Uzbek Quotes

“Supposedly troubled that women would no longer be treated as property, these man saw the hujum as another kind of expropriation, much like the land and water redistribution. One was quoted as saying that unveiling was merely an extension of Soviet land reform, since it aimed to seize the second, third, and fourth wives of bois and transfer them to the poor landless peasants who had to hire themselves out as field hands. (This was a common view, as many Uzbeks also saw the hujum as transferring women from male control to that of the state.)”
― Douglas Northrop, Veiled Empire: Gender and Power in Stalinist Central Asia

“Russian authorities distinguished between steppe Islam, suffused, they believed, with Shamanism, and the Islam of the Uzbek cities, which they considered hotbeds of fanaticism. Catherine viewed Islam as a "civilizing" tool that would first make Kazakhs good Muslims, then good citizens, eventually good Christians. She used Tatar teachers, her subjects, who could travel among the nomads and speak their language, to preach a more "correct" Islam. The Tatars became an important factor in implanting in the steppe an Islam that adhered more closely to traditional Muslim practices.”
― Peter B. Golden, Central Asia in World History