center, the nearby Central Mosque with its towering minarets, the Kyrgyz-American Baptist Church most of my friends attended and the “Great Emptiness Museum,” a hidden hub for all kinds of esoterically inclined people run by a Russian artist who had transformed the house into a labyrinth filled with surrealist art.
Entering and leaving these places — often several times a day — I inevitably felt like I was moving in and out of worlds completely disconnected from each other. What struck me most was the almost total lack of awareness many believers displayed regarding the religious lives of other communities.
Since public displays of religiosity have faced significant government restrictions, religious groups tend to exist in isolation. Belonging to a community is often determined by ethnicity, appearance and specific rules of conduct, which are usually unknown to outsiders.
Within both Muslim and Christian communities, religiosity and ethnicity are often strongly intertwined. Government officials and local imams frequently invoke the rhetoric of “Kyrgyz Islam,” which is characterized by non-adherence to Sharia Law and references to traditional nomadic values, in contrast to the stricter “Foreign Islam.”
As a result, non-Kyrgyz Muslim communities tend to establish and maintain their own mosques and imams, avoiding contact with others and upholding their own local traditions. Within Christianity, this ethno-religious divide is most visible in the large Russian population, which almost exclusively adheres to Orthodox churches, while Kyrgyz Christians tend to belong to evangelical churches, usually founded by American missionaries after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
This fragmentation of religious communities has allowed for a relatively peaceful coexistence of various ethnic groups, guided by a principle of non-interference. Proselytizing is uncommon, especially in public. Even in rural areas, there is often a relatively high tolerance for religious diversity — at least as long as community boundaries are respected.
However, the ethno-religious plurality of Kyrgyz society has come under increasing pressure from government efforts to control the religious landscape in a proclaimed “war against extremism.”
The “Law on Religious Freedom” passed in February 2025 marks a major step in this direction. It requires all religious communities to register with the State Commission for Religious Affairs, which demands extensive information about members, beliefs and communal activities. Communities with fewer than 500 members are not allowed to register and are therefore effectively abolished. The law also forbids proselytizing and the public display of religious materials.
In an official statement, President Sadyr Japarov declared that the law’s goal was to “strengthen the position of the Muftiate (the regime-controlled Muslim board)” and to “promote unity amongst Muslims” for the sake of “spiritual security.” The law appears primarily aimed at extending government control over autonomous Muslim communities seen as threats to “Kyrgyz Islam” and at further centralizing Islamic religious life under the Muftiate.
As a side effect, most non-denominational Christian and Buddhist communities now face significant restrictions or outright bans from the SCRA, since they usually cannot meet the 500-member requirement. Over the past two decades, government religious policy has posed a serious threat to religious plurality in Kyrgyzstan in its effort to prevent radicalization among Muslim communities.
The desire to control religious life for the sake of national integration is a common trend in post-Soviet Central Asia. It often traces back to Soviet policies that subordinated religion to state interests. As historian Catherine Poujol notes: “The common Soviet ideological heritage of a 'fighting atheism' left traces that are not fully erased in governance practices and attitudes. The post-Soviet ‘techno-political toolkit’ re-uses well-established methods.”
This development is particularly concerning given that various religious communities have significantly increased their influence on public life since the Soviet Union’s collapse and are unlikely to accept a diminished role without resistance. Some observers fear that repression within Muslim communities may strengthen radical movements originating from the Arabian Peninsula, which call for replacing the secular state with a Caliphate and reintroducing Sharia Law.
Looking ahead, growing conflicts between the state and various religious communities over the governance of public religious life seem likely. The Kyrgyz state’s attempts to further control and homogenize religious expression may ultimately lead to significant unrest in a country already grappling with political instability.
Jonathan Bühne is currently studying religious studies in Leipzig. He was born in Menden in 2005, grew up in Tenerife and Germany, and spent a year in Kyrgyzstan after graduating from high school. In addition to his studies, he works as a journalist, editor and author.