State Control of Islam in Independent Uzbekistan

Since independence in 1991, Uzbekistan has maintained tight state control over religious life through a Muftiate that vets and licenses imams and mosques, requiring registration of all religious organizations under laws that for decades banned unregistered worship outright and criminalized proselytism and the import of unauthorized religious literature; independent estimates suggested many thousands of people were imprisoned in the 1990s and 2000s on charges connected to unauthorized Islamic study or suspected extremism, often under a broad legal category targeting so-called Wahhabism regardless of an individual's actual beliefs.

Reforms since President Shavkat Mirziyoyev took office in 2016 have eased some restrictions, releasing a number of religious prisoners, removing thousands of people from a long-standing informal blacklist of suspected extremists, and permitting expanded religious publishing and mosque construction, changes the US State Department's International Religious Freedom Report has credited while still noting continued restrictions on independent religious practice outside state-sanctioned structures. The government maintains particular vigilance against transnational Islamist movements, including Hizb ut-Tahrir and groups linked to the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, which waged an armed insurgency in the late 1990s.