Religious Identity in the Context of Present-Day Ritual Culture of the Kyrgyz People

Abstract

The article examines the ethnographic aspects of the religious identity of the Kyrgyz people, expressed through attitudes to the rituals of the family cycle, mainly funeral and memorial rites. The article describes the features of the development of religious culture, regional differences in the manifestation of religious identity, the place of ritual in the discourse between traditionalism and Islamic normativity, and issues of regulating rituals. The uniqueness of the history of the religious life of the Kyrgyz people is noted, which lies in repeated modernization during the 20th century: the transition from total atheization to the revival of religious consciousness. The diversity and inconsistency of religious identities, the nature of the clash of positions between different trends on the values of the folk ritual of the family cycle are studied. It defines that today the rituals of the folk have become the central issue of the discourse between traditionalists, Islamic normativists, “statists” and representatives of secular approaches. The author comes to the conclusion that the regulation of some aspects of rituals, in particular funeral and memorial rituals, shows a tendency towards convergence of state and religious (Islamic) approaches, which in the future may lead to contradictions between different identities.