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In this article, my concern is the sharing of being, thus the existential question of what a person shares with others by virtue of her very 'thrownness', the circumstance of finding herself born as human in a particular place, into a particular family, and in a particular moment in history. Questions about what we share with others by virtue of our very being often confront us with a particular urgency in liminal situations where we are confronted with alterity amidst the familiar, when the world becomes porous and mouldable where we thought it was most solid. I explore how such questions become urgent amongst Kyrgyz people of Muslim background who have become evangelical Christians and who struggle to find a place of belonging that is welcoming to them and the values and virtues they see as central to who they are in a context where conversion to Christianity is seen as deeply controversial. Engaging with insights from the phenomenological tradition in philosophy and anthropology, I explore encounters with alterity as central to the efforts of Kyrgyz Christians to find a place of belonging in the world. I argue that we may experience the sharing of being most intensively when alterity draws us in, emplacing us in shared horizons of possibility whose contours are not yet clear.

Recent studies have convincingly demonstrated that Soviet state atheism continues to influence how religion is understood and practiced in present-day Central Asia. In Kyrgyzstan, however, a new generation of atheists is emerging whose ideas about atheism—and about religion—are informed more by globally circulating neo-atheist ideas and images. This paper explores their efforts to live atheist lives and be true to their atheist convictions, and the images of religion that play into the process. Focusing on the role of social media in particular, I will argue that while many, at least initially, embrace these platforms as ways to encounter like-minded individuals and experience moral community, what they encounter there are often images of atheism and its religious "others" with which they cannot identify and which often seem irrelevant to the challenges of everyday life, in which coexistence with (and caring for) religious others are central concerns for many.

Introduction -- Islam in post-Soviet Central Asia -- Sufism and the veneration of saints in Central Asia -- Bukhara -- Ziyorat -- Journey in the homeland -- Imagining time -- Doing business with Bibi Seshanba -- Conclusion : faraway so close

In the past fifteen years, there has been a virtual explosion of anthropological literature arguing that morality should be considered central to human practice. Out of this explosion new and invigorating conversations have emerged between anthropologists and philosophers. Moral Engines: Exploring the Ethical Drives in Human Life includes essays from some of the foremost voices in the anthropology of morality, offering unique interdisciplinary conversations between anthropologists and philosophers about the moral engines of ethical life, addressing the question: What propels humans to act in light of ethical ideals?

Enthält Rezension von: Naumkin, Vitaly: Radical Islam in Central Asia : between pen and rifle. - Oxford : Rowman and Littlefield, 2005