In 1909, the Islamist reformer, Rashid Rida, published a response to a question about validity of Muslim religious rites in Bosnia Herzegovina, and the necessity of migration to the Ottoman domains in light of the Habsburg occupation of this former Ottoman province. His was yet another important ruling in a discussion that already lasted for several decades and implicated religious decrees, political proclamations, imperial policies, and deliberations among intellectuals. These debates touched upon issues that increasingly concerned Muslims in the nineteenth and twentieth century: whether Islamic religious rites and practices should be related to the status of the state, the notion of sultan-caliph’s political protection of Muslims worldwide, or whether non-Muslim rule over Muslims necessitated migration. The reasons for Muslim migration from Bosnia Herzegovina after the Habsburg occupation varied from economic and social to political. However, those promoting or discouraging migration exclusively used religious reasoning, rhetoric, and symbolism. In this paper, I analyze the debates about migration from Bosnia Herzegovina among the ulema, intellectuals and notables; as well as the discrepancy between the alleged Ottoman Pan-Islam and the actual state policies regarding migration. Drawing on religious rulings, popular publications, and archival material in the Ottoman Empire and Bosnia, I analyze the many aspects of sovereignty and authority, and abstract notions of loyalty and sentiment intersecting in the issue of migration.