Husein Kavazović

Biography

Son of Hasan and Saima Kavazović, Husein attended primary schools in Gradačac and then enrolled at the Gazi Husrev Bey's Madrasa 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.

Kavazović 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 in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

In 2012, the Islamic Community elected Kavazović to succeed Mustafa Cerić as the Bosnian Grand Mufti; 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".

Under an agreement, Kavazović was suggested to also serve as Grand Mufti of Hungary.

He speaks Bosnian, Arabic and English.