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In 1991, Tajikistan, a primarily Sunni Muslim Central Asian state, gained independence from the Soviet Union. The isolated mountain community of minority Shia Muslims living in the high reaches of the Pamir mountains retained their Islamic faith during the 70 year period of Soviet atheism through specific cultural features and practices--namely literature, domestic architecture, and ritual. In particular, the symbolic architecture of the traditional house, called cheed, was a covert asset that doubled as a marker of sacred space, history, and practice, illegible to the state’s gaze and policies of atheism enforced by the purges during the Soviet period. The cheed resurfaces in renewed and sometimes contested form in post-Soviet life amidst shifting constellations of religion, identity, law and politics.
Dr. Zahra N. Jamal is a Rice alumna and a Senior Research Associate at the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality and the Dept. of Political Science at the University of Chicago, where she directs the Civil Islam Initiative. She is also Assistant Director of the Center for the Study of American Muslims at the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, and Scholar on the Isma'ili Tariqah and Religious Education Board USA. She was previously on the faculty at Harvard, MIT, and Michigan State University (MSU), and was also the Program Director of Central Asia and International Development at MSU.
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