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Uzbekistan
Religion
Islam is by far the dominant religious faith in Uzbekistan. In
the early 1990s, many of the Russians remaining in the republic
(about 8 percent of the population) were Orthodox Christians.
An estimated 93,000 Jews also were present. Despite its predominance,
Islam is far from monolithic, however. Many versions of the faith
have been practiced in Uzbekistan. The conflict of Islamic tradition
with various agendas of reform or secularization throughout the
twentieth century has left the outside world with a confused notion
of Islamic practices in Central Asia. In Uzbekistan the end of
Soviet power did not bring an upsurge of a fundamentalist version
of Islam, as many had predicted, but rather a gradual reacquaintance
with the precepts of the faith.
Data as of March 1996
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