Islam is the predominant religion in Uzbekistan.
In 2022, the Uzbek Ministry of Foreign Affairs estimated that Islam was followed by 96.3% of the population; most Muslims follow the Hanafi school of Sunni Islam.
Religiosity and confessions
According to WIN-Gallup International's 2012 Global Index of religiosity and atheism, 79% of the respondents from Uzbekistan who took part in the survey considered themselves a religious person, another 16% stated they were not religious, 2% convinced atheists, and 3% had checked no response box.
As of 1 June 2019 there were 2,286 registered religious organisations from 16 different confessions.
In total, 2098 mosques and islamic organizations, 160 churches and 28 other religious organizations
Soviet era
State atheism was an official policy in the Soviet Union and other Marxist-Leninist states. The Soviet Union used the term gosateizm, a syllabic abbreviation of "state" (gosudarstvo) and "atheism" (ateizm), to refer to a policy of expropriation of religious property, publication of information against religion and the official promotion of anti-religious materials in the education system. By the late 1980s, the Soviets had succeeded in curtailing religion in Uzbekistan by removing its outward manifestations: closing mosques and madrasas; banning religious text and literature; outlawing non-state-sanctioned religious leaders and congregations.
Since independence
Uzbekistan is a secular country and Article 61 of its constitution states that religious organizations and associations shall be separated from the state and equal before law. The state shall not interfere in the activity of religious associations.
In the early 1990s with the end of Soviet power large groups of Islamic missionaries, mostly from Saudi Arabia and Turkey, came to Uzbekistan to propagate Sufi and Wahhabi interpretations of Islam. In 1992, in the town of Namangan, a group of radical Islamists educated at Islamic universities in Saudi Arabia took control of a government building and demanded that president Karimov declare an Islamic state in Uzbekistan and introduce Shari‛a as the only legal system.
The regime, however, prevailed, and eventually struck down hard on the Islamic militant groups, leaders of which later fled to Afghanistan and Pakistan and were later killed in fights against coalition forces. In 1992 and 1993 around 50 missionaries from Saudi Arabia were expelled from the country. The Sufi missionaries too were forced to end their activities in the country.
Islam
There are more Sunni than Shia Muslims among the residents. Islam was brought to the ancestors of modern Uzbeks during the eighth century when the Arabs entered Central Asia. Islam initially took hold in the southern portions of Turkestan and thereafter gradually spread northward. Islamic customs were broadly adopted by the ruling elite, and they began patronage of scholars and conquerors such as Muhammad al-Bukhari, Al-Tirmidhi, al-Biruni, Avicenna, Tamerlane, Ulugh Begh, and Babur. In the 14th-century, Tamerlane constructed many religious structures, including the Bibi-Khanym Mosque. He also constructed one of his finest buildings at the tomb of Ahmed Yesevi, an influential Turkic Sufi saint who spread Sufism among the nomads. Islam also spread amongst the Uzbeks with the conversion of Uzbeg Khan. He was converted to Islam by the influence of Ibn Abdul Hamid, a Bukharan sayyid and sheikh of the Yasavi order. Uzbeg promoted Islam amongst the Golden Horde and fostered Muslim missionary work to expand across Central Asia. In the long run, Islam enabled the khan to eliminate interfactional struggles in the Horde and to stabilize state institutions.
During the Soviet era, Moscow greatly distorted the understanding of Islam among Uzbekistan's population and created competing Islamic ideologies among the Central Asians themselves. The government sponsored official anti-religious campaigns and severe crackdowns on any hint of an Islamic movement or network outside of the control of the state. Moreover, many Muslims were subjected to intense Russification. In Uzbekistan the end of Soviet power did not bring an upsurge of Islamic fundamentalism, as many had predicted, but rather a religious revival among the population. Currently, according to a Pew Research Center report, Uzbekistan's population is 96.3% Muslim.