Before letting Uzbekistan drift into my personal history, one more observation. About religion there.

What is now the nation of Uzbekistan was ruled by Russia from about the middle of the 19th century, and then by the Soviets, who took control of the Russian Empire in 1917.

Uzbekistan escaped Soviet rule in 1991, meaning the communists were in charge for 74 years, or about three generations.

And they managed to do something I have never before seen:

Turn a Muslim community into a largely atheist one.

To study Uzbek names is to see variations of many names with Arabic origins. The president, for example, is named Karimov — which almost certainly is a Russified version of “Kareem” — Russified by sticking the “ov” at the end.

Lots of names like that. Looking at the roster from their game with the UAE, and I see … Mustaphev (Mustafa), Hasanov (Hassan), Abduhali (Abdul-Ali) and another Karimov.

There are more than a few traces of Islam in Taskhent. A grand old mosque, here or there. The common greeting of “salaam aleikum”, pronounced almost exactly as it would be in the Gulf, is standard there.

Around my second day in Tashkent I realized I had not heard any calls to prayer. None. The daily five calls can be heard without trying in UAE cities, so numerous are the mosques.

I asked one of my “taxi” drivers about religion. He said no, the calls to prayer are not broadcast over the air, as they are in most of the Muslim world. And he said no one much prays — except on Friday, the biggest day of worship in the week. (Like Sunday would be to Christians.) He said “everyone” goes to the mosque that day.

However, the London-based Legatum Institute, which I mentioned in yesterday’s post, in its 2011 Prosperity Index suggests that “Uzbek society is characterized by … weak religious bonds,” adding: “Uzbeks draw very little on religious networks: only 13 percent regularly attend a religious service, which is the fifth-lowest rate in the world.”

Communism had no love at all for religion. Karl Marx’s famous dictum about “religion” and it being the “opiate” of the masses is well known.

Practicing Christians dwindled in the lands the communists ruled. Those who observed religious practices were barred from the Communist Party, and it was hard to succeed in the secular world without party membership.

By the time the Eastern Bloc was freed from communism, religious practice had shriveled. It has made a bit of a comeback, and remained strong in a few places, like Poland … but to enter Eastern Europe is to find a population no more interested in religion than Western Europe, and perhaps less.

It seems to be the same for Islam and Uzbekistan. For three generations, going to a mosque was to handicap yourself in daily life. And in 2012, Islam here is seen mostly in names and in mosques that are more like museums than actual places of worship. Most women cover their heads. Most older women, anyway. But is that simply a cultural practice now, and not one with religious significance? Pork does not seem to be consumed, but alcohol certainly is.

I found it a curious concept: A post-religious Islamic country. Central Asia’s answer to, say, the largely post-Christian Germany.