Bringing a Quran or Bible Into Uzbekistan: The Rules

Three copies of each title. That's the ceiling Uzbekistan's rules set for religious books a private person brings into the country for their own use, and it's written into a 2022 government regulation that few visitors have heard of. A single Quran or Bible in your luggage sits well inside it.

The rules around it are tighter than that number suggests, though, and human rights monitors have documented seizures at airports and land borders for years. Here's what the law actually says, what has happened to real travellers, and what's sensible to pack.

The legal framework, briefly

Article 10 of the 2021 Law on Freedom of Conscience and Religious Organisations says that producing, importing and distributing "materials of religious content" in Uzbekistan is allowed only after a positive religious-studies expert assessment. The stated aim is to stop ideas that threaten interfaith harmony or call for violence on religious grounds.

"Materials" is defined broadly. The law lists printed matter and also electronic media: discs, built-in and removable memory cards, and content posted on the internet. Keep that in mind; it's why phones come up later.

The detail sits in Cabinet of Ministers Resolution No. 180 of 14 April 2022, which approved a regulation on producing, importing and distributing religious materials. It replaced an earlier 2014 resolution. The parts that matter to a traveller:

Paragraph 9: religious organisations and private individuals may bring in materials for their own needs, not for commercial purposes.
Paragraph 10: the Interior Ministry, the State Customs Committee and the border troops send materials found at the border straight to the authorised body (the Committee for Religious Affairs) for expert review.
Paragraph 11: individuals may import up to three copies of each title for their own needs or for research, "after a positive conclusion is obtained". Materials imported by religious organisations must carry a hologram, and anything without a positive conclusion and hologram is banned from import. The person importing is responsible.
Paragraph 12: during mass pilgrimage periods, the expert review is to be carried out directly at customs checkpoints.

So is a personal Bible legal? Broadly, yes: personal, non-commercial import is expressly allowed. The catch is the phrase about a positive conclusion. The regulation doesn't spell out how a tourist's single copy of a standard scripture gets one, and in practice that leaves room for a customs officer to hold a book for review. Our general laws and customs guide says a Bible or Quran for personal use is fine, and that's true of the law's intent; this is the fine print behind it.

Who can import religious books in bulk

Anything beyond personal use goes through a short list of registered bodies, and the list has shrunk. The US State Department's 2017 and 2018 religious freedom reports named eight organisations allowed to publish, import and distribute religious literature after review by the Committee for Religious Affairs. Its 2023 report, the most recent Uzbekistan edition we could find in September 2026, names seven. Tashkent Islamic University no longer appears.

Organisation	2017–2018 reports	2023 report
Bible Society of Uzbekistan	Listed	Listed
Muslim Board of Uzbekistan (Muftiate)	Listed	Listed
Tashkent Islamic Institute	Listed	Listed
Tashkent Islamic University	Listed	Not listed
Russian Orthodox Church	Listed	Listed
Full Gospel Church	Listed	Listed
Baptist Church	Listed	Listed
Roman Catholic Church	Listed	Listed

Christian groups told the State Department that one authorised Uzbek-language Bible isn't enough for their needs. The first complete Uzbek Bible was finished only on 1 June 2017, after a 23-year translation project.

What has actually been seized

None of the cases below involve a Western tourist with a single book, and that matters. But they show how the rules are enforced at the edges.

Pilgrims' Qurans, 2017. In May 2017 Forum 18 reported, citing a Muslim witness, that customs officials at Tashkent Airport had confiscated Qurans and other Islamic books, bought in Mecca, from pilgrims returning from Umrah that January. The State Department repeated the account in its 2017 report. Forum 18 didn't record whether the books were returned.

Legally imported books. According to worshippers quoted in the State Department's 2017 and 2018 reports, authorities confiscated, and sometimes destroyed, Uzbek- and Russian-language religious literature that had been imported legally or printed in the country, along with items such as prayer beads and incense. Members of registered minority churches said literature was seized at the border for alleged customs violations.

Land borders, 2023. The 2023 report records that in February customs officers at the Kazakhstan border seized Bibles and other Christian books from a Baptist visiting from Kazakhstan, and that in June border guards in Fergana detained a Jehovah's Witness crossing from Kyrgyzstan after finding a Bible in her bag, as reported by Forum 18.

Phones. This is where the stakes rise. Forum 18 reported in December 2016 that a Kazakh citizen had been sentenced to five years in prison for sermons by the imam Abduvali Qori Mirzayev found on his phone as he entered Uzbekistan, and a Russian citizen to three years in similar circumstances. The 2018 State Department report describes a Tajik citizen released that year after serving most of a five-year sentence for an electronic Quran and sermons on his phone while transiting Tashkent. The 2023 report says arrests continued for unauthorised sermons on phones and for any printed Jehovah's Witness material, and that activists reported police examining phones without a warrant.

Penalties on paper

Administrative Code Article 184-2 covers the illegal production, storage, import or distribution of religious materials. The State Department put the fine for individuals at 20 to 100 times a monthly base amount, which it gave as 6 to 30 million som in 2022. Its report calls that the minimum wage, but the figures match the base calculation value of the time. At the current value of 440,000 som, in force from 1 September 2026, the same range would be 8.8 to 44 million som. The code also allows the materials to be confiscated.

For foreigners there's an extra risk. Article 29-1 of the Administrative Code, on the administrative expulsion of foreign citizens, lists Article 184-2 among the offences for which expulsion may be applied.

Material classed as extremist is a criminal matter. The State Department reports prison terms of five to 20 years for distributing extremist leaflets or literature through social networks.

The government's position, stated in the 2021 law, is that expert review protects interfaith harmony and religious tolerance and blocks calls to religious violence. Rights groups including Forum 18 argue that in practice it gives officials wide discretion over ordinary scripture.

What we'd pack

One copy of your own scripture, clearly used, in your luggage. That's personal use under paragraph 9 and well under the three-copy limit. We'd leave behind:

Extra copies or tracts meant as gifts. Handing them to locals edges toward distribution, and missionary work is illegal.
Religious books bought in bulk abroad, including on the way back from Umrah or Hajj.
Downloaded sermons or lectures you don't know well, especially by preachers who may be banned in Uzbekistan. Your phone counts as a carrier of "materials".
Anything published by an organisation that isn't registered in Uzbekistan.

If an officer does take a book for review, stay polite, ask for a written record of what was taken, and contact your embassy if it isn't returned. Our customs rules guide covers the rest of what you can bring in, and the Tashkent airport guide covers the customs channels on arrival.

One small tangent: you may not need to pack anything. In 2018 the State Department reported that large state-run hotels furnished a limited number of rooms with Qurans and Bibles, that 1,000 Qurans had been made available to hotels, and that other holy books and prayer mats could be requested in advance. Its 2023 report says many hotels provide prayer mats and qibla indicators. Ask when you book.

A related 2025 law on children's religious lessons is covered in our piece on Articles 47 and 229-2.

Sources

This article is for general information and is not legal advice.