Over the last two decades, hostile depictions in mass media and propaganda have led to the development of the image of Muslim men as terrorists and Muslim women as suppressed, backward and covered in burkas. Such images are also often applied wholesale to Muslims from Central Asia. This paper aims to denounce such stereotypes and give an insider perspective of how a modern Uzbek Muslim woman practices her spirituality and struggles to understand her religious belonging. Using autoethnography as a research method and as a genre of writing, I present my own journey of establishing my Muslim identity. I show how it has been questioned over and over in various encounters and incidents both in and outside of Uzbekistan. This paper is, in some ways, my answer to the question I have been asked so many times: “Are you really a Muslim?”

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