"Sit down!" hissed members of the agitated crowd in front of Communist Party Central Committee headquarters in Dushanbe, capital of Tadzhikistan. Humiliated, the group of veteran Soviet combat officers and their men sank awkwardly to the ground when ordered to do so by the throng of 10,000 militant Tadzhiks. The troops then listened grimly as a mullah recited the Islamic call to prayer from atop one of their armored vehicles.
The startling display of religious assertiveness took place at the height of the revolt against Moscow's rule that broke out three weeks ago in Tadzhikistan, perhaps the most ardently Islamic of the 15 Soviet republics. For the Tadzhiks who forced the soldiers to observe their demonstration of piety, the moment represented a vindication of their faith, long suppressed under the official Soviet policy of atheism. But for Soviet journalists who took in the scene, the moment may have confirmed a nightmare.
Under glasnost, ordinary Soviets are only now learning how deeply Islam is rooted in their federation, which contains some 55 million Muslims, overwhelmingly located in the five Central Asian republics and Azerbaijan. Among some anxious citizens, the discovery has touched off premonitions of disaster, as republic after republic is shaken by unrest, often with religious overtones. After Soviet troops were called in last January to quell bloody rioting in Azerbaijan, Igor Belyaev, a prominent Soviet commentator on Muslim affairs, warned that "Iran has threatened the Soviet Union with an Islamic conflagration." President Mikhail Gorbachev argued that "Islamic fundamentalism" was a major factor in the rioting against minority Armenians in the Azerbaijani capital of Baku.
Neither Gorbachev nor Belyaev is exactly on target in Azerbaijan. Fundamentalist Islam had very little to do with the rapid growth of the republic's Popular Front before the crushing intervention of the Soviet army in mid-January; the main issues were autonomy from Moscow and an end to the Communist Party monopoly of power. But elsewhere, profound Islamic forces -- some of them violent -- have begun to shake up the status quo in response to Gorbachev's decision to allow freedom of conscience throughout the Soviet Empire. Examples:
-- In Dushanbe protesters last month demanded that Islam be declared the official religion of Tadzhikistan.
-- Mullahs in Tashkent are now permitted to conduct proselytizing meetings on the street, in factories, even in prisons.
-- In Samarkand last summer gangs of young Tadzhik thugs roamed the local marketplace, slashing the faces of women who wore makeup.
-- To compensate for a chronic lack of Islamic holy books, Saudi Arabia has printed 1 million copies of the Koran for Soviet Muslims -- and Aeroflot has agreed to deliver them.
-- Primarily in Uzbekistan but also in other Central Asian republics, Muslim TV and radio programs are now a regular feature. Some Muslim prayer gatherings are televised along with readings from the Koran.
-- Across the Soviet Union's Central Asian region, a construction and restoration program is under way that has tripled the number of functioning mosques to 250 since the beginning of 1989.