 Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening, everyone, depending on where you're joining us from. My name is Gavin Health and I'm senior expert on Central Asia at the U.S. Institute of Peace. I'll be moderating today's discussion, and I'd like to thank you all as well as our panelists for taking time out of your busy schedules to be with us for this really interesting and timely discussion. I'd also like to thank our co-hosts for today's discussion. George Washington University's Central Asia Program and the American University of Central Asia's Social Innovations Lab. We invite all of you in the audience to please take part in today's discussion by asking a question using the chat box function located just below the video player on the USIP event page. We ask that you please indicate your name and specify where you're joining us from in your questions, and you can engage with us and each other on Twitter with today's hashtag USIP Central Asia. As many of you know, USIP was founded by the US Congress 35 years ago as an independent, nonpartisan, national institute with the goal of preventing, mitigating, and resolving violent conflict. USIP's work in Central Asia is organized under the US State Department's C5 plus one initiative, which provides a format for dialogue and a platform for joint efforts to address common challenges based by the United States and the five countries of Central Asia. Our in-country activities focus on countering and preventing violent extremism in the region. USIP accomplishes this through working with governmental stakeholders, experts, civil society leaders, and youth from each country to share and promote best practices and approaches to countering and preventing violent extremism in their communities at the national level and the regional levels. From DC, we produce timely analysis and convene discussions like this on key drivers of the conflict and stability in Central Asia. As one of these initiatives in 2020, USIP partnered with our co-hosts today to conduct a study on the emergence of Muslim civil society in Central Asia and the role they play in their communities. The research, which has included dozens of interviews with civil society representatives from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, culminated in a USIP pieceworks report that was published in December of 2021. The report examines the types of Muslim civil society organizations in the region, their linkages and relations with state structures, and how Western donors and practitioners can better tap into their potential. It's found that the regions of Muslim civil society organizations are highly diverse in terms of activities and structures, often politically moderate, and supportive of democracy, and importantly, open to working with global development actors. We are thrilled today to have the co-authors of this study with us to present the findings of the report. Sebastian Payrose, research professor with the Central Asia program at George Washington University, and Emil Nassudinov, associate professor of anthropology, technology, and international development at American University of Central Asia. Following the presentation, we will have a moderated question and answer session, where we will be joined by Indira Aslanova, the UNESCO chair of world culture and religions at Kyrgyz Russian Slavonic University in Bishkek, and USIP zone Paul Washa Kakar, who leads our religion and inclusive societies program. Before I hand it over to Sebastian and Neil, I want to take a moment to recognize a colleague of ours, Richard Stoddard, who passed away suddenly last month. Rick was a senior advisor with the State Department's Office of the Coordinator of US Assistance to Europe and Eurasia. His guidance and support were critical to the launch of this program, this research, our program, and I think to the success of US Assistance in Central Asia for decades. Rick was an advocate for Central Asia in the policy community through good times and bad times. Our thoughts are with his family, with his colleagues, and friends during this really difficult time. And with that, I'd like to hand it over to Sebastian and Emil. Sebastian. Thank you. Thank you very much, Kevin. Before starting, I just would like to thank the USIP and Kevin. I mean, we're really grateful to them for their support in our work and for the opportunities that you gave us to publish this report on this topic, which we think is very important. So, yes, I mean, in the three decades since the fall of the Soviet Union, Muslim civil society has developed significantly in Central Asia. But despite this development in contemporary discussions of the future of the region and on the social cohesion in the region, the role of the Muslim civil society is often ignored because we lack information or even avoided due to political concerns both by Central Asian political authorities and by the international community. But actually, Muslim civil society is often suspected of contributing to the development of politically slam and it is suspected of possible ties to radical terrorist elements. So one of the goals of our report and of our work is to go beyond another generalizing approach regarding the Muslim civil society. Like secular civil society, Muslim civil society, I would say is of variable geometry. So we highlight diversity of Muslim civil society in the region. I mean, the diversity of its actors, the diversity of its goals, the diversity of its methods. And second, we underline the necessity to take more into account the impact of the emergence of an indigenous Islamic oriented path towards development. And in Central Asia, the growth of inequality has been a fertile ground for the development of Muslim civil society organizations. So Amir is going to talk more precisely on who are these actors. Before Amir goes into these details, what I would like to say is that many Muslim CSOs describe themselves as being engaged in charitable work designed to help individuals and family experiencing social difficulties. And they conduct their charitable initiatives in the name of the Islamic prison principle of Yersan, which requires Muslim to provide assistance to needy people. For example, through the Zagat, which is a form of housekeeping that requires people to contribute a percentage of their wealth, which is about usually 2.5%. Central Asian Muslim civil societies often also conduct charity activities that target particular groups or causes. Or I think, for example, with the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, to mitigate the coming back of the crisis through financial support to the most vulnerable families or to provide medicine to people affected by the pandemic. The second major pillar of Muslim civil society engagement consists of development activities of the kind actually conducted by secular and other religious CSOs. This base went absolutely not specific to Central Asia. I mean, the growing number of Muslim CSOs engaged in development rather than charity reflects a more general shift in Islamic economics, so to cross the Muslim world. Where Islamic economies in the 1960s emphasize the concept of redistribution as a foundation of social justice and Islam, the notion of social justice has slipped progressively into a concept of equal opportunity instead of economic equality of equal income. So this has led Muslim CSOs to increase their efforts to help people become economically independent on the assumption that fostering self-reliance and economic empowerment is better than leaving people dependent on charity. So our interviews revealed, I mean, several main sectors of development work that includes education. Another very important area of engagement is economy, because some Muslim CSOs aim to stimulate economic development by supporting the creation of new jobs or new Islamic companies and startups attaching to efficiency and professionalism. Another main area of activity is contributing to the maintenance of urban infrastructures, for example, constructing irrigation facilities, paving roads, etc. And of course, several interviewees said that they considered charity and development not as polar opposites but as two sides of the same coin and noted that their organizations intentionally combined the two types of activities. An interesting point is that several Muslim CSOs we interviewed did raise concern about the potential for individuals to be radicalized or recruited by terrorist groups and asserted that Muslim CSOs could assist governments in preventing radicalization, particularly by promoting moderate messages by strengthening education or by addressing societal issues that could make people more vulnerable to recruitment by radical groups. Another point is that the most central Asian Muslim CSOs we interviewed describe their activities as, of course, an expression of their religion. So they stressed the importance of working within their local culture and traditions, including religion. And many considered that Islam provides a strong basis for responding to local issues and to build a strong and vibrant civil society. But while religion is in many instances an important and determining factor in Muslim collective action, it's not always the only or the most important factor. And insist on this because by focusing on religion, we run the risk of reinforcing exceptionalist views of Muslim civil society organizations as something basically and fundamentally different than all the kinds of civil society organization, which is not necessarily the case. I mean, the role of the Muslim civil society in Central Asia has much in common with the rest of civil society in terms of of a desire to help civil society and to act as a channel for relaying social social social view, sorry, and concern to the government based on the belief that civil society has deeper grassroots knowledge on local context and of where there may be gaps in what the government is providing. So this means that the views between the governments and Islamic civil society organization may be different. I mean, we had many Muslim CSOs, which expressed a range of criticisms about the current economic and social situation in their country, both on a moral and material level. They denounced what they viewed as, for example, the moral roles in Central Asian society, including corruption of the political authorities that they deemed incompatible with the values of Islam. Second, many civil society organizations identify economic and social issues that they believe need to be addressed, which includes education, health, or for example the Saudi issue of unemployment. Several Muslim CSOs highlighted a perceived lack of state commitment or even inaction of the state in several social sectors. That being said, a Muslim CSOs criticism level against political authorities are often more of a call for increased dialogue and cooperation between the state and civil society, including in its Muslim component. So many Muslim CSOs call on the political authorities to allow more political and civil freedom in the country, including by opening space for more society organization to engage. But a huge majority of those who interviewed recognized the state as an important, if not indispensable force with its financial capacity and decision making capacity. So to conclude, I mean, please don't get us wrong, an important point is that we don't deny the fact that there are certainly groups that support radical or even possibly violent agendas. But what we mean, what we want to show with this report is that many are more moderate. I do not necessarily directly challenge the secular political system. I mean, the diversity of the Muslim civil society in Central Asia goes, I think, against the tendency, both by the Central Asian governments and those in the West to view Muslim CSOs stereotypically as an homogeneous group of organization for this many fundamentalist religion. Instead, again, Muslim CSOs have very diversified objectives, working methods and relations with the government views about the international communities and view on national and foreign policy. So we think it's really essential to inquire about the full spectrum of the moral, ethical, community, social role of Islam, rather than focusing strictly on its political, ideological role in Central Asia and on its possible links to violent extremism or terrorism. The last word is that Muslim CSOs are, we think, likely to be increasingly important actors in Central Asia. I mean, for Western policymakers, as well as for governments in the region, understanding how and why Muslim CSOs work, how they interact with local communities and how they view their role in connection with the governments and other entities can help inform possible cooperation with them. So there are, of course, potential obstacles to working with Muslim CSOs in Central Asia, including concerns about vetting for possible connections again to radical groups or local government regulations or working methods which may not readily match the requirements. But Muslim CSOs have the potential to bring their local connection and knowledge to bear in making policies and programs, particularly those concerning development and social assistance, more effective. And I'm going to start here. Thank you. Okay, and now we'll hand it over to Emil. Thank you very much, Sebastian. Yes, I would like to carry on with what Sebastian has started. He summarized the key theoretical and empirical insights from the study and I'm going to briefly describe six types of Muslim society organizations that we reviewed in our report. At the very beginning, I will say that this list is not exclusive, right, and there are several other types of Muslim society organizations like Islamic political parties or various types of voluntary Islamic associations and organizations. But for different reasons, we decided to focus on these six, right, and these six types of organizations can be broadly divided into the formal and informal organizations, right. So the formal organizations in our study includes Muftiads, Islamic Charity Foundations and Islamic NGOs, and the informal civil society organizations include mosques, mahalas, and various types of jamats. So it is probably the most straightforward conclusion that we get from this comparison, right, is that the more formal organizations are better structured, better organized, and they also work more like in the top down direction while the less formal organizations are more natural, more authentic, better connected to specific localities, but also work from bottom up, right, and they're more grassroots organizations than the formal organizations. So if you go to the formal ones, right, the first on the list is Muftiads, right, or spiritual boards of Muslims in various countries. They constitute the government bodies over Islam, they exercise control over mosques and all Muslim worship places, also over the theological approach and worship practice of the clergy. Some of them also regulate the appointment of Imams, and also they have departments that look after the religious education in the country. But what is interesting is that the Muftiads status as Islamic civil society organization is somewhat ambiguous, right, because on one hand Muftiads cannot be state institutions, considering that all Central Asian states are secular. Muftiads are largely in all of our countries, Central Asian countries monitored by the state administration and often cooperate closely with other state bodies such as committees for religious affairs, ministries of internal affairs, and various security services. Also, Muftis are often appointed with the informal approval of the countries presidents. If you look at the charitable and philanthropic activities of Muftiads, these are quite significant and funding mostly comes from the collections of Sadakal Fitr, right, during the Eid celebrations, but also from the organization of annual Hajj. The second type is Islamic charity foundations. Their main function is to collect and distribute resources. There are local foundations, but there are even more international foundations, many of which are based in the airport, particularly in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait, but there are also a number of foundations that come from Turkey. Perhaps the most common type of activity is the construction of mosques, and this has been the case, particularly in the 90s and early 2000s. But now things are changing a little bit. Well, once the mosques are built, usually these foundations simply pass them to the local communities and have little control over activities inside the mosques. But besides constructions of mosques, and particularly from mid-2010s, and in the context of what was happening in the Middle East, more and with the more sort of control from the state institutions, these foundations are more likely to engage in various types of social projects than in the construction of mosques. And these include building schools and hospitals, helping orphanages and poor families, organizing with their dinners. And so this social, and in Kyrgyzstan, for example, these Islamic foundations built nearly 70 secular public schools and a great number of medical facilities. Orphans nowadays in the country receive more support from these Islamic foundations than they receive from the government. In Kyrgyzstan, the foundations also built nearly 20 mini towns for 80 to 100 socially vulnerable families. And they also engage, as Sebastian mentioned, in various infrastructural projects, such as, for example, bringing water for drinking and irrigation to rural communities. The third type is Islamic NGOs. They are the most diverse sector of Muslim civil society in Central Asia. Their status runs from official to semi-official to underground, and they may be locally based, national or international. And their sizes and structures also vary from just a few individuals to dozens of staff. And their sources of funding are also quite diverse. And the NGOs are quite innovative in terms of how they find sources of funding. Some Islamic NGOs became quite well known in the region, such as Aga Khan Foundation or Mutakalim. Yet many Islamic NGOs also try to keep a low profile or even operate underground because of the fear of political authorities. They engage in all kinds of social projects from supporting women's rights, teaching them Islamic subjects and offering places for women to socialize. For example, in Uzbekistan, the NGO was advising people to stay away from radical Islamic groups. Another NGO found raising money for sick children and provided assistance to orphanages. Yet another one provided Muslims with assistance for developing their businesses and help them find investors. And there are several NGOs that were helping local communities to fight COVID pandemic. So now if you go into the less formal civil society groups, we start with mosques. The number of mosques all across Central Asia has significantly increased. Almost all sentiments has nowadays at least one mosque. And mosques are places where people pray mostly, right, but also where they discuss issues facing their community. They have capacity to mobilize people for social events and activities. And they also engage in various charitable actions and distribution of food and clothing. Also mosques often serve as unofficial madrasas where children from a very small age are sent by their parents to study mostly reading and memorizing the Quran. They can also become places for various jamaats that I will describe in a minute to get together and engage in their daily activities. And finally mosques are also important places for socialization, right? That's where people chat after and before prayers. And thus we can see that both geographically and socially mosques often become the community center for local neighborhoods. And so this local neighborhood, right, or mahalas, right, is another phenomenon, another spatial type of Islamic civil society. It's an old Central Asian urban concept that describes a neighborhood that has set boundaries and usually has its own unique name. Mahalas were always more prevalent among the historically more settled Central Asian people such as Uzbeks and Tajiks. And in many cities today is still a very important element of traditional urban fabric. And mahala is not only a bounded territory, but also a place that has a specific atmosphere within the community, united by certain principles, ethics and association within one another. And mosques in the physical and social sense often become the centers of mahalas. Mahalas constitute a community of bonds between the members during various life cycle rituals and events. And they also organize ashars. This is like events when community gets together for cleaning the neighborhoods, repairing the roads, building houses in very harvesting crops. And in Uzbekistan, they're also perceived as a structure of government control over the population. And while in Tajikistan and southern Kyrgyzstan, they're much less under the control of the states and mainly operate as community based voluntary organizations. And finally, the sixth type of informal Islamic civil society we look at is Jamaat. It's an Arabic word that describes a group. And for this report, we use the term to identify certain groups that represent specific Islamic movements, either local or more often actually a foreign or foreign origin. So some of the most popular Jamaats in Central Asia include groups of Turkish origin, such as Hizmet Nurjular, Sulayman Chander, groups of Indo-Pakistan origin, and some of the Saudi origin, various Salafi groups, for example. And some of these groups, like Hizmet Nurjular or certain Salafi Jamaats, receive foreign funding, others like Tablighi Jamaat are completely self-reliant in terms of funding. In most Central Asian countries, these groups were popular in the 90s and early 2000s, but then were banned and now have either seized their activities or operate secretly. Kyrgyzstan is an exception, though, as many Jamaats spent in other Central Asian countries are still quite legal here, right? And Jamaats start with different layers of population. For example, Tablighi Jamaat is more popular among the poor, while Hizmet, which operates through a network of expensive private schools, and is more likely to attract the middle and upper middle class people than the poor community. And so, such groups aim to help their own members in many ways. For example, engagement in groups like Tablighi Jamaat is particularly known for helping people to overcome various forms of addiction, including alcohol and drug use. Other groups like Hizmet help their members with professional career development, help them obtain jobs, develop businesses, or access public services. And secondly, and perhaps very importantly, that most of these groups are also involved in various forms of Dawa, spreading the message of Islam. And finally, in addition to their religious activities, Jamaats are also engaged in various kinds of charitable or development work. So this basically briefly summarizes the six main types of NGOs that we looked at our report. Once again, this is not an exclusive list. There are other types of NGOs that we can discuss, but let me stop for now in the interest of time. Thank you. So we see that it's a very rich fabric, very difficult to put into any one box. But I did want to dive a little bit in on the question of the role of the state in the development of these and the relationships with the state. So Indira, the Central Asian states all chose a secular form of government when they became independent from the Soviet Union. And on the one hand, they've struggled with a counter-terrorism approach that sometimes has been aggressive towards Islam and any religious expression. On the other hand, many of these politicians individually in the states themselves have embraced Islamic identity by building state-sponsored Islamic institutions like mosques, celebrating tradition with festivals, and the religion's role historically in nation building. How has the relationship between the state and Islam in Central Asia developed over the last few decades, Indira? Thank you, Gevin. First of all, let me thank you, Zip, for the event organizing and all the work that you are doing on peacebuilding in the region, and also Emilia and Sebastian for conducting this research and giving the different angle for the politicized and quite securitized topic that used to be in the Central Asia. And yes, the role of the charity and development assistant cannot be overemphasized in terms of how religions work on this before and still historically they patronized poor houses, houses for elderly, hospitals, schools, universities, some correctional facilities. And in terms of the post-Soviet approach to religion, it was usually recognized as an essential part of the ideology and something that should be under the control by the state and which creates a lot of stereotypes and prejudice towards their role in the society. So, and I guess the importance of this research was to present a different angle on the issue and to show how these historically inherent activities have developed in the Central Asia and what kind of capacity the religious organization, Muslim civil society organization have in peacebuilding. So, as for the state and Muslim civil society organizations, if we rely to them, definition that Emil gave and what kind of organization is there. So, as for now, and I will more rely to the Kyrgyz experience, sorry, we can say that there is a positive progress during the last decades. This is sometimes even really contradictory experience, but reality is that all Central Asian countries have preferences to Islam and recognize it as a traditional religion and officially or non-officially provide some sort of support for the Islamic, let's say, Muslim organizations. And of course it wasn't the case all the time. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, most countries set out to ensure this freedom of religion equal rights and opportunities for the members of the different religions groups. But over the time this the policy began to change towards greater control state control, especially over so called destructive movements or extremist movements, and a number of their organizations that before was legitimate. Let's say his Buddha career and others then identified this extremist organization. There was attempts to limit so called Salafi groups, Salafi Jama'at, and at the same time this so called traditional Islam. And there is a different understanding in different Central Asian countries and even in different communities. What is this traditional Islam has become to seen as a constructive alternative to the influence from the influence of so called this non-traditional religious movements and extremism. But ironically this trend to countering extremism has increased the cooperation of both state and Muslim civil society organizations in the country. And also like international donors. So I'm more now speaking about this huge peace building country and preventing violent extremism funds that the Central Asian countries received and where the religious actors, formal, non-formal was seen as a great actor to have an access for the vulnerable groups to provide this counter alternative narratives to the countering violent extremism. And still like if we will just take the state committee for religious affairs in Kyrgyzstan, every activity is done with the invitation, representation of the Muslim majority there. And the last state policy in religious realm emphasize the role of the religious organizations in the charity, in the social work, in the working with the vulnerable groups. But still I have to say that there is the obvious preferences who was in the state policy to them and in the practice to the Islamic groups. But just to compare if non-Islamic civil society organization will conduct charity work or have some social work, it will be recognized as conducting proselytism. So it's not like with the Muslim groups. And at the same time it's true what was highlighted in the report about the certain level of distrust to the Muslim civil society organizations. And here from my perspective it's more emotions and emotions of some kind of fear when the Islam state or religious identity is more in the public space now and it's visual and there is some fear to lose this usual way of life. To think about that this is a strong Islamization that's going on. And I'm glad that the reports to some extent dispel these stereotypes around the work of the Muslim civil society organizations. And to conclude, generally speaking, all the civil society organizations, possibly all NGOs, regardless of form of establishment and affiliation, it's now experiencing difficulties in the countries. One is blamed for receiving funds from the and influence from the West. Another one is blamed for receiving influence and funds from the East. So speaking of West and East, I'd like to kind of look at this question of how Muslim civil society in Central Asia is like or not like Muslim civil society in other parts of the world. Paul Washa, I want to turn to you. While Muslim civil society may be a new thing in Central Asia, it's not a new thing in much of the rest of Asia or the Middle East. Most civil society as such in say Bangladesh or Indonesia is just naturally Muslim. How does Central Asia look to you in a comparative perspective. Thank you, Gavin. I really appreciate this opportunity to talk about Muslim civil society in Central Asia, given our work that intersects with a lot of this study. We have a work that we do on religious landscape mappings that looks at the political economy of religion and how different religious organizations and groups and institutions and ideas intersect with peace building in different countries, as well as another project that we will this this in a month will probably have the report out called closing the gap, which is looking at global trends and challenges to protecting the promotion of freedom of belief or religion. And we actually one of the case studies was looking at was back is done so I'll bring some of those into my conversation today. One thing is I want to start off by agreeing with Sebastian that Muslim civil society in Central Asia is not unique. We do see civil society, faith based civil society organizations across the world, and we do see Muslim civil society organizations that have popped up, you know, over time. In fact, we can even go to the definition of civil society that Catherine Marshall at the Berkeley Center, who leads the work on religion and global development brings where she says by some measures and definitions religion is itself a non governmental organization civil society organization. And so, you know, it's even thinking about what religion does itself can lend itself to that that own the definition of what is civil society civil society organizations. The second thing I wanted to mention is that the report and Sebastian both stated that the diversity that's documented is very healthy in Central Asia, and it really leads towards many indicators for resilience against violent extremism. And so I think that's something it's really important to highlight that this diversity that it's not reliant solely on foreign movements or foreign powers that there is local diversity and healthy diversity. It's really important to building community resilience in terms of having some civil societies in Central Asia and that's something I want to highlight. And then in terms of what Emile said that supports that that this diversity there are some international organizations with the diversity. There's really important in terms of the roles that civil society has been Muslim civil society organizations have been able to play. Now, I will bring some of my own perspectives to this conversation, I myself being Afghan and American, both seeing on the Afghan side where there's a huge reliance on international support for faith based organizations and based based on society. We see the path that that's led where there is a lot of international, you can say, interference, and there's a lot of skepticism in terms of the roles that these faith based organizations can play because of the international interference and how there seem to align with various movements whether it's aligning with Iran or that's aligning with Turkey or Turkey Pan Nationalism or whether it's aligning with various Arab countries and states in terms of their perspectives and how their work somehow affects it. And what I've seen in terms of this report it shows that there is much more diversity in Central Asia, where that kind of reliance doesn't exist as much. And that kind of interference then can't take us strong route, which again gets back to the point that I mentioned about resiliency against international interference but also against violent extremism. One thing I did want to mention was that I think it would be good in this conversation for us to compare faith based development and charity organizations in general with Muslim CSOs because I think that if we get to a more general sense of what is faith based charity organizations, and we will come to an understanding that this is not something unique or new or something that should be feared in Central Asia but this is something that we know across the board that other states also do this work and have done this for centuries in many countries that really fill the gaps where government cannot reach or is unable to reach in terms of social development in communities. The other issue that was raised is a little bit in terms of bringing in the issue of secular CSOs or civil society organizations and comparing that with fears towards Muslim based CSOs versus not having as much fear towards secular CSOs as long as they are apolitical and do not get involved in political issues. So I think that teasing that out a little bit in the conversation may be helpful in terms of understanding the role CSOs play in how there's a lot of commonalities between faith based CSOs and secular CSOs in Central Asia. The other thing I think is really important here and I want to continue to reiterate is that this healthy homegrown sense of civil society in Central Asia is really important. Whereas Sebastian mentioned indigenous civil society organizations in Central Asia is really important in terms of being able to both meet the demands of the people but also being able to remain independent and from ties to international movements and also remain resilient. So I mentioned a little bit about the definition that faith based organizations in many ways can be a way that religion itself functions but there are different terms that have been used in this field. We talk about faith based organizations or faith inspired organizations and they're more organized generally legally constituted entities and involved in various different ways. They have with faith or religious beliefs that are intrinsic to the organization's inspiration and character and the civil society aspect is stressing their civic and social purposes and citizens roles in the creation and management. So in terms of the debates, what is really the difference between the secular and the faith? Where is there some sort of a faith DNA in how these two differ? It's often debated and in terms of particularly on the outcome side, we see that the work in the social sphere, their civic and social purposes are very similar. And the issue I think here is whether there is an overt religious dimension and what we hear in Central Asia and from your report is that oftentimes religious dimension is downplayed and it is more the civic and social purposes that are played. And one other thing to continue to know is to look for where there are links to the indigenous community, the communities locally being homegrown in terms of providing these social services and filling these gaps versus those that are connected with larger international movements and organizations. And we see less and less of that. I think that's something to look at and even with what Emile noted is for example with some of the Gem odds that even though they may have roots internationally, they're also now locally funded and self-reliant. And that's something that's really important to look at in terms of the difference between how international movements function with civil society organizations and locally they function. So those are some of the things I wanted to highlight. The two things that I've noted to compare with other countries in the region, I'll talk about Afghanistan, but also we can look at other Muslim countries is the connection with the pan-Turkic movement. And so connection to Turkish roots, you know, whether it's the Sulamaniya type madrasas or whether it's the Turkic schools like was mentioned with the hizmet and how that's related to this pan-Turkic identity and Muslim identity that's pan-Turkic is something to look at. But the other issue is looking at the connections with the Brotherhood and oftentimes Muslim civil society, there's this fear that they are related to Islamist organizations that are connected with the Brotherhood somehow loosely or more intrinsically connected and that that can then lead to political upheaval. And what we're seeing so far with this report is that, you know, there isn't as much of a connection and that connection has become less and less. So, you know, that's something to compare to other countries where a lot of these Muslim civil society organizations are more intrinsically connected to Brotherhood, either directly connected to those structures or loosely connected to those structures as we might see and how Tunisia would define their civil society movement, their religious Islamist civil society movements there. So those are some of the major things. Now I want to turn to our study that I think has some important results. We collaborated with the USAID Center for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships to study the relationship between religious freedom or belief and regime-type political stability and economic development. The initiative we called Closing the Gap and it consisted of two complementary strands of research, one which is cross-national quantitative analysis and the other was a qualitative set of case studies based on interviews and focus group discussions and that included Uzbekistan. So the first strand we looked at data on violations of religious freedom, political stability, economic growth in 167 states from 1990 to 2014. And the data sets were from the Religion and State data set housed at Bar-Long University, the Pew Research Center's Global Restrictions on Religion data set, and the varieties of democracy project data managed by the University of Gothenburg Department of Political Science. And then as we mentioned before, the second strand was of case studies where we looked at Uzbekistan as well as Sri Lanka, Sudan, South Sudan and Venezuela. And we looked at them because they represented different levels of freedom of religion or belief in the field, so it was like a diversity of those relationships between the states. And the analysis that we came to generally supports the view that freedom of religion or belief and democracy are related. And although we cannot say that one causes the other or if the relationship is mutually reinforcing, but what the analysis finds is a positive and significant correlation between religious freedom and a variety of democracy measures. And I think that's really important here because in the report on Central Asia, we're looking at civil society and democracy and the relationship between the two as well as development. Now on the development side, we don't have any clear indicators, but we do have indicators between democracy and development. And so if we say religious freedom is positively correlated to democracy, there are then links then to positive GDP and development in that sense. And our findings were that, like I mentioned, freedom of religion or belief correlates positively and significantly with democracy. But secondly, that some types of violation of religious freedom correlate positively and significantly with political instability. So violations of religious freedom means political instability. And third, the analysis showed that no statistically significant correlation between religious freedom of belief and economic development, we couldn't find anything there. But what we concluded is that more effective integrative policies and programs that promote religious freedom and a broader democracy is important. And so I think this finding really correlates with the paper on Muslim civil society organizations in Central Asia that are working on democracy because in terms of the recommendations, we're saying the same thing, that working with these kinds of organizations can broader democracy promotion, can help societies at that level. And there shouldn't be a fear of working with this diversity, particularly as it relates to limiting religious freedoms. It should not be limiting religious freedoms in the state. So I'll end here and I look forward to the conversation. Thank you. Actually, one of the things that's very unique about Muslim civil society in Central Asia is by definition, given the history of these countries, it's new. It's a new phenomenon, largely still organic. And while we've seen some hints of it being connected to a broader outside world, it really is quite local. I have a question for Emil and Sebastian and I want to remind everybody in the audience that if you'd like to submit your question, please look at the chat box function just below your video player on the USIP event page. Let us know who you are and where you're asking from and we'll see some of those questions if we've got time. But Sebastian and Emil, you have sort of portrayed a non-homogeneous view of these organizations from the outside world. They are not necessarily pro-democratic or pro-authoritarian. They may be blind to that. They are not necessarily anti-capitalist or pro-capitalist as is defined in the post-Soviet world. I would probably venture even to say they are not necessarily pro-Western or anti-Western or pro-American or anti-American, which may surprise some people given the history of the United States relationship with the Muslim world. So to get to the sort of the top-line question that was implied in the title of today's roundtable, how should Western, specifically American donors go about engaging Muslim civil society in Central Asia? If you were to sort of look at a VIN diagram of issue areas in poverty alleviation, development, even democratic development, where would you see the opportunities for overlap and the areas where there's probably not overlap? Sebastian and Emil, who wants to go first? Yeah, sure. I mean, it's a difficult question. I mean, there's no real recipe on how we should cooperate. I mean, let me mention maybe a few brief points. The first and main step I think would be to have more dialogues with Muslim civil society organizations that are active in Central Asia. I mean, getting to know them is very important. And we need, as I was saying this report, to disaggregate them and to consider that Muslim civil society is not only the humanitarian or self-imovement, and we need to make them understand that we take them into account and that we also take their interest into account, their concerns, their culture too. So of course, I mean, we might have different approaches on some issues, maybe on human rights or women's rights. But at the same time, I mean, we have many common thinking on the risks or even the threats that the region is facing, the Central Asian countries are facing, I mean, including the back shape of the social welfare, including health, food security, poverty, whatever. And this is precisely under development that threatens the stability of the region, much more than the so-called threat coming from abroad. And on that, I think there's really an overlap of interest. So yeah, first talking to them, I think is essential. And by the way, one of the main criticisms of on foreign development aid is that local stakeholders are not sufficiently taken into account. I mean, development programs are very often written from abroad without enough consultation with local stakeholders. So in a way, I mean, conducting a strong dialogue with Muslim CSOs would also contribute to change the services by image. Regarding, I mean, cooperation, I think this could be, I mean, my suggestion, I mean, my colleagues might disagree with me, but my suggestion would be to go case by case. I mean, it would be very difficult to have a general approach, to have a one size fits all approach, which is by the way, again, one of the main criticisms against foreign aid formulated by local stakeholders. I mean, cooperation should be based on the local context. I mean, this will depend on which Muslim CSOs are present, what are the issues, I mean, social, economic or whatever, and what local populations are expecting. So this could be, for example, based on the cooperation with one or two Muslim CSOs based on what Muslim society organization consider as important and of course, you know, on issues that the foreign donors would agree with. But I think that, I'm going to stop here, but just, I think that a much more localized approach is likely to have a bigger impact. I think on that, I would join what some development theoreticians like William Easterly said that we need to stop this one size fits all approach. And this is especially important with Muslim society organizations in Asia, which, again, I mean, they are extremely diversified. So I think it's important to cooperate with it, not necessarily with all its components, but again, yes, there are many opportunities. Emil, any thoughts? Thank you for your question, Gary, and thank you so much for the interesting insights. So, Mike, I would start by saying that I probably wouldn't be overly optimistic about the positive perception of the West by Muslim society organizations. The perception is quite diverse, right, and it depends, you know, depending on who we talk about, right, so some of the perhaps Islamic NGOs would be on the more robust insight of the spectrum, while many of the locally rooted like organizations or community based Jamaats perhaps would be, I mean, their perception of the West is also very strongly shaped by Russian propaganda, you know, that is quite strongly present through media in their life. So there are, like, what our research reveals that there is a very positive perception of the West in regards to the freedom of religion, right, but there are also negative stereotypes, particularly associated with the role of West in the conflict in the Middle East, and particularly the kind of promotion of liberal values such as LGBT rights, feminism, etc. So, if we are to ask how to engage with the, for the, how can West engage with the Muslim civil society organizations, I'll probably start with the thinking and working with the staff in the local international development organizations, right, because these are the main actors who implement policies on the ground, right, and so far, like at this moment, like the perspectives of people who work in the development organizations are often, you know, based on this very strong secular position, right, and in many cases, like the stereotypical view of Muslim communities as conservative, as liberal as the patriarchal, etc. So unless the view of the local staff, you know, in international development organizations changes, it will be difficult to engage the two communities, right, so it's basically we're talking about the two different groups of actors. The second suggestion would be perhaps here to think about specific projects that would aim, you know, and incorporate local Muslim civil society organizations into the development efforts introduced by Western countries, and also to introduce more projects for such projects, right, because as you can see, and as we have described, quite a lot of funding comes from Muslim countries, right, from the, from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, from Turkey, right, and so obviously funding that shape the perspectives, right, and so if more Western money comes, you know, and engages with the local civil society Muslim groups, I think there is more potential for something to come out of that. But I also totally agree with Sebastian that we should start with the dialogue. Thank you. Indira, did you have any thoughts on this? Yes, I guess. When funding is coming from the Arab or Turkic countries, they have, they literally have this religious affiliation meaning that Islam is helping to Islam but when it comes to support coming from the Western countries which is more in the light of the human rights, equal support for every religion and others, it's, I guess this will be risk of, risk of supporting one religion, supporting one belief in comparison with others. And also I think that we, as you mentioned, we should take into account that as an angel overall, civil society overall, the Muslim civil society in Kyrgyzstan also developing. This is going to, through its pathways and from my experience working with religious organization and again as you mentioned, there are lots of, they are diverse this Muslim civil society in Kyrgyzstan, it might depend like their views and level of tolerance, our level of being moderate may be different. But as for now it's more about promoting Islamic values and they are okay with being moderate unless it's not contradicts with their values, with their beliefs. And I guess, if we have a time, could I mention with this gender case that happened in Kyrgyzstan when I saw like the role of the religious organization should be high, the Islamic clergy should be high. So the case was in June 2020, when the women in age of 50 was beaten with his, by his husband, he put car tires filled by a bricks onto her head, neck and also pulled the water on her and were filming all this. And the issue was because she was late and this was like a shocking accident in Kyrgyzstan, like even for us taking into account the level of the domestic and gender based violence. And at the time we were monitoring the social network seeing what is the reaction of the clergy, or what is the reaction of the religious organization and it was surprising that none of them give some official statement about this and I'm not saying that this is a religious issue. I'm saying that taking into account the role of an influence that this religious organization have the tools and platforms that they have to like Juma Namaz pray during the pray, working with the local locals and taking into account their authority they could be a great actor. And I guess it's maybe a good, good issue to be one of the program from your side to come here and do the great actor for the gender based violence. And this is not about like promoting Western values but this is something that inside of Islam none of the religion calls for the violence against women. And still like we see this, there is moderate non face based organizations as Mutakalim, as Uma who are raising these issues, but the traditional one like Muftiyat, Madrasa, Mosque were more mind concentrated, not. So, I guess we have to be aware and understand that there is some risks in, and also opportunities in integrating and working with them any religious, religious civil society organization. Thank you. Well you bring up something that's a question that we've started to see appear from the audience which is what, how you think the rise of Muslim civil society will impact specifically the role of women or the position of women in Central Asian society, bearing in mind of course that Central Asia doesn't live, you know, out in outer space, it is right next door to Afghanistan where we're seeing disturbing trends in the role of women. You know, if, do any of you want to take us have a comment on that. Yeah, so one organization that you're probably very well familiar with is Mutakalim, right, and there is no other civil society group that did as much for women, for Muslim women in Kyrgyzstan as Mutakalim, and the leader Jamal from Bekizu for the last 25 years they've been fighting, you know, while as Indira rightly pointed, Mufti Yad and other more kind of male leaders of Islamic society group is taking a passive stand. And so I think this is what makes the case of Kyrgyzstan and of many other Central Asian countries different from Afghanistan, right, this legacy of the Soviet emancipation of women, you know, the more kind of a more feminist and more like a gender right based position of Muslim women who are ready to fight for their own rights, who are ready to struggle, you know, for their own values. And in that sense, I wouldn't bring the parallel here with Afghanistan, you know, because the case of Kyrgyzstan and Central Asia with 70 years of the Soviet female emancipation has a strong effect on how women perceive themselves in the society in general and also the way they look at their own Islamic roles in these organizations. Paul Washer. Yeah, thank you. I think that distinction is important, as well as what I mentioned earlier in terms of the role that international movements and countries have played in Central Asia versus how they played the role in Afghanistan with the international jihadi movement that was very much grounded and started in that area and between Afghanistan and Pakistan that led to the explosion of so many different brand jihadist brands that are related to the Salafi movement, the al-Qaeda, all of those pieces that are there, which is different, although they do have strands and relationships into Central Asia, it is not as strong as you see in Afghanistan, of course. I think the other key here to mention is, you know, in the roles that the Uzbekistan government and others in Central Asia have had in terms of talking about women's rights in Afghanistan, we've seen scholars, we've seen the governments also come out in support of women's rights in Afghanistan, particularly on this issue of education, where we saw the Uzbekistan government come out, and the olama also come out in support of girls' education in Afghanistan, and that's very important. And as we're looking at, you know, religious scholars and the roles that the regional scholars and influence regional scholars can have on women's rights in particular countries and looking at Afghanistan, there is this connection and role that can support and has been in support of, for example, Fatwas against suicide bombings, Fatwas against the internal jihad, Muslims killing Muslims, that sort of thing that's come out, and that Central Asian scholars have come out in support of. And I think that needs to be also understood as part of the traditional Hanafi school of thought and the role that traditional scholars in the region have. And so, although, as you mentioned, Indra, that there didn't seem to be a very strong response from the olama on that particular issue, there has been a movement of olama organizing on particular issues and there's potential for that to happen, particularly within the more traditional Hanafi schools that are being promoted over Salafi Wahhab is international interference on some of the topics related to violent extremism in the region. And so there's a potential for that to actually blossom. The other thing I wanted to mention is also the work that's being done on peaceful masculinities and promoting peaceful masculinities with religious, we say religious actors. So not just the clergy, but also those that are considered having influence in the religious sphere, as well as looking at, as was mentioned, the role of female religious actors in dealing with these situations and the roles that they can play in promoting women's rights in these communities. So I just wanted to mention those trends and issues there. So here's, you know, shifting gears a little bit. Although, you know, we have talked about how, in the case of Mutakalim, they've looked at gender-based violence, they've looked at issues where sometimes they may be pushing against retraditionalization of some things that, you know, were bad behaviors, some of these issues seemingly overcome during the Soviet Union. But I want to broaden that out a little bit to the question of the other, I would say, in my mind, powerful wave of identity in Central Asia over the last maybe 15 years, of ethnic national identity. We, in some ways, you know, a Muslim identity cuts across ethnic identities, whether it's Kyrgyz, Uzbek, Tajik and Kyrgyz. In some parts of the world, the religious identity and the national identity are synonymous, right? We say, you know, I say Polish, you can say Catholic. I say Sinhalese. You can say Buddhist. I say Indonesian. You can say Muslim. Of course, there are exceptions, but in general, those identities are very closely tied. And I'm very curious what our panel thinks about how that the national ethnic identity and the religious identity in Central Asia are reinforcing each other or divergent or in conflict with each other, based on sort of the VIN diagram of what Muslim civil society organizations do compared to other types of movements. Does anybody want to take a stab at that? Yes, I mean, I can very, I mean, yeah, I think that religious and ethnic national identities in Central Asia are connected to some extent. I mean, for example, the government, a government in Central Asia would strongly encourage any, let's say, traditionally Muslim nationalities like Uzbek, Kazakhs or Tajiks to be a Muslim if he's a believer, or a Russian to be a Russian or so dogs, or, let's say, for the German minority to be a Catholic or the Protestant Luceran. And we have, in a way, the same approach with the different religions. I mean, the Muslim leadership would strongly encourage the Kyrgyz or Kazakh to be a Muslim and not to be part of another region. And we have exactly by the same approach with some Christian movements. I mean, especially the main ones, the Russian or so the church who has been strongly encouraging Russians to be a Russian or so dogs and really even refusing. I've seen that. I mean, I've worked a lot on that, but I've seen that some priests in the Russian or so the church refusing to convert some Kazakhs or some Kyrgyz because they were supposed to be Muslims and not a Christian. I'm sorry. Now, there are some, of course, some awesome movements who don't necessarily abide by that. I mean, you have some Protestant movements who are proselytizing a lot. And this has provoked some reactions. I wouldn't say that there are strong tensions between the Muslim and the Christian community, but we have seen some tensions about sometimes conversions, proselytizing activities conducted by Protestant movements. So, yes, but in a way, so yes, ethnic and religious national identities are connected, but an important point to say that contrary to some Muslim countries or where there is an Islamic government. The government, no governments in Central Asia is trying to encourage people to convert. I mean, you have perfectly the right to be an essayist or at least, I mean, not to be a believer and not to be willing to practice a religion. So I've never seen in Central Asia, I don't think it's going to happen anytime soon, a government saying, okay, you are Muslim, you are Kazakh, you are Kyrgyz, so you have to be, you have to be Muslim or you are Russian. So you have to be an Orthodox. Indira, Emil? Okay. Yeah, I agree with Sebastian that there is no direct attempts to convert or there is no direct attempts to convert, but there is indirect ways, like in the structural level, let's say when the legislation prohibits proselytism. And it depends, for example, if the evangelical groups proselytizing this is prohibited. If the Muslim groups proselytizing, it's not prohibited because they are not proselytizing their sharing their knowledge about the Islam and others. So it depends on their angle. Again, I will more focus on the experience of the Kurdistan, but I have heard that this is true for the Tajikistan and Uzbekistan as well. So the main conflict is not between the Christian and Muslims, not between the Christian and like protestants, but between the Muslim and Kurdish protestants. And here we have a number of the conflicts, ongoing conflicts. It's about the burying issues when, so the cemeteries in Kurdistan are organized in the basis of the relationships, like one relative in the one place. And when if someone from the family become a Christian, so there is a conflict that this is Muslim cemetery, shouldn't wear it here, it was a number of, not number, it's still going on. When the Kurdish protestant not allowed to be buried in that place. And sometimes it's even like forced to dig up or forced to change their beliefs, and it comes from the society, the majority. And also there is a, there is examples of the direct violence towards this protestant Kurdish when they were beating, or they were forced to moved from their villages. And yes, they're trying to live more in the big cities because it's like these connections are more not so visible in the cities. Thank you. Emil. Jump in. On one hand, we do observe the trend towards this overlap of identities where, for example, it is very common to hear if you're Muslim, you should speak Turkish, you know, why are you speaking Russian. But on the other hand, we can see that these identities are national agents are very, very strongly contested, particularly in the space of social media. And in the case that was mentioned by India, right, this is like, does this mean that you're Muslim, you know, and so what does it mean to be a Christian, but there is also a lot of contestation over what religions curious follow, and particularly in relation to the people dress right and there is a lot of criticism from secular groups, but also a very strong kind of criticism comes from the nationalist Tengris groups, you know, that promote pre Islamic religious values that says that that criticize the current Arabization or Pakistanization of the communities community. Right. And so this is quite strongly contested right as I would say that perhaps the contestation is much. There's much more evidence towards the contestation than towards the overlap of the identity. Well, we're a little bit over our time, and I want to wrap this up and say thank you to Sebastian and meal for for initiating this really interesting work. And I wanted to thank Paul wash and Indira for bringing a perspective on it. I think we're at the very beginning of process of recognition. I think, you know, some of the things we didn't cover was, were how different these different Muslim civil societies are in each country and you know how how Tajikistan Uzbekistan Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan are different from each other in this development. We didn't really, I think, delve into what what it's going to look like when the the rest of the world discovers Muslim society in Central Asia. You know, is it how does that relate to, you know, the traditional orientations towards Russia and Tatar stun and other Muslim communities in the former Soviet Union, versus these outside non former Soviet connections, including Afghanistan. So there's obviously going to be a lot of room for a follow on report at some point, where we watch how this evolves over time, especially given the complex geo strategic situation. So, on behalf of USIP, I want to thank American University. I want to thank George Washington University for working with us on this. And I want to thank our audience for joining us today and being engaged and with that. Have a good day. Good evening. Good night. Thank you.