Musa Jarullah Bigiev (sometimes known as Luther of Islam) (born c. 1870 – c. 1875[1][2] in Novocherkassk,[3] Russian Empire – 28 October 1949 in Cairo, Egypt) was a Tatar Hanafi Maturidi[4][5] scholar, theologian philosopher, publicist and one of the leaders of the Jadid movement.

[16] Bigiev spent most of his youth studying at madrasas in Kazan, Bukhara, Samarkand, Mecca, Medina, Cairo (where he attended the Dar al-Ifta al-Misriyyah and was educated by Shayk Muhammad Bakhit al-Muti'i), Damascus, Istanbul and Uttar Pradesh in India, where he studied Sanskrit and the Mahabharata.

He also held lectures at the city's philanthropic association (Orenburg Jäm'iyät-i Khayriyäsi) and became secretary of the fourth Muslim congress in 1914.

After his publications in Rizaeddin bin Fakhreddins journal Shura drew immense criticism from the local Ulama, he left Orenburg.

[3] Even after the takeover by the Soviets, he saw the new regime as a potential ally against what he perceived to be the primary enemy of the Muslims of the world – the British Empire.

During the course of the Russian Civil War, Bigiev toured the Volga region together with Abdul Hafiz Mohamed Barakatullah in order to mobilize the Muslim population for military service against the British.

[3] His arrest provoked a storm of indignation; for example, the Tatars of Finland requested the assistance of the Turkish government, which at that time was on friendly terms with the new Soviet regime.

The political climate had worsened harshly; Bigiev witnessed the League of Militant Atheists and was personally forbidden to leave the country.

In 1931, he held a speech at the World Islamic Congress in Jerusalem, where he praised Finland for its friendly attitude towards Muslim émigrés from Russia.

After the outbreak of World War II in 1939, Bigiev tried to reach Afghanistan again, but was arrested by British authorities in Peshawar without any charge.

While Bigiev left "a deep imprint on the history of the reformed madrasas and the Muslim press of Russia in the 1910s",[17] his work and even his name are largely forgotten today.

In 2007, as a part of the project Ijma' – Concord, the Kunstkamera (Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography) of the Russian Academy of Sciences sponsored the documentary The manuscript and the Fate about Bigievs life, with a script written by the Orientalist Jefim A.

[18] A year later, in 2008, the documentary And the moon has split, directed by B. Baishev, was awarded a special prize "for the contribution to Islamic Enlightenment" at the fourth Golden Minbar International Film Festival.

While he was one of the leading members of Jadidism, Bigievs provocative nature led to opposition not only from the Kadimists (nearly all issues of the Qadimist journal Din vä Ma'ishät include one or more articles written directly against him), but also from fellow reformers.

[16] Bigiev has also been described as one of "the most notorious Sunnite polemicists against Shiism in the 20th century", along with such figures as Muhibb-ud-Deen Al-Khatib and Ehsan Elahi Zaheer.

In these works, Bigiev claims that during his travels in Iraq and Iran he had not met even one Shia individual who knew the Quran to a satisfactory level.