This paper discusses prevailing representations in social science studies on the successor states of the Soviet Union, as well as on the ethnic fringe of the Russian Federation. Whereas the critique of Orientalism has led, over the past twenty years, to a more historical and nuanced approach to understanding Islamic societies, post-Soviet Studies tend to uncritically incorporate and apply Orientalist, static and over-deterministic portrayals of Islam. In reviewing the basic critiques of Orientalism, particular attention is paid to how ‘regions and their boundaries are constructed through scholarship. Comparing scholarly and popular notions of ‘the Orient’, ‘the Balkans’, ‘Central Asia’ and ‘the Islamic world’, highlights the similarities and differences of these ‘imaginative geographis’ and the ways in which they shape perceptions of the societies and peoples of these regions. Nationalism, ethnic identification and Islamic beliefs are all offered as major factors embroiling these regions in political and armed conflict, and preventing them from integrating into the global economy and polity. This paper argues that the focus on Islam, as both the cause and the explanation of conflict in these regions, is as much a result of the disorder in post-Soviet Studies as of real political struggles taking place. The implications of conceptually assimilating these regions into the ‘Islamic World Order’ need to be carefully considered.