Swedish authorities say that Obid-kori Nazarov, the Muslim cleric in exile in Sweden shot yesterday, has been transferred to another clinic following an operation but his conditions has worsened, uznews.net reports. Unconvincingly, the Swedish police official told reporters that Uzbeks need not feel in danger in Sweden. Oh, surely not after nine of them have been extradited and now one very prominent one has been shot! With the help of the UNHCR, Nazarov had obtained political asylumin Sweden in 2006.
The Swedish police gave out no information, and Tord Andersson, a Swedish journalist said that Stromsund, where the imam was shot, was a quiet town in which nothing like this had happened in memory. He also discounted a hypothesis that the Muslim imam could have been shot by theoretical Swedish nationalists angry at a growing Muslim population.
Viola von Kramon, a German MP has called for an investigation into the attack on Nazarov. She says that if Uzbek intelligence (the SBU) were found to be involved in this attack (a more likely hypothesis), there should be an appropriate "political response" from the EU.
But...how will the SBU's involvement be established, do they leave business cards or do they just follow you on Twitter? The gun was found near the scene of the crime -- very common method of Russian and other post-Soviet gangsters so that they don't have the evidence on them.
Here's Joanna Lillis' story today in EurasiaNet on the shooting in Sweden which I covered yesterday. She is merging the uznews.net and rferl.org story, which reports that Nazarov has been moved.
RFE/RL also describes his popularity:
With tens of thousands of followers and admirers, he is considered one of the most powerful opponents of the regime of President Islam Karimov.
Both RFE/RL and Lillis add that first, Nazarov fled Uzbekistan in 1998 to Kazakhstan where he spent eight years, but in 2006 "promptly fled to Europe after Kazakhstan’s intelligence services rounded up nine of his Uzbek associates living in Kazakhstan and handed them over to Tashkent." This was after the Andijan massacre in 2005.RFE/RL reports that he broke years of silence in a 2006 interview.
Lillis also adds a quote from uznews.net:
"He “never felt safe” in Sweden, Uznews.net reported, moving house frequently and keeping locations secret for fear of the long arms of the Uzbek intelligence services."
This is a very bad sign for any Uzbek exile trying to stay safe in Sweden or for that matter any other European country. Have there been any other attacks of this nature on Uzbeks in Europe? There are plenty of stories about secret police following and harassing exiles and students, but have there been attacks this severe?
RFE/RL also reminds us of the persecution of his sons and even disappearance of one. Central Asian family-style repression -- awful.
And now for the controversial part.
Typically, this EurasiaNet author doesn't mention that Nazarov himself calls for censorship of free speech for the sake of Islam which indicates he may espouse a belief ultimately in the Islamic caliphate (theocratic government), despite creating a different impression in his 2006 interview. He has certainly vigorously debated the secular liberal independent journalists since then, who have been covering his story all along -- as I noted. Lillis alludes to that problem with this biographical notation:
Nazarov gained popularity as an imam in Uzbekistan in the 1990s, where his fiery sermons led President Islam Karimov’s administration to cast him as an opponent at a time when the main challenge to Karimov’s rule came from clerics with wide public followings.
"Fiery" as in "no free speech except for Islam".
The RFE/RL interviewer in 2006 asked him if he was a terrorist and wanted an Islamic state to be imposed. He said, "I do not support a change of government with arms. We believe things can get better through peaceful means."
What he says next gets us quickly to the HRW line Ken Roth promulgated recently about the need to tolerate "rights-respecting Islam":
RFE/RL: Do you want an Islamic state to be established in Uzbekistan?
Nazarov: Islam does not mean the establishment of an Islamic state. It is wrong to think that those who preach Islam preach the establishment of an Islamic state as well. We don't think about an Islamic state -- we just want those thousands of Muslims who want to pray freely or wear headscarves to exercise their freedom to do so. We want those thousands of Muslim prisoners of conscience who have been tortured there to be released. This is our wish. If there was freedom of religion in Uzbekistan it would be Muslims who would benefit from it. That also would be very suitable for Christians and other religions. We want a society where human rights are respected and freedom of religion is guaranteed.
Except, as we know from the uznews.net article, NOT freedom of speech.
I'm not so sure that the 5,000 or 10,000 people who have been tortured and held in prison for years and years are -- understandably -- going to emerge with such tolerant notions as Nazarov espoused in 2006. The Muslim Brotherhood didn't, after years of torture and imprisonment in Egypt.
But here's where you have to be a bit concerned:
RFE/RL: Do you support the Uzbek secular opposition which is calling for democratic changes?
Nazarov: We support democrats willing to rescue the Uzbek people from oppression, stand for their well-being, and help them. Islam teaches us to cooperate for the good and to stand against evil. So we support opposition that working on that common good aims.
This all sounds completely anodyne and tolerant, except it contains an escape clause: only opposition that supports the common good -- as defined by devout Muslims -- can be supported, and recognized only if they "rescue the Uzbek people from oppression" -- again as defined by this cleric. While some of what Nazarov says is encouraging for hope in a tolerant Islam taking hold some day in Uzbekistan, this last bit (and the later uznews.net debate) indicates the need to press further.
Few people are going to want to do that, now that this imam, characterized as a moderate Muslim leader, has now been made a high-profile victim.
Even without such compelling circumstances, the community around Open Society Institute/Human Rights Watch/other grantees often find it hard to say something critical about the Muslim victims they rightly care about whose rights are violated, when the victims themselves have ideas that are a threat to other people's rights. The cases of torture, imprisonment, and even now assassinations and attempted assassinations of course appear far more dramatic and compelling than a free speech or women's rights problem. This is the Gita problem that Amnesty International had.
In Lillis' piece, the reference to "clerics with wide public followings" is supposed to accomplish two things for us: a) let us know that this is the form that widespread dissent took b) that Karimov "cast" them wrongfully precisely because they challenged his rule.
But both of these narratives have to be challenged. In this secular, Sovietized state, was there really widespread popularity for radical clerics? There might well have been -- RFE/RL says there are "tens of thousands" of followers, but I think it needs a critical examination. That's not to suggest that Uzbeks were instead attracted to secular human rights groups -- they weren't. And there are thousands of religious prisoners in Uzbekistan who likely constitute the proof of popularity of non-state religious groups, some of them were willing to risk jail, others were caught up unwittingly.
Despite these numbers in prison and what they might mean, it's worth asking the question: when people came out on the square to protest in Andijan, their concerns appeared to be more related to social justice and basic rights like housing or living conditions, not to insistence on the right to follow fundamentalist Islamic groups.
The other narrative is about Karimov. Does Karimov crack down on these people only because they challenge his power? That's a good thing for them to be doing, most would agree, because he's a tyrant responsible for untold misery.
But when he does that, does he also have some legitimacy with some sectors of the elite who don't want to give up their non-religious lifestyles and don't want the clerics to win? And maybe even some grudging support from the larger population? That elite may be a fervent base of support into which Karimov can tap at will, and that may be one of the critical reasons why "spring doesn't come" to Central Asia which few want to look at -- those loyal supporters of Karimov with the jobs and regime-doled perks are a nasty bunch, and having them as the spearhead of the movement for secular rights and freedoms everyone would like to keep isn't very fun.
These are the same issues that of course Egyptian secular dissidents faced regarding the Muslim Brotherhood, and it's worth pondering, despite the constant vetoing of any debate on the influence of the Arab Spring imposed by the Registanis. The issues are the same -- secular Soviet-era dictator with elite base and army, popular resistance taking a religious form -- but some very big differences, namely, the fact that Russian TV is no Al Jazeera! And Internet penetration far less and Western support far less.
So the open question is this: will the secular elite supporting Karimov view this assassination attempt with indifference or even tacit support, and prevail? Or will the anger undoubtedly unleashed among emigres and Uzbeks inside Uzbekistan over this sinister assault spark even more protests and backfire on the SBU, if indeed they are behind it -- and will this protest prevail?