"An ethnograpic study set in Uzbekistan which shows how Muslims practise and celebrate their religion despite a repressive government"-- "In recent years, the Uzbekistan government has been criticized for its brutal suppression of its Muslim population. This book, which is based on the author's intimate acquaintance with the region and several years of ethnographic research, is about how Muslims in this part of the world negotiate their religious practices despite the restraints of a stifling authoritarian regime. Fascinatingly, the book also shows how the restrictive atmosphere has actually helped shape the moral context of peoples' lives, and how understandings of what it means to be a Muslim emerge creatively out of lived experience."-- Provided by publisher. Provided by publisher.

Itroduction: towards an anthropology of moral reasoning -- Islam and sociality in Pakhtabad and Samarkand -- The new Soviet (Central Asian) person and the colonisation of consciousness -- Good and bad Islam after the Soviet Union : the instrumentalisation of tradition -- The practical hegemony of state discourse -- The moral sources of experience : social, supernatural and material worlds -- Moral reasoning through the experience of illness -- Debating Islam through the spirits -- Experience, intelligibility, and tradition.