Sheikh Mahmud Effendi: Pakistanis mourn death of Naqshbandi scholar in Turkey
Islamabad: Pakistanis are mourning the death of Turkish Islamic scholar Sheikh Mahmud Effendi.
Effendi, real name Mahmut Ustaosmanoğlu, died at the age of 92 on Wednesday.
Former prime minister Imran Khan said the Sheikh’s death is a great loss for the Muslim Ummah.
Pakistan’s top Islamic scholars have expressed deep sorrow over the passing away of Sheikh Effendi, the leader of the influential İsmailağa jamia of the Naqshbandi-Khalidiyya Ṭarīqah centred in Çarşamba, Istanbul.
Maulana Fazlur Rehman, the leader of Pakistan’s Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam party, issued a statement to express condolence over the demise of the Sheikh.
In an Urdu language statement, the Maulana said that the demise of Sheikh Mahmud Effendi was a huge loss for Turkey and the entire Islamic world.
He said that the Sheikh was the soul of the Naqshbandi order and the symbol of the revival of Islamic education in Turkey after the end of the Ottoman Empire.
In 1952, Ustaosmanoğlu met Ahıskalı Ali Haydar Efendi (Gürbüzler), a Naqshbandi sheikh who became his murshid. Ali Haydar Efendi appointed him as the imam of the İsmailağa Mosque in 1954. By the year 1960, Ustaosmanoğlu’s life had its greatest turn after Ali Haydar Efendi’s demise and he became the leader of the path (tariqa). In 1996, he retired as the imam of the İsmailağa Musjid.