On a Sunday afternoon in mid-August, Sheikh Ilyas Nazarbekov is sipping green tea before starting his lecture at a private house on the outskirts of Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan. Among a series of publications available to buy on a small stand in the vine-covered courtyard is Saudi Sheikh Ali Tantawi’s General Introduction to Islam translated into Kyrgyz by Ustad Shamsuddin Abdykalyk Uulu, as well as a pamphlet entitled Who are the Shia?
Every Sunday, Sheikh Ilyas teaches Islam in Kyrgyz to a group of mostly young men in the morning, and to another group in Russian in the afternoon. The same schedule applies on Saturdays for female students. On the day I attend, he imparts his teachings for the following three hours with no break and no question asked, jumping from the health virtues of olive oil and dates, to the necessity for strict monotheism, to the thousands of contradictions contained in the Bible - and much, much more.
Sheikh Ilyas is a respected and active member of Kyrgyzstan’s Salafi community, although he prefers the definition ahl-u-s-sunna wal-jama’a, or Sunni Muslims, as ‘we follow our salaf, our righteous ancestors; we aren’t them.’ Originally from the southern city of Osh, Sheikh Ilyas spent several years studying Arabic and Islam in neighbouring Uzbekistan and moved to Bishkek in 1990, where – with other ulama, or religious scholars – he founded the Hazreti Umar Islamic Institute and a small mosque adjacent to it.
