This chapter examines how Uzbekistan’s Islamic revival unfolds within the infrastructures of the digital age. Extending the book’s framework of paradoxical governance, it argues that social media operates simultaneously as a mechanism of state surveillance and a medium of religious renewal, producing a moral economy in which piety is curated, quantified, and contested through algorithms. Drawing on the literature on mediatization and digital religion, this chapter distinguishes between Islam online—the digital extension of mosque-based authority—and online Islam—new, platform-native forms such as home-studio daʿwah, raddiya (refutation) videos, and interactive Telegram publics. Platform logics of programmability, popularity, connectivity, and datafication redistribute religious authority by transforming engagement metrics into markers of legitimacy and linking domestic believers with diasporic audiences. Through the contrasting cases of Imam Abror Mukhtor Aliy (state-aligned) and Imam Mahmud Abdulmomin (diasporic and oppositional), this chapter demonstrates how identical digital affordances generate divergent moral and political effects. The analysis of the Nargiza Saidova outrage cycle further reveals how gendered moral panics and algorithmic amplification intensify polarization between official moderation and popular zeal. Ultimately, the chapter shows that in contemporary Uzbekistan, faith and visibility are inseparable—religious authority is now algorithmically distributed, and freedom and fear are co-produced within the same digital circuits of devotion and control.

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Role of Media in the Revival of Islam: Navigating Official and Unofficial Islam in Uzbekistan

  • Dilsora Fozilova

摘要

This chapter examines how Uzbekistan’s Islamic revival unfolds within the infrastructures of the digital age. Extending the book’s framework of paradoxical governance, it argues that social media operates simultaneously as a mechanism of state surveillance and a medium of religious renewal, producing a moral economy in which piety is curated, quantified, and contested through algorithms. Drawing on the literature on mediatization and digital religion, this chapter distinguishes between Islam online—the digital extension of mosque-based authority—and online Islam—new, platform-native forms such as home-studio daʿwah, raddiya (refutation) videos, and interactive Telegram publics. Platform logics of programmability, popularity, connectivity, and datafication redistribute religious authority by transforming engagement metrics into markers of legitimacy and linking domestic believers with diasporic audiences. Through the contrasting cases of Imam Abror Mukhtor Aliy (state-aligned) and Imam Mahmud Abdulmomin (diasporic and oppositional), this chapter demonstrates how identical digital affordances generate divergent moral and political effects. The analysis of the Nargiza Saidova outrage cycle further reveals how gendered moral panics and algorithmic amplification intensify polarization between official moderation and popular zeal. Ultimately, the chapter shows that in contemporary Uzbekistan, faith and visibility are inseparable—religious authority is now algorithmically distributed, and freedom and fear are co-produced within the same digital circuits of devotion and control.