Aigul Zabirova,
Chief Research Fellow at the Kazakhstan Institute
for Strategic Studies under the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan
Eighty-six percent of Kazakhstanis identify themselves as believers [1]. This figure alone suggests that religious identity in Kazakhstan has become a widespread social norm. But sociology does not stop at the first number. The next question is: how do people actually practice their faith? Here the picture becomes considerably more complex: while the majority of respondents observe religious holidays, a much smaller share engage in regular prayer, and only a minority attend mosque on a regular basis.
These findings do not contradict one another. Rather, they reflect different levels of religious life — from symbolic belonging and cultural participation to everyday practice and institutional involvement. Each of these levels carries its own social function and internal logic. To understand how this configuration of religiosity emerged in Kazakhstan, we need to go back three decades.
After the collapse of the USSR, society faced an unexpected problem: who to be? The answer to ‘Who am I?’ disappeared along with Soviet identity and the state that had produced it. Kazakh identity required language, traditions, a cultural code, all things that decades of Soviet modernization had placed out of reach for many, especially urban, Kazakhs. Islam offered a way out, not as a rigid system of prescriptions, but as an accessible language of self-definition. To call oneself a Muslim meant answering ‘Who am I?’ simply, clearly, and with dignity.
This does not, of course, erase the spiritual dimension of religion. For many Kazakhstanis, faith has become a personal, profound experience that requires no public confirmation. What the data show is that Islam performs several functions simultaneously, both spiritual and identificational. Both are genuine. Both matter. Sociologists call this cultural religiosity, religion functioning primarily as a sense of belonging. A person observes holidays, upholds traditions, identifies with the faith. This is a complete form of religious life, not a surrogate for one.
In the Kazakhstani context, it is historically organic: steppe Islam was never rigidly institutionalized. It spread through oral tradition, family practices, and cultural ritual rather than through the strict discipline of the mosque. This is likely why 88.6% of Kazakhstanis support state religious policy while simultaneously 84.5% believe the country should remain a secular state. This is not a contradiction but a reflection of the Kazakhstani model, in which religion as cultural identity coexists comfortably with a secular state. This, in fact, is how most Kazakhstanis understand religion.
Sociological analysis allows us to identify three forms of religiosity coexisting in contemporary Kazakhstan. The first, cultural religiosity, is the most widespread. A person considers themselves a believer, participates in holidays, upholds traditions, but religious norms do not necessarily govern their everyday behavior. This is not half-hearted faith but a distinct form in which religiosity functions primarily as a symbolic marker of identity.
The second form, practicing religiosity, involves daily prayer, regular mosque attendance, and observance of prescribed norms. Here belief and behavior are more tightly bound.
The third, reflexive religiosity, is the most complex. Here religion becomes a language. Through religious categories, people discuss justice, morality, cultural identity. Religion enters public discourse not as dogma but as a framework for making sense of what is happening. All three forms coexist within one society, and often within one person.
Religion in Kazakhstan is becoming a language. Through it, society describes itself, draws moral boundaries, and explains ongoing change. And this language is multi-layered. For some it is expressed in daily prayer, for others in the observance of holidays, for others still in a simple sense of belonging to a tradition. All these levels exist simultaneously, and together they form what might be called the Kazakhstani model of religiosity. Not a copy of a Middle Eastern model, not Soviet atheism in reverse, but something grown from its own history and its own experience.
[1] Empirical data were taken from the analytical report Assessment of State Religious Policy in Kazakhstan, prepared by the research company MLGroup in 2024 at the request of the Committee for Religious Affairs of the Ministry of Culture and Information of the Republic of Kazakhstan. A total of 6,000 respondents took part in the survey, with 1,500 people surveyed in each quarter of 2024. The survey included respondents over the age of 18 from 17 regions and 3 cities of republican significance — Astana, Almaty, and Shymkent.
