Husein Kavazović

In his speech in Switzerland made in May 2016, Kavazović said that it shouldn't be allowed for "Vlachs to govern Srebrenica", using a derogatory term for Serbs. He also said "Either we water ourselves with blood or we go to the polls every four years and confirm our sovereignty. Choose Bosniaks, whether we shed blood every 20-30 years or go to the polls. Our house is our obligation, and to preserve Srebrenica, especially. You have to defend yourself against them and the cemeteries. Stay awake for your homeland."

In 2012 the Islamic Community elected him to succeed to Mustafa Cerić as 14th Bosnian Grand Mufti since 1882; at the vote in the Gazi Husrev-beg Mosque, the main mosque of Sarajevo, he received 240 of 382 preferences. In his election program, Kavazović had pushed inter alia for the co-operation with other religious communities and a wider "incorporation of women into the work of the Islamic religious community".

He then worked as imam, khatib and muallim (lecturer) at the Islamic congregations of Srebrenik and Gradačac, before serving as mufti of Tuzla from 1993 to 2012. In the early 1990s he was also elected member of the Council of the Islamic Community of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Son of Hasan and Saima Kavazović, Husein attended primary schools in Gradačac and then enrolled at the Gazi Husrev-begova Medresa in Sarajevo, where he graduated in 1983. He left Yugoslavia to study Islamic law from 1985 to 1990 at the Al-Azhar University in Cairo, then came back to defend his master's thesis at the Faculty of Islamic Studies at the University of Sarajevo, in the field of Sharia law.

Husein Kavazović (born July 3, 1964) is a Bosnian Islamic cleric and since September 2012 the Grand Mufti (Reis-ul-Ulema) of Bosnia and Herzegovina, after having been Mufti of Tuzla.