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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Uzbekistan
Index
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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