ABSTRACT
The Kyrgyz call her talaa, a vastness of unfathomable emptiness.1 The talaa, or steppe, is mother of all Central Asian civilization and is a sweeping sea of grasslands and mountains.2 Central Asia straddles the two great continents of Europe and Asia, but for much of the world, it seems to be a blank space at the center of the map. Central Asian intercultural and interfaith interactions have often only gained the attention of historians in relation to the expansion of Russian colonialism. Few scholars of sociology, history, religion, or missiology have explored the various ways in which, for example, Central Asian Christians or Muslims have interacted with their neighbors of the opposite faith while also examining the ways non-Central Asian Christians or Muslims have positively or negatively been involved in the intercultural, interreligious dynamics of the region.
