After the assassination of the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo and his wife Sophie, there was a persecution of the Serb population, especially those on the border with Serbia and Montenegro.
The first one to publicly stand up against such policy and such actions was the Reis ul-Ulema at the time, Džemaludin Čaušević. Already on July 4, 1914 he urged Bosniaks, advising “every Muslim to sustain from teasing and provoking, and especially to sustain from the destroying of property, an act that the God does not like”.
Reis Čaušević expanded his appeal and published it in the Sarajevo aljamiado paper “Jeni mishab” (The New Torch”) as the “The Proclamation for Muslims” on July 24, 1914.
Apart from Reis Čaušević, numerous other Bosniak political, religious and cultural leaders and ordinary people stood up with similar appeals against the persecution of Serbs, as long as it was possible to do it in one of the Sarajevo papers.
(Source: nap.ba/photo: krupljani.ba)
