The Jadid movement or Jadidism was a Turco-Islamic modernist political, religious, and cultural movement in the Russian Empire in the late 19th and early 20th century. They normally referred to themselves by the Tatar terms Taraqqiparvarlar ("progressives"), Ziyalilar ("intellectuals"), or simply Yäşlär/Yoshlar ("youth"). The Jadid movement advocated for an Islamic social and cultural reformation through the revival of pristine Islamic beliefs and teachings, while simultaneously engaging with modernity. Jadids maintained that Muslim peoples in Tsarist Russia had entered a period of moral and societal decay that could only be rectified by the acquisition of a new kind of knowledge and modernist, European-modeled cultural reform.

Modern technologies of communication and transportation such as telegraph, printing press, postal system, and railways, as well as the spread of Islamic literature through print media such as periodicals, journals, newspapers, etc. played a major role in dissemination of Jadid ideals in Central Asia. Although there were substantial ideological differences within the movement, Jadids were marked by their widespread use of print media in promoting their messages and advocacy of the Usul-i Jadid or "new method" of teaching in the maktab of the empire, from which the term "Jadidism" is derived. As per their Usul-i Jadid system of education, the Jadids established an enterprising institutions of schools that taught a standardized, disciplined curriculum to all Muslims across Central Asia. The new curriculum comprised both religious education and material sciences that would be resourceful for the community in tackling the modern-day challenges.

A leading figure in the efforts to reform education was the Crimean Tatar intellectual, educator, publisher, and politician Ismail Gasprinsky (1851–1914). Intellectuals such as Mahmud Khoja Behbudiy, author of the famous play The Patricide and founder of one of Turkestan's first Jadid schools, carried Gasprinsky's ideas back to Central Asia. Anti-colonial discourse constituted a major aspect of the Jadid movement; leaders like Gasprinskii promoted anti-Russian political activism. Following the defeat and collapse of the Ottoman Empire in the aftermath of World War I, the Jadids extended their anti-colonial critiques against the Allied great powers like the British and other Western European empires. Jadid members were recognized and honored in Uzbekistan after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Jadid thought often carried distinctly anti-clerical sentiment. Many members of the Muslim clergy opposed the Jadid's programs and ideologies, decrying them as un-Islamic, heretical innovations. Many Jadids saw these "Qadimists" (proponents of the old ways) not only as inhibitors of modern reform but also as corrupt, self-interested elites whose authority lay not in the Islamic faith as dictated by the Quran, ḥadīth literature, and sunnah, but rather in local tradition that were both inimical to "authentic" Islam and harmful to society. In his Arabic publication al-Nahḍah ("the Awakening"), the Crimean Tatar educator and intellectual Ismail Gasprinsky published satirical cartoons in Cairo, British-ruled Egypt that depict Muslim clerics, such as mullahs and sheikhs, as rapacious and lustful figures who prevented Muslim women from taking their rightful place as social equals and exploited the goodwill and trust of lay Turks.

Jadids asserted that the Ulama as a class were necessary for the enlightenment and preservation of the Turkic community, but they simultaneously declared Ulama who did not share their vision of reform to be unacquainted with authentic knowledge of Islam. Inevitably, those who opposed their modernist project were decried as motivated by self-interest rather than a desire to uplift their fellow Turks. Sufi mystics received an even more scathing indictment. Jadids saw the Ulama and the Sufis not as pillars of Islamic principals, but rather as proponents of a popular, unorthodox form of Islam that was hostile to both modernization and authentic Islamic tradition. Central Asian Jadids accused their leaders of permitting the moral decay of Islamic societies, as seen in the prevalence of alcoholism, pederasty, polygamy, and gender discrimination among Muslims, while simultaneously cooperating with Russian officials to cement their authority as elites.

Despite their anti-clericalism, the Jadids often had much in common with the Qadimists. Many of them were educated in traditional maktab and madrassas, and came from privileged families. As historian Adeeb Khalid asserts, Jadids and the Qadimist Ulama were essentially engaged in a battle over what values should project onto Central Asian culture. Jadids and Qadimists both sought to assert their own cultural values, with one group drawing its strategic strength from its relationship to modern forms of social organization and media and the other from its position as champion of an existing way of life in which it already occupied stations of authority.

One of the Jadid's principal aims was educational reform. They wanted to create new schools that would teach quite differently from the maktabs, or primary schools, that existed throughout the Turkic areas of the Russian empire. The Jadids saw the traditional education system as "the clearest sign of stagnation, if not the degeneracy, of Central Asia." They felt that reforming the education system was the best way to reinvigorate a Turkic society ruled by outsiders. They criticized the maktabs' emphasis on memorization of religious texts rather than on explanation of those texts or on written language. Khalid refers to the memoirs of the Tajik Jadid Sadriddin Ayni, who attended a maktab in the 1890s; Ayni explained that he learned the Arabic alphabet as an aid to memorization but could not read unless he had already memorized the text in question.

The traditional education system was not the only option for Central Asian students, but it was far more popular than the alternative. Beginning in 1884, the tsarist government in Turkestan established "Russo-native" schools. They combined Russian language and history lessons with maktab-like instruction by native teachers. Many of the native teachers were Jadids, but the Russian schools did not reach a wide enough segment of the population to create the cultural reinvigoration the Jadids desired. Despite the Russian governor-general's assurances that students would learn all the same lessons they could expect from a maktab, very few children attended Russian schools. In 1916, for example, less than 300 Turks attended Russian higher primary schools in Central Asia.