on the laws, memorization and conformity offered by Islam, but were focused on the inwardly and personal experience. Thus, many scholars argued for a syncretism between Orthodox-Islam, Sufism, and pre-IslamicTurkic religion. Recently, the syncretism-theory has been challenged. Scholars argued that an orthodox Islam simply did not existed during the Medieval period and has been a product of Modernization, thus there has been no strong distinction between Islam and Pre-Islamic Turkic beliefs when the first Turkic empires converted. First contact between shamanistic Turks and Islam took place during the Battle of Talas against the Chinese Tang dynasty. Many shamanistic beliefs were considered as genuinely Islamic by many average Muslims and are still prevalent today. Turkic Tengrism further influenced parts of Sufism and Folk Islam, especially Alevism with Bektashi Order, whose affiliation to Islam became disputed in the late Ottoman period. Modern Tengrists see themselves as separate from the Abrahamic religions. According to some modern believers, by praying to the god of Islam the Turkic peoples would give their energy to the Jews and not to themselves (Aron Atabek). It excludes the experiences of other nations, but offers Semitic history as if it were the history of all humanity. The principle of submission (both in Islam as well as in Christianity) is disregarded as one of the major failings. It allows rich people to abuse the ordinary people and makes human development stagnant. They advocate Turanism and abandonment of Islam as an Arab religion (Nihal Atsız and others). Prayer from the heart can only be in native language, not Arabic. On the contrary, others assert that Tengri is indeed synonymous with Allah and that Turkic ancestors did not leave their former belief behind, but simply accepted Allah as new expression for Tengri. Shoqan Walikhanov asserts, only the names but not the thoughts became Islamic. Thus, "Gök Tengri" (the "blue Sky") was called Allah, the "spirit of the earth" Shaitan, demons became div, peri or jinn, but the idea behind them remained shamanic. Aron Atabek draws attention to how the Islamization of the Kazakhs and other Turkic peoples was carried out: runic letters were destroyed, physically persecuted shamans, national musical instruments were burned and playing on them was condemned, etc. Muslim Turkic scholar Mahmud al-Kashgari, around the year 1075, whom he considered Tengrists as "infidel", offered this view: "The infidels — may God destroy them! — call the sky Tengri, also anything that