Field Notes from Kyrgyzstan: Bishkek's New Religious Landscapes

I arrived last September in Bishkek, the capital city of Kyrgyzstan, to begin a yearlong sabbatical researching new religious landscapes in this enclave of Central Eurasia. As geographers are wont, I spent those first weeks afoot, familiarizing myself with the city's contours, its boulevards, squares, side streets, and alleyways, along the way gawking at the monumental Mahmud Kashgari (see Figure 1) and other 'mega-mosques,' as I've taken to call the behemoth temples that have been cropping up in Bishkek and other post-Soviet Muslim capitals. Kyrgyzstan, like Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan, gained its independence upon the dissolution of the USSR in late 1991, and most of its citizens claim at least nominal adherence to Islam.