Abstract
The present study is trying to analyzed current trends of Islam in the region, the relation between so-called traditional forms of Islam and its more puritanic forms and the mutual influence of salafism and socio-political situation. Generally speaking, the USSR era witnessed a significant decline of Islamic knowledge.
On the contrary, the post-Soviet period was marked by indisputable revival of religious consciousness in a broad sense, often hand in hand with heightened ethnopolitical awareness. Since the 1990s, the region witnessed growing presence of so-called wahhabists, the term which in fact included a wide spectrum of salafi movements from apolitical islamic purists to radical jihadists.
This simulated debate, what is "culturally compatible" Islam and it also brought into the limelight rising popularity of salafi ideas for some parts of society.