ABSTRACT
This chapter will focus on five major ethnic groups and the ways that Muslims and Christians have interacted among these communities. When walking through the pulsating, vibrating bazaars of any one of the major cities in Central Asia one becomes rapidly aware of the dynamic interplay of the melting pot of cultures. Indeed, contemporary Central Asia is the result of a “genuine merging and crossing marked by widespread bilingualism and cultural hybridization.”1 Persians, Turks, Russians, Germans, Ukrainians, Uzbeks, Tajiks, Turkmen, and Kazakhs meet together in a splashing mixture of color, smell, and sound that includes young and old, modern and ancient, religious and secular, and nomadic and urban.
