The first International Forum of Islamic Civilization earlier this month brought over 450 religious leaders, scholars, diplomats, government officials and other participants from more than 50 countries to Uzbekistan. Across events in Tashkent, Samarkand and Termez on July 7-11, participants discussed Islamic theology and the global challenges that the Islamic world faces. 

The setting was significant, with the main sessions held at Uzbekistan’s newly opened Center of Islamic Civilization in Tashkent, a museum, research and educational complex intended to present the region as one of the historic centres of Islamic learning. The forum’s theme—“The Path of Peace, Tolerance and Enlightenment”—captured the message Uzbekistan wanted its guests to take away.

In an address delivered on his behalf, Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev said that science, education, culture and moral values offered the most effective response to conflict, extremism and growing mistrust between religions. Islam, in the government’s presentation, was not an obstacle to modernity but a civilisation that had encouraged intellectual inquiry, artistic achievement and scientific discovery.

The forum also produced a declaration, with participants proposing the creation of a World Alliance of Islamic Civilisation in Tashkent, alongside international digital platforms for manuscripts and museum collections, a research foundation, a global heritage report and a joint programme of work extending to 2030.

The forum served as a demonstration of how Mirziyoyev’s government is making Islam more prominent as a source of national identity and international influence. Yet his administration has also sought to maintain a firmly secular political system. It is promoting an Islam that is scholarly, tolerant, patriotic and closely connected to the state, while continuing to regulate contemporary religious activity extensively.

Essentially, Uzbekistan is not choosing between secularism and Islam, but determining which expressions of Islam will be given public space. 

 

Islamic identity in a secular state

The secular character of the Uzbek state is explicit in its constitution, which guarantees the right to profess – or not profess – a religion and separates religious organisations from the state. It is also visible in daily life. 

While the population is overwhelmingly Muslim, Uzbekistan does not impose an Islamic code of public behaviour. Alcohol is legally sold in shops, restaurants and bars. Women are not required to cover their hair and, on the streets of Tashkent, can be seen wearing everything from hijabs and long dresses to trousers, short sleeves and Western-style clothing. Most dress conservatively, but there is no uniform religious dress code.

The result is a society that appears both recognisably Muslim and markedly secular. In Tashkent, mosques, shrines and Islamic customs are prominent, but so too are nightlife venues, mixed-gender workplaces and an extensive public role for women. Religious observance is largely treated as a personal matter rather than the basis for state law.

The government also regulates religious life, presenting its controls as safeguards against radicalisation and imported fundamentalism. Religious organisations must register with the state, while religious educational establishments require licences and Muslim institutions and clergy remain subject to extensive official oversight. Uzbekistan’s government services explicitly require registration for religious organisations and licensing for religious educational institutions.

Yet at the same time, Mirziyoyev’s administration has sought to place Uzbekistan’s Islamic heritage more firmly at the centre of the country’s national identity. The government has invested heavily in Islamic institutions, monuments and scholarship – the Center of Islamic Civilization Center serving as the most visible expression of that policy. 

Mirziyoyev ordered the centre’s creation in 2017 and it was officially opened in March this year.  Built beside Tashkent’s historic Hazrat Imam complex, it occupies around 10 hectares and is monumental even by the standards of Central Asia’s grand Islamic architecture. It is framed by four elaborately decorated entrances that are 34 metres high, with white walls, crowned by a 65-metre turquoise dome that dominates the surrounding skyline. The centre has the air of a museum, palace and place of worship combined. 

The embrace of Islamic heritage as central to national identity serves as a way of Uzbekistan reclaiming a history that was partly suppressed or reframed during the Soviet period. The country can move further away from its perception as simply another former Soviet republic and present itself instead as the heir to one of the great centres of Islamic scholarship, science and culture.

Among the scholars celebrated at the forum were Muhammad al-Khwarizmi, whose name gave rise to the word “algorithm” and whose mathematical work helped establish algebra as a systematic discipline; Abu Rayhan al-Biruni, a polymath whose work ranged across astronomy, mathematics, geography and pharmacology; and Ibn Sina, or Avicenna, the hugely influential physician and philosopher born near Bukhara.

Mirzo Ulugh Beg, the 15th-century Timurid ruler and astronomer, turned Samarkand into one of the leading scientific centres of his age. His observatory produced exceptionally precise astronomical tables and a catalogue of almost 1,000 stars. UNESCO describes Samarkand during his rule as a major centre of science and astronomy.

These figures lived centuries before the creation of the modern Uzbek state and belonged to a multilingual intellectual world that stretched from Central Asia and Persia to Baghdad and India, though many were born in or closely associated with territories inside present-day Uzbekistan. Their achievements give Tashkent a basis for arguing that Central Asia was not peripheral to Islamic civilisation but one of the places where it reached its intellectual heights. 

The government is also elevating theologians such as Imam al-Bukhari, Imam al-Tirmidhi and Imam al-Maturidi. Conferences dedicated to their work formed part of the forum programme in Samarkand and Termez.

The narrative that Uzbekistan seeks to sculpt is that religious scholarship and empirical science have historically reinforced one another, with Islam as a source of rationality and learning.

 

Islamic heritage as diplomacy

By convening Islamic organisations, universities, manuscript centres and religious authorities, Uzbekistan is also positioning itself as a potential centre for dialogue across the Muslim world. Representatives from ICESCO, the Muslim World League, Turkic organisations and international academic institutions attended the forum.

Participants came from countries ranging from the UK, Serbia and Finland to Egypt, Morocco and Saudi Arabia, and eastwards to India, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Maldives. Through the forum, Uzbekistan is not looking solely towards the Arab and wider Muslim world, but also strengthening ties with communities in Turkic states and Western universities, museums and research centres. 

The proposed World Alliance of Islamic Civilisation would make the new Tashkent centre a permanent convening institution rather than simply a national museum. The forum declaration’s digital registries, research programmes and international council could give Uzbekistan influence over a growing network of cultural and academic groups and institutions if they are implemented.

The initiative may also have economic implications. Saudi Arabia, the UAE and other Muslim-majority states have become increasingly important investors in Uzbekistan, while the country’s Islamic architecture and historic cities are central to its expanding tourism sector. Meanwhile, Uzbekistan can present itself as a moderate and stable Muslim-majority state able to speak simultaneously to religious institutions, secular governments and international organisations. It is pursuing a form of managed religious revival: Islam as culture, scholarship and soft power, operating within the boundaries of a secular state.