Nuriddin Khaliqnazar

Nuriddin Khaliqnazar (Russian: Nuriddin Khaliknazarov; Uzbek: Nuriddin Xoliqnazarov), an Uzbek religious scholar born in 1968 in Asaka, Andijan region, has been Grand Mufti of Uzbekistan and chairman of the Muslim Board of Uzbekistan since 19 October 2021 — the fifth holder of the chairmanship. ¹

He is the Board's principal media face: the Muslim uz YouTube channel, the official YouTube page of the Board's muslim.uz portal, is dominated by his sermons and talks, and had about 573,000 subscribers by platform figures in October 2026, a platform figure that changes constantly. ²

He was born in 1968 in the town of Asaka, Andijan region, in the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic. ¹

He graduated from the Mir Arab madrasa in Bukhara in 1992, from the Tashkent Islamic Institute named after Imam Bukhari in 1998, and from Fergana State University in 2007. ¹

He began as imam-khatib of the Ahmadali Mahdum Friday mosque in his home town of Asaka, then served as imam-khatib of the Oqtepa mosque in Tashkent, taught at the Kukeldash madrasa in Tashkent and the Sayyid Muhyiddin Makhdoom madrasa in Andijan region, and became chief imam-khatib of Andijan region. ¹

In August 2019 he was appointed chief imam-khatib of the city of Tashkent. ¹

On 19 October 2021 an expanded meeting of the Council of Ulama of the Muslim Board of Uzbekistan elected him Grand Mufti of the country and chairman of the Board, succeeding Sheikh Usmonkhon Alimov, who had died. ^{1 3}

On 22 June 2023 he was admitted to membership of the International Union of Muslim Scholars. ¹

In April 2024 he was accepted into the Islamic Fiqh Academy of the Muslim World League. ⁴

In January 2026 he was appointed to the Scientific Council of the King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud Complex for the Prophet ﷺ's Hadith in Madinah; the Board's portal described the Complex as the sixth international body he has joined. ⁴

He received the Order of Imam Bukhari of the highest degree in 2025 under an Uzbek presidential decree, and in November 2025 the "120th Anniversary of Uzbekistan Trade Unions" commemorative medal. ^{3 4}

The Muslim uz channel describes itself as the official YouTube page of the Muslim Board of Uzbekistan's muslim.uz portal. Its recent uploads are headed by sermons and talks of "Shayx Nuriddin Xoliqnazar", alongside weekly programmes such as "From Friday to Friday", live religious question-and-answer sessions and live Friday sermons. ²

This section should be read as a presentation of positions reported in the sources, not as the museum's judgement on them.

Forum 18, an independent religious-freedom news service, reported that in a sermon in a Tashkent mosque on 8 September he called on Muslims not to wear long beards, short trousers or other "foreign" religious clothing, and said that Islam does not demand that women fully cover their faces or wear black clothes: "Arabs have their clothes, Turks theirs and Uzbeks theirs." ⁵

Russian Wikipedia's infobox gives his current as Sunni Islam and his madhhab as Hanafi, but no second independent source naming his school could be verified for this record; because his Board's institutional Hanafi-Maturidi tradition is not a personal attestation, the museum records no school for him until a second source confirms it. ^{1 4}

He is married with children, and alongside Uzbek he speaks Arabic, Tajik and Russian; the museum publishes no family detail beyond what understanding his work needs. ¹

• The defined sources cited above, registered in data/source/.
• Later translations and edits of this article need periodic review with clear update dates.