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Shrines fill the Eurasian land mass. They can be found from Turkey in the west to China in the east, from the Arctic Circle in the north to Afghanistan in the south. Between town and country, they can consist of full-scale architectural complexes, or they may compose no more than an open field, a pile of stones, a tree, or a small mausoleum. They have been at the centers and peripheries of almost every major religious tradition of the region: Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism. Yet in the formerly socialist world, these places of pilgrimage have something even more in common: they were often cast as the last bastions of religious observance when churches, mosques, temples, and synagogues were sent crashing to the ground in rapid succession across the twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the significance and role that Islam plays in defining the Chechen national identity. Chechnya's embrace of Islam, the author states, developed during a period of colonization as Chechens struggled to stop the Russians from encroaching on their land. Other topics include the 80 years Chechens spent under Soviet rule after the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, the geographic isolation of the Caucasus Mountains, and the Chechen victory over the Russian Federation during the 1994-1996 war.