The vast majority of today's Kyrgyz are Muslims of the Sunni branch, but Islam came late and fairly superficially to the area. Kyrgyz Muslims generally practice their religion in a specific way influenced by earlier tribal customs. The practice of Islam also differs in the northern and southern regions of the country. Kyrgyzstan remained a secular state after the fall of communism, which had only superficial influence on religious practice when Kyrgyzstan was a Soviet republic. Most of the Russian population of Kyrgyzstan is atheist or Russian Orthodox. The Uzbeks, who make up 12.9 percent of the population, are generally Sunni Muslims. Kirghiz (also Kyrgyz) are a Turkic ethnic group found primarily in Kyrgyzstan. ... Sunni Islam (Arabic سنّة) is the largest denomination of Islam. ... Islam   listen? (Arabic: al-islām) the submission to God is a monotheistic faith, one of the Abrahamic religions, and the worlds second largest religion. ... For information about the band, see Atheist (band). ... The Russian Orthodox Church (Русская Православная церковь) is that body of Christians who are united under the Patriarch of Moscow, who in turn is in communion with the other patriarchs of the Eastern Orthodox Church. ...

The Introduction of Islam

Islam was introduced to the Kyrgyz tribes between the ninth and twelfth centuries. The most intense exposure to Islam occurred in the seventeenth century, when the Jungars drove the Kyrgyz of the Tian Shan region into the Fergana Valley, whose population was totally Islamic. However, as the danger from the Jungars subsided and Kyrgyz groups returned to their previous region, the influence of Islam became weaker. When the Quqon Khanate conquered the territory of the Kyrgyz in the eighteenth century, the nomadic Kyrgyz remained aloof from the official Islamic practices of that regime. By the end of the nineteenth century, however, most of the Kyrgyz population had been converted to at least a superficial recognition of Islamic practice. Dzungaria (also Junggar, Jungaria, Sungaria, Zungaria) is a physical region, covering approximately 777,000 km², within the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, in northwestern China. ... The Tian Shan (Chinese: 天山; Pinyin: Tiān Shān; celestial mountains) mountain range is located in Central Asia, in the border region of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region of western China. ... The Fergana Valley (also Ferghana Valley) is a region of Central Asia spreading across Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. ...

Tribal Religion

Alongside Islam the Kyrgyz tribes also practiced totemism, the recognition of spiritual kinship with a particular type of animal. Under this belief system, which predated their contact with Islam, Kyrgyz tribes adopted reindeer, camels, snakes, owls, and bears as objects of worship. The sun, moon, and stars also played an important religious role. The strong dependence of the nomads on the forces of nature reinforced such connections and fostered belief in shamanism. Traces of such beliefs remain in the religious practice of many of today's Kyrgyz. Totemism (derived from the root -oode in the Ojibwe language, which referred to something kinship-related) is a religious belief that is frequently associated with shamanistic religions. ... Shamanism is a range of traditional beliefs and practices that involve the ability to diagnose, cure, and sometimes cause human suffering by traversing the axis mundi and forming a special relationship with, or gaining control over, spirits. ...

Knowledge of and interest in Islam is said to be much stronger in the south, especially around Osh, than further north. Religious practice in the north is more heavily mixed with animism and shamanist practices, giving worship there a resemblance to Siberian religious practice. Animism is the belief that personalized supernatural beings (or souls) inhabit all objects and govern their existence. ... Siberian federal subjects of Russia Siberia (Russian: Сиби́рь, common English transliterations: Sibir, Sibir; possibly from the Mongolian for the calm land) is a vast region of Russia and northern Kazakhstan constituting all of northern Asia. ...

Islam and the State

Religion has not played an especially large role in the politics of Kyrgyzstan, although more traditional elements of society urged that the Muslim heritage of the country be acknowledged in the preamble to the 1993 constitution. That document mandates a secular state, forbidding the intrusion of any ideology or religion in the conduct of state business. As in other parts of Central Asia, non-Central Asians have been concerned about the potential of a fundamentalist Islamic revolution that would emulate Iran and Afghanistan by bringing Islam directly into the making of state policy, to the detriment of the non-Islamic population. Because of sensitivity about the economic consequences of a continued outflow of Russians, President Akayev has taken particular pains to reassure the non-Kyrgyz that no Islamic revolution threatens. Akayev has paid public visits to Bishkek's main Russian Orthodox church and directed 1 million rubles from the state treasury toward that faith's church-building fund. He has also appropriated funds and other support for a German cultural center. The state officially recognizes Orthodox Christmas (but not Easter) as a holiday, while also noting two Muslim feast days, Oroz ait (which ends Ramadan) and Kurban ait (June 13, the Day of Remembrance), and Muslim New Year, which falls on the vernal equinox.

See also

• Islam by country

Distribution of Islam Important note: There is currently no exact mechanism in place anywhere around the world for counting religious denomination membership with precision. ...

References

• This article incorporates public domain text from the Library of Congress Country Studies.