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Alongside freedom of worship, Muslim citizens of the Central Asian republics are becoming more assertive about culture. Many are demanding a return to the original Arabic script of their respective 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: "It's a good idea to read the old script because then they can read the old books."
Soviet Muslim leaders hope to steer growing Islamic consciousness in the direction of tolerance, to allay Russian suspicions of Islam and to preserve a coherent structure of religious authority and order in the country. But they may be racing against time. Demographics are having their own influence on Soviet Islam. Though the Muslim nationalities make up just 19.2% of the Soviet population, they accounted for half the total population increase of the past decade. They are still growing at five times the rate of the remaining population.
The population pressures, coupled with the floundering Soviet economy, have added greatly to impoverishment, joblessness and stinging resentment of the better-educated European Soviet nationalities -- and particularly of the well- to-do elite. Last month in Dushanbe these resentments exploded in several days of looting, burning and pogroms against non-Tadzhiks, especially against ethnic Russians. Yet next to the violence, the most striking aspect of the uprising was its trenchantly Islamic character. The insurgents demanded that Islam be declared the republic's official religion and that Arabic script be reinstated. Some of their supporters terrorized Tadzhik women who did not wear head scarves in public.
A more sinister view of the riots was provided by a Russian intellectual resident in Tadzhikistan. He told TIME last week that the violence was deliberately fomented by a group of young radicals within the republic's government who want to give the area an Islamic character. Some extreme elements, he says, have been calling bluntly for the establishment of an Islamic republic. The intellectual reported that all non-Tadzhiks in the republic are anxious to leave and, as he put it, "everyone is terrified" of what will happen with the departure of some 7,000 Soviet soldiers who arrived in Tadzhikistan after the disturbances began.