Report
Even Stone Can Be Shaped Through Soft Engagement: Kazakhstan Religious Freedom Assessment Trip Report
About this report
Abstract
Findings from an assessment visit to Kazakhstan, 13–22 September 2025, covering Astana, Almaty, and Shymkent with separate visits to Aktobe, Atyrau, and Aktau. It traces the country's movement from the securitized policy of the 2011 religion law toward a state that increasingly reaches for dialogue, and sets out what remains unresolved in registration, independent Islamic scholarship, and institutional accountability.
The title is an argument about method. Soft engagement means working as builders rather than as critics at a distance — cooperation sustained long enough that it earns the standing to raise hard questions. This report is the record of what that produced in Kazakhstan across more than a decade.
It documents concrete movement: the January 2025 amendments halving administrative fines for religion-related offenses, removing automatic deportation, and introducing official warnings as an alternative sanction; court rulings favoring a conscientious objector and upholding students’ right to wear the hijab; and the finding that some people previously prosecuted over their beliefs were no longer prosecuted, with some unregistered minority communities meeting openly.
It is equally specific about what has not been settled. Registration procedures remain uneven in practice, opportunities for independent Islamic scholarship are limited, and the institutional safeguards that would make consistent implementation reliable are still to be built. Its recommendations are addressed to that gap.