What follows is one part of a cross-blog initiative, which takes the role of Islam in Central Asia and the Caucasus as its central theme:

The Turkmen authorities rarely bother to comment on new stories about the country, which made it all the more noteworthy when the Foreign Ministry issued an angry denial of items appearing in the British and Russian press about an organisation called the Islamic Movement of Turkmenistan in November last year. In the event, it is likely that the journalists concerned were confusing the organisation with the Islamic Movement of Turkestan, the alternative name of an underground group active in neighbouring Uzbek, but the tone of the Foreign Ministry’s press release was suggestive:

“The Turkmen side resolutely protests against such actions on the part of the above-mentioned media outlets and states that this fictitious information does not correspond to reality at all and is clearly of a provocative nature.
The activities of news agencies and periodicals which disseminate such libellous information and use very unscrupulous sources are obviously unfriendly towards Turkmenistan.”

Indeed, although groups representing alternative currents to state-sponsored Islam have cropped up in various shapes and forms in other Central Asian states, no such organisation of any significance has yet appeared in Turkmenistan. The anomaly seems all the more acute when one considers that religion is only one of the many social categories in which competitive impulses have been squashed by the monolithic authoritarianism of President Saparmurat Niyazov.
Yet, as the recent history of Islam in Central Asia demonstrates, the Soviets failed in their bid to stamp out religious belief. From the late 1960s, clandestine Islam became an increasingly common feature, while the Soviet apparatuses of state control could never truly exercise anything near a complete degree of absolute control over the geographically dislocated Muslims of the southern republics. The persistence of the Islamic faith, which was consequently easily revived in the post-Soviet period, indicated the possibility that it was a social phenomenon that fundamentally eluded state suppression and control.
These broadly sketched hypotheses, however, serve only to raise more questions about the fate of Islam in Turkmenistan. If religion has succeeded in enduring the challenge of Soviet domination, why has its ability to defy regime manipulation not lead to it generating a base for domestic opposition? Is the failure of politically engaged Islam to materialise a resultant effect of the president’s ability to wholly co-opt religion for the ends of regime stability? Or is it possible that the Soviet-created Muslim Board of Central Asia succeeded in its aim to subordinate the goals of the faith to those of the state?
None of these considerations should be read as a suggestion that vigorous campaigns have not been undertaken in suppressing Muslim devotees not sanctioned by the state. Although the most internationally high-profile cases of infringement of religious freedoms have been connected with non-Muslims, the U.S. State Department’s most recent International Religious Freedom report notes:

“The serious mistreatment of some religious minority members, which began in 2003, continued and was extended to the Muslim community. In March 2004, Turkmenistan’s popular and respected former Mufti, Nasrullah ibn Ibadullah, was secretly tried and sentenced to 22 years in prison, reportedly for his alleged role in a failed 2002 coup plot. Ibadullah had been dismissed as Mufti in 2003, reportedly in part for his refusal to teach the President’s book, Rukhnama, as a sacred text. Little is known about the whereabouts or the condition of Ibadullah, despite calls from the international community for access to him and for his release.
Muslim religious leader Hoja Ahmed Orazglychev remained isolated in internal exile in Tejen for alleged criminal activity. Some believe his refusal to publicly support [Presisent Saparmurat] Niyazov’s regime and Orazglychev’s strict religious beliefs contributed to his exile.”

Although such repression suggests that there is an existing scope for religiously inspired dissidence, the cultural and religious history and heritage of Turkmenistan indicates that the reasons that faith endured Soviet rule also accounts to a great extent for the unlikelihood of it becoming a vehicle for organised opposition. Examining the Soviet perspective, any number of reasons is offered for the ability of Islam to remain intact in spite of the often violent hostility displayed towards it by Moscow. One idea is that the communist ideology and Islam shared a collectivist mindset, based on the predilection for communalising agricultural resources, which allowed for a degree of accommodation, Soviet intolerance notwithstanding. What also follows from such observations is that Islam’s traditional emphasis upon collectivism has also engendered a respect for political authority that has counteracted a dynamic towards the rhetoric of individualism in favour of one that emphasises conformity and solidarity.
In a strictly Turkmen context, however, there are particular features that have also served to militate against absolute subsumption of faith within the institutional setup. Islam became assimilated into Turkmen culture, roughly speaking, by means of assimilation of beliefs imported by Sufi missionary scholars and pre-Islamic traditions. This gradual amalgamation was largely conditioned by the clannish and tribal social structures that had long previously existed. The local flavour that this lent Islam in Turkmenistan remains evident to this day in the character of devotional shrines dotted around the country. Such factors, sharply enforced by the predominantly rural nature of Turkmen society, have contributed to the preservation of code of religious membership that has defied extirpation while simultaneously invalidating any likelihood of a head forward plunge into theological extremism.
All of which probably goes some way to explaining the general population’s apparent passivity towards Niyazov’s peculiar adoption and adaptation of Islam to his own ends. The most notable feature of this campaign is the notorious Rukhnama, or the Book of the Soul, which is purported by the Turkmen authorities to be an invaluable spiritual guide, although its purpose is ostensibly that providing its readers a sense of national identity. The misconception about the contents of the Rukhnama, which are freely available on any number of Internet sites, is largely due to media reports, such as those that emerged earlier this year, in which it was said that Niyazov had said that “anyone who reads [it aloud] three times will … become more intelligent, recognise the divine being and go straight to heaven.”
On a point of fact, the designs of Rukhnama are patently political, dwelling as it does on themes of national identity and the historically enshrined legitimacy of Niayzov’s leadership. Consequently, the fact that verses from the Rukhnama have been inscribed on the walls of the grand Kipchak Mosque is testament to Niyazov’s perception of the integral role of Islam in the Turkmen state’s identity and not, as is commonly assumed, that he believes himself to be integral to Islam.
This distinction may seem trifling, and is certainly quite open to debate, but there is ample reason to believe that it reflects the general Turkmen perception. There is no way to quantify the extent of damage that the enforced teaching of the Rukhnama has wrought on educational and cultural standards of the country, but the belief and understanding that Niyazov’s personality cult goes no deeper than the golden statues and contrived misappropriations of religious symbolism must be of reassurance to many, if not all, Turkmen people.