In November 1914 the fatwas issued by the Shaykh ül Islam Hayri
Efendi, in which Muslims were called upon to take up arms against
those who attacked Islam, who seized and looted Muslim countries and
who made the Muslim populations captive, were read to an audience of
allegedly almost 100,000 Muslims at the Fatih Mosque in Istanbul.
In the very first of these fatwas it becomes clear who should get
engaged in the struggle against the attackers: “all Muslims, … young
and old, cavalry and infantry, … Muslims from anywhere”. Their
contribution to the struggle, moreover, should be not just “financial”
but also “physical.”
