[8] Although Musavat espoused pan-Islamic ideology and its founder was sympathetic to the pan-Turkic movement, the party supported the tsarist regime during the First World War.

[9] Russia's social democrats received the foundation of Musavat in what they considered "imperial, orientalist terms, governed by the long-standing ideological categories of Muslim backwardness, treachery and religious fanaticism",[10] as a betrayal of historic proportions.

The founders of this ideology were Azerbaijani intellectuals of the Russian Empire, Ali bey Huseynzade and Ahmed-bey Agayev (known in Turkey as Ahmet Ağaoğlu), whose literary works used the linguistic unity of Turkic-speaking peoples as a factor for the national awakening of various nationalities inhabiting the Russian Empire.

The Menshevik and Social Revolutionary parties of Baku, both largely dependent upon the support of selected Georgian, Armenian and Jewish cadres, as well as upon the ethnic Russian workers, had long vilified the Muslims as "inert" and "unconscious".

[8] For them as well as for Bolsheviks, Constitutional Democrats and Denikinists, the Musavat, by default, was the false friend of social democracy, just a party of feudal "beks and khans".

Musavat leaders were largely well-educated professionals from the upper class echelons of Azeri society; its mass membership, most recruited between 1917 and 1919, comprised the poorly-educated Muslims underclass of Baku.

[8] After the Amnesty Act of 1913 dedicated to the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty, Mammed Amin Rasulzade returned to Azerbaijan and undertook party leadership.

"Until a certain time the Baku Committee of Muslim Social Organizations and the Musavat party successfully fulfilled the mission not only of representing the general national interests but also of guiding the Azerbaijani workers' democracy".

In accordance with the doctrine accepted by the Special Transcaucasian Committee (OZAKOM) the Georgian, Armenian, and Azerbaijani territories were authorised to rule independent domestic policy, leaving to the Provisional Russian government only foreign affairs, army and defense, and customs.

At this stage, Musavat started propagating the pan-Islamist and pan-Turkish ideas and aimed at the creation of a United Muslim State under the protection of Turkey (Ottoman Empire).

Under the Musavat's leadership, the name "Azerbaijan" was adopted; a name that prior to the proclamation of the ADR was solely used to refer to the adjacent region of contemporary northwestern Iran.

Due to a split between its nationalist and its liberal wing, the party failed to adopt a unified program at the October 1997 congress.

[29] The party has alleged that the Azerbaijani government has been seized by leading politicians of Kurdish, Talysh, Armenian or other ethnic groups of non-Turkic origin.