Skip to main content

Eren Tasar

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, History, Faculty Member

Followers

474

Following

256

Co-author

1

Public Views

Central Asian, Russian / Soviet, and twentieth century Islamic History
Phone: +1-919-962-2115
Address: UNC-CH Department of History
Hamilton Hall CB# 3195
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3195
United States

less

Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration

Institute for African Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences

Elmira Muratova

European Centre for Minority Issues

Лейла Алмазова

Kazan Federal University

Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient

Alfrid Bustanov

University of Helsinki

Jesko Schmoller

Humboldt Universität zu Berlin

InterestsView All (35)

Uploads

Papers by Eren Tasar

A Question of Texture: "Getting Religion" in a Bashkir Antireligious Text from the 1950s. Anzeiger der philosophisch-historischen Klasse 157-158 (2023): 25-50

This essay demonstrates that the renaissance experienced in the religious and literary spheres ac... more This essay demonstrates that the renaissance experienced in the religious and literary spheres across much of the USSR after World War II influenced the field of scientific atheism as well. Through the prism of a remarkable article that appeared in the flagship Bashkir literary journal Literary Bashqortostan, it argues that a distinct type of antireligious writing, namely Muslim atheism, crystallized during the 1950s, combining the religious and the antireligious. Unlike anti-Islamic writings of the 1920s, this Bashkir piece brings in elements of texture, i. e., documentary and ethnographic snapshots of Muslim life. By extensively quoting Bashkir prayers and folk sayings, it offers an additional window on the history of Islam and atheism in the USSR. Viewing the piece as the product of a dynamic atheism that responded to the decade's social climate, opens up the possibility of treating atheistic writing in Turkic languages as "religious" texts.

Pious Lives of Soviet Muslims. In The Routledge Handbook to Islam in Asia. Edited by Chiara Formichi. New York: Routledge, 2021: 296-309.

Atheist and Muslim: Islamic Dictionaries from the 1980s and 1990s. In From the Khan’s Oven: Studies on the History of Central Asian Religions in Honor of Devin DeWeese. Edited by Eren Tasar, Allen Frank, and Jeff Eden. Leiden: Brill, 2021: 323-357.

Islamic Media in Soviet Central Asia

This paper takes stock of "Islamic media" in the ussr by reviewing the kinds of sources that are ... more This paper takes stock of "Islamic media" in the ussr by reviewing the kinds of sources that are available for the study of Islam in the Soviet Union, and, more importantly, exploring how social historians can use them. What follows is a detailed discussion of three genres of materials: anti-religious propaganda; correspondence of the official organizations engaged with Islam; and what, for convenience's sake, I will term Islamic samizdat (popular religious literature and the few available autobiographies of 'ulama).

Sufism on the Soviet Stage: Holy People and Places in Central Asia's Socio-Political Landscape after World War II. In Sufism in Central Asia: New Perspectives on Sufi Traditions, 15th-21st centuries. Ed. Devin DeWeese and Jo-Ann Gross. Leiden: Brill, 2018: 256-283.

Unregistered: Gray Spaces in the Soviet Regulation of Islam

The Official Madrasas of Soviet Uzbekistan

Islamically Informed Soviet Patriotism in Postwar Kyrgyzstan

The Central Asian muftiate in occupied Afghanistan, 1979-1987

Central Asian Survey, Jan 1, 2011

Soviet Policies toward Islam: domestic and international considerations

Book Reviews by Eren Tasar

Review of Islam, Imeiushchii mirnuiu i dobruiu sushchnost. Ed. R. I. Bekkin. Slavic Review 82 2 (2023)

Review of Yaacov Ro'i, The Bleeding Wound (Stanford/Hoover, 2023) in Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 53:4 (2023); 653-655.

Review of Spiritual Subjects: Central Asian Pilgrims and the Ottoman Hajj at the End of Empire by Lale Can, Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association, 8:2, Winter 2021: 358-361.

Review of Polymaths of Islam: Power and Networks of Knowledge in Central Asia by James Pickett. Russian Review, 80:3 (2021): 529-530.

Review of Gulag Miracles: Sufis and Stalinist Repression in Kazakhstan by Allen J. Frank. Russian Review, 81:1 (2022): 186-187.

Bayram Balci. Islam in Central Asia and the Caucasus since the Fall of the Soviet Union. Trans. Gregory Elliott. Introduction by Olivier Roy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018.

Paul Stronski, Tashkent: Forging a Soviet City, 1930–1966 (2010), xv þ 350 (University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, paperback $27.95).

Michael Kemper, Raoul Motika, and Stefan Reichmuth (Eds.), Islamic Education in the Soviet Union and Its Successor States (London and New York: Routledge, 2010). ix + 366 pp. Index. ISBN: 978-0- 415-36815-5.

Michael Kemper & Stephan Conermann, eds. The Heritage of Soviet Oriental Studies (2011), xv + 336 (Routledge, Abingdon, hardcover, $150.00).

Neringa Klumbyte & Gulnaz Sharafutdinova (eds), Soviet Society in the Era of Late Socialism, 1964–1985. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2013.

A Question of Texture: "Getting Religion" in a Bashkir Antireligious Text from the 1950s. Anzeiger der philosophisch-historischen Klasse 157-158 (2023): 25-50

This essay demonstrates that the renaissance experienced in the religious and literary spheres ac... more This essay demonstrates that the renaissance experienced in the religious and literary spheres across much of the USSR after World War II influenced the field of scientific atheism as well. Through the prism of a remarkable article that appeared in the flagship Bashkir literary journal Literary Bashqortostan, it argues that a distinct type of antireligious writing, namely Muslim atheism, crystallized during the 1950s, combining the religious and the antireligious. Unlike anti-Islamic writings of the 1920s, this Bashkir piece brings in elements of texture, i. e., documentary and ethnographic snapshots of Muslim life. By extensively quoting Bashkir prayers and folk sayings, it offers an additional window on the history of Islam and atheism in the USSR. Viewing the piece as the product of a dynamic atheism that responded to the decade's social climate, opens up the possibility of treating atheistic writing in Turkic languages as "religious" texts.

Pious Lives of Soviet Muslims. In The Routledge Handbook to Islam in Asia. Edited by Chiara Formichi. New York: Routledge, 2021: 296-309.

Atheist and Muslim: Islamic Dictionaries from the 1980s and 1990s. In From the Khan’s Oven: Studies on the History of Central Asian Religions in Honor of Devin DeWeese. Edited by Eren Tasar, Allen Frank, and Jeff Eden. Leiden: Brill, 2021: 323-357.

Islamic Media in Soviet Central Asia

This paper takes stock of "Islamic media" in the ussr by reviewing the kinds of sources that are ... more This paper takes stock of "Islamic media" in the ussr by reviewing the kinds of sources that are available for the study of Islam in the Soviet Union, and, more importantly, exploring how social historians can use them. What follows is a detailed discussion of three genres of materials: anti-religious propaganda; correspondence of the official organizations engaged with Islam; and what, for convenience's sake, I will term Islamic samizdat (popular religious literature and the few available autobiographies of 'ulama).

Sufism on the Soviet Stage: Holy People and Places in Central Asia's Socio-Political Landscape after World War II. In Sufism in Central Asia: New Perspectives on Sufi Traditions, 15th-21st centuries. Ed. Devin DeWeese and Jo-Ann Gross. Leiden: Brill, 2018: 256-283.

Unregistered: Gray Spaces in the Soviet Regulation of Islam

The Official Madrasas of Soviet Uzbekistan

Islamically Informed Soviet Patriotism in Postwar Kyrgyzstan

The Central Asian muftiate in occupied Afghanistan, 1979-1987

Central Asian Survey, Jan 1, 2011

Soviet Policies toward Islam: domestic and international considerations

Review of Islam, Imeiushchii mirnuiu i dobruiu sushchnost. Ed. R. I. Bekkin. Slavic Review 82 2 (2023)

Review of Yaacov Ro'i, The Bleeding Wound (Stanford/Hoover, 2023) in Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 53:4 (2023); 653-655.

Review of Spiritual Subjects: Central Asian Pilgrims and the Ottoman Hajj at the End of Empire by Lale Can, Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association, 8:2, Winter 2021: 358-361.

Review of Polymaths of Islam: Power and Networks of Knowledge in Central Asia by James Pickett. Russian Review, 80:3 (2021): 529-530.

Review of Gulag Miracles: Sufis and Stalinist Repression in Kazakhstan by Allen J. Frank. Russian Review, 81:1 (2022): 186-187.

Bayram Balci. Islam in Central Asia and the Caucasus since the Fall of the Soviet Union. Trans. Gregory Elliott. Introduction by Olivier Roy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018.

Paul Stronski, Tashkent: Forging a Soviet City, 1930–1966 (2010), xv þ 350 (University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, paperback $27.95).

Michael Kemper, Raoul Motika, and Stefan Reichmuth (Eds.), Islamic Education in the Soviet Union and Its Successor States (London and New York: Routledge, 2010). ix + 366 pp. Index. ISBN: 978-0- 415-36815-5.

Michael Kemper & Stephan Conermann, eds. The Heritage of Soviet Oriental Studies (2011), xv + 336 (Routledge, Abingdon, hardcover, $150.00).

Neringa Klumbyte & Gulnaz Sharafutdinova (eds), Soviet Society in the Era of Late Socialism, 1964–1985. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2013.

Tim Epkenhans, The Origins of the Civil War in Tajikistan. Nationalism, Islamism, and Violent Conflict in Post-Soviet Space. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2016.

Michael Kemper and Artemy Kalinovsky, eds., Reassessing Orientalism: Interlocking Orientologies during the Cold War. New York: Routledge, 2015.

Becoming Muslim in imperial Russia: conversion, apostasy, and literacy, by Agnès Nilüfer Kefeli, Ithaca NY, Cornell University Press, 2014, 289 pp., US$52.50 (hbk)

From the Khan's Oven: Studies on the History of Central Asian Religions in Honor of Devin DeWeese, edited by Eren Tasar, Allen J. Frank, and Jeff Eden. Leiden: Brill, 2021.

by Jeff Eden and Eren Tasar

Spanning the history of Islamic Central Asia from medieval to modern times, this volume features ... more