The evangelical work of the Full Gospel Church of Jesus Christ of Karakol was going well in the little farm village of Lipenka, Kyrgyzstan, population 400. Christian discos on weekends. Early morning prayers in the homes of believers. Bible study in evening cell groups.
“The group grew up to about 25 people, and the work started developing in a positive way,” recalled Allie Shvidko, a leader of the charismatic church. “A whole Kyrgyz family in Lipenka got converted.”
Then, in November, one of the new Christians died. The tight-knit, mostly Muslim village has not been the same since.
After Shavshakhan Kasmalieva, 40, succumbed to uterine cancer, her closest relatives, most of whom were also members of the Full Gospel Church, wanted to bury her in the village cemetery next to her parents, as is tradition.
The local mullah and a group of village elders refused to allow the burial, even though the cemetery is the property of the local government, not the local mosque. When the Christians bused in believers from a nearby city as reinforcements, local Muslims bolstered their numbers with people from neighboring villages.
The resulting standoff verged on violence, Shvidko said, with a group of elders confronting the dead woman’s brother, offering a burial plot in exchange for his returning to the faith of his forefathers.
“They surrounded him and screamed at him, ‘Deny your faith in Jesus and everything will be all right!’” she said. “But he answered, ‘Even if you cut me into 1,000 pieces, every piece will still scream ‘Jesus!’”
At the end of the day, the minority Christians backed down, and the two sides reached a compromise of sorts: “They buried her 100 meters outside the cemetery,” Shvidko said, adding, “like a dog.”
The brother, Adyl Kasmaliev, confirmed Shvidko’s account in a telephone interview from his home in Lipenka, located about a six-hour drive east of the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek. Lipenka’s mullah was not reachable by telephone and officials in the Spiritual Directorate of the Muslims of Kyrgyzstan were not familiar with the situation in Lipenka but said such burial conflicts are common.
“It is, of course, a problem when a person changes his faith,” commented the country’s top mufti, Kimsanbai Azhy Abdurakhmanov. “First of all, it is unpleasant. Secondly, it is forbidden for a Muslim to do it. And thirdly, everyday life in the village will become difficult for the person who changes his faith.”
In Lipenka, according to Kasmaliev, relations between the Muslim majority and Christian minority are tense. Evangelism has plateaued.
“It is still a critical situation. It is bad,” said Kasmaliev, who continues to hold daily 6 a.m. prayer services in the two-room house he shares with his wife. “The other people won’t accept the Word of God. They are against us.”
Kasmaliev hopes to rebury his sister’s body someday. “We are still praying that we’ll be able to move her body into the cemetery,” he said.
There seems little doubt that Lipenka’s Christians are within their legal rights in demanding that a local resident be given burial space in the municipal cemetery. They collected 25 signatures on an affidavit, sent it to the local office of the Council of National Security (CNS) — the former KGB — and demanded an investigation. Local Muslims collected signatures on a petition demanding the expulsion of Christian residents. The CNS looked into the matter and referred it to regional officials and the Committee for Religious Affairs, a CNS spokeswoman said.
“They will try to … solve the problem. Maybe a burial site for people who have converted to other faiths will be found,” said the spokeswoman, Chinara Asanova.
Alisher Sabirov, a member of the Kyrgyz parliament and the driving force behind proposed new religious legislation, said disputes like Lipenka’s are widespread, especially in the south of Kyrgyzstan where Muslims are more devout.
“Of course, the government must do something. But our bureaucrats don’t understand the reasons for the conflicts and don’t know what to do. Most often, the police are the ones who get involved,” said Sabirov, himself a former police colonel. “It is the spiritual leaders, the imams, who must try to resolve these problems peacefully.”
Sabirov, who founded the Kyrgyzstan chapter of the 102-year-old International Association for Religious Freedom, would also like to establish a Center of Religious Tolerance, to be based in the capital Bishkek and with offices throughout the country of 4.7 million people.
Given the direction of Allie Shvidko’s work, a Center of Religious Tolerance may come none too soon. Shvidko said the future of her 200-member Full Gospel Church depends on the 75 percent of the country who are Kyrgyz and Uzbek, historically nomadic Muslims.
“It is easier to evangelize Kyrgyz people than Russians because they are desperate,” said Shvidko. “Kyrgyz people don’t really have a strong ideology, and they have so much poverty. They really need God badly.” (RNS)
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