Hayrullo Hamidov and Uzbekistan’s culture wars: how soccer, poetry, and pop-religion are “a danger to society

UZIN Paper nº 6 (2014)

In late April 2010 a closed trial took place outside Tashkent for a group of young observant Muslim men; it proceeded like dozens of others that go unnoticed, resulting, as always, in foregone convictions for every defendant. This one drew the attention of the world, however,because Hayrullo Hamidov—Uzbekistan’s first religious celebrity—sat in the defendant’s cage.