Can you possibly elaborate on this? Are you saying these women are supporters of the pro-Russian government? So the pro-Russian groups in Chechnya are trying to encourage Islamism as a means of discouraging Islamists? That's quite interesting.

Yes, exactly that. On the one hand, there are Salafi Islamists, who constantly accuse the government of not being true Muslims and use general degradation of mores as an obvious evidence of that, so the government goes out on a limb trying to appear more Islamic than the Islamists themselves. On the other hand, they want to push some sort of an Islam that they can use the way Saudis and Iran use their respective flavors. In case of Chechnya it means Sufi Islam mixed with local traditions (they even call it "traditional Islam"). Though the only thing that makes you a "traditional Muslim" as oppose to a bad non-traditional one is whether or not you support the government. As long as you don't question the sainthood of the rulers you are a good traditional Muslim.

That's what I thought. I read on Wikipedia that the traditional folk religion of Chechnya was quite popular until a couple of centuries ago and is undergoing some kind of underground revival. Is that true? I also imagine that Chechens aren't very religious traditionally...or is that incorrect?

Not exactly. Islam was brought to Chechnya by preachers of Naqshbandi branch of Sufi Islam, which itself is an interesting sect. The adoption was slow and gradual, during which a lot of pagan elements would mix into the new religion. Since the connection to the Islamic world wasn't strong, as I said before, it would allow these pagan elements to remain in the religion long enough to be viewed as intrinsically Islamic. For example, Chechens used to do war dance, a collective dance where through chanting and collective rhythmic movement men would go into trance, when they adopted Islam they just began to chant something resembling Shahada and now everyone considers that dance to be an Islamic ritual zikr. A more obvious example: the highest god of the Chechen pantheon was called Dela and today it's used as a Chechen translation for Allah, imagine Scandinavians calling the God Odin. Sharia was never adopted even in slightest, even when it was formally proclaimed it was some 90% based on local traditional law - adat. Lashing, for example, is used in Sharia yet absolutely unacceptable in Chechen tradition hence in adat, you better kill a man than lash him. Marrying a cousin is a absolute taboo, small clans don't allow marrying inside a clan, let alone relatives. Touching a woman for a man can result either in marrying her (if it was accidental and the woman agrees) or death for the man (in every other case), generally there is no minor penalties when the honor is involved. As you can see, the traditional Sharia would have a lot of problems justifying these laws, so Sharia was only involved when clans needed to settle long standing blood feuds where calling for Islamic forgiveness and brotherhood was in order.

Not knowing Arabic and weak ties to the Islamic world also meant that the general public had poor grasp of even the basics. Today, if you ask who the Prophet was quarter of Chechens above 40 might say that he was a Chechen guy who said to do good and avoid evil, and half of those might add that he lived in their village not a hundred years ago. If you tell them that they are wrong or otherwise imply that they are not Muslims, they'll happily break your leg, for being called a Muslim is big deal and means that they are good Chechens and not Russians. So, it's not paganism reviving, it's just they simply didn't know enough about Islam to begin with. Most of them are puzzled by the recent Shia/Sunni conflict in the ME, because they had no idea that Shias existed at all. Chechens like the moral (and more so the moralistic) basis of Islam, its respect for honor and demand for justice, but most importantly the fact that Russians don't like it, beyond that, there is little it can offer.

Still, there is the pious minority, which is slowly turning into the pious majority among the younger generations who take Islam seriously and either actively try to reconcile it with their notions of the traditions and "Chechenness", or drop traditions altogether to become the true, cosmopolitan, Muslims, which usually means they join various Islamist movements and effectively seize to exist for the general Chechen society.