Sheikh-l-Islam Mustafa Hayri Efendi and fatwa on big jihad

Abstract

UDK: 929 Hajri M.

The article presents a brief review of the life of sheikh-l-Islam, Mustafa Hayri Efendi (1867-1921), who happened to be the head of the Ottoman Meshihat at the time of the beginning of the First World War with an emphasis on his fatwa on big jihad. In 1914, when the Ottoman Empire joined the alliance of Germany and Austria–Hungary against Russia, France and England, he issued a fatwa about the great jihad.   Since the Ottoman Empire was still, though in its last years only formally, a state managed by the rule of the Shariah, it was required of the religious head of the state, sheikh-l-Islam, to issue a fatwa regarding the jihad. The fatwa obligates all the Muslims of the Muslim world, thus including the Bosniaks, against the enemy of the Ottoman Empire. The religious head of the Muslims in Bosnia and Herzegovina at the time was Džemaluddin-ef. Čaušević. Fatwa was read in public in Sarajevo, on December 11, 1914, before over 3000 people after the jummah salah, in Gazi Husrev-bey’s mosque, and before the troops of the Austro-Hungarian army in Bosnia and Herzegovina in March 1915.