Modernization of Islamic education in Kyrgyzstan to be reviewed in Bishkek.

The Social Research Center at American University of Central Asia organizes the lecture "Modernization of Islamic Education in Kyrgyzstan: Challenges and Prospects of Secular and Religious Teaching Approaches" on May 23. The lecture will be delivered by Dr. Kadyr Malikov, PhD in Political and Islamic Studies, Madrid University, Spain. Currently, a rapid re-islamization process is being observed in Kyrgyzstan. This process is particularly common among youth. In some cases, the active politicization of Islam is viewed as the reaction of people to the new challenges ofcontemporaneity - political, socio-economic and spiritual problems. At the same time, religious institutions have started playing a key role in the Kyrgyz society by becoming one of its political powers. There is a serious concern that youth, who are mostly "illiterate" in the field of Islam, are joining various radical organizations and movements, which use Islamic slogans. The growing number of believers makes one pay attention to the qualitative level of religious education provided in madrasahs in Kyrgyzstan. In Central Asia, a traditional teaching method in Islamic training institutions is "Hujra", which gives only a narrow religious education. This method blocks religious thinking and educates intimidated followers. In addition, so called "black" clergy cannot connect new contemporary challenges faced by the society with Islam. Consequently, it cannot resist the radical ideology in Islam. When youth cannot find the right answers to their questions, they start looking for it outside of official mosques and this increases the number of radical movements. Kadyr Malikov holds PhD in Political and Islamic Studies from the Department of Arabic, Islamic and Central Asian Studies at Madrid University. He graduated from the Master's Program at Department of Islamic Law, Jordan National University, Jordan. He has a Certificate on Conflict Studies from the Center on Security and International Cooperation, Complutense de Madrid University, Spain. Dr. Malikov is an author of many scholarly articles on Islam. Currently, Dr. Kadyr Malikov is a Senior Expert at the Institute of Strategic Analysis and Prognosis, Kyrgyza"Russian Slavonic University, and a Thematic Team Leader on Islam at the Social Research Center, AUCA.