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Other authors named Alija:
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Vote: | All in all this is a difficult political struggle which will go on for years, in which our people won't die anymore; I'm not sure how much we will be able to win, but I'm certain that we won't loose anything that we have now. |
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Vote: | As far as the sovereignty of Bosnia-Hercegovina is concerned we agreed to have limited sovereignty for a limited time and that is clear from the Dayton Agreement. |
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Vote: | Bosnia is a complicated country: three religions, three nations and those "others". Nationalism is strong in all three nations; in two of them there are a lot of racism, chauvinism, separatism; and now we are supposed to make a state out of that. |
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Vote: | I believe that the people, instead of pretty lies, should be told the truth, no matter how ugly it may be. What can we do, destiny hasn't been kind to us; but, with the help of God, we will prevail. |
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Vote: | In these negotiations we are not a helpless object, although great world powers are involved. We play an active role and try to influence our destiny; we have our own trump cards and we use them. |
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Vote: | Our goal: the Islamization of Muslims. Our methods: to believe and to struggle. |
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Vote: | The international community is pushing things forward in Bosnia... but it is doing it at expense of the Muslim people. I feel it as an injustice, these are the things that I cannot live with. |
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Vote: | We Bosniaks would for sure fight for integrity of Bosnia. |
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Biography
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Alija Izetbegović (August 8, 1925 - October 19, 2003) was a Bosnian Muslim activist, philosopher, and politician, president of Bosnia and Herzegovina from 1990 to 1996 and member of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina from 1996 to 2000, and author of several books, most notably Islam Between East and West. He was a controversial figure in the former Yugoslavia and was often denounced by Serb and Croat politicians for his alleged support for Islamic fundamentalism. Many aspects of Izetbegović's life remain strongly disputed between all three sides in the Bosnian War and his record has come under intense scrutiny, particularly in the light of war crimes allegations.
Izetbegović as dissident and Muslim activist
Izetbegović was born in the northern Bosnian town of Bosanski Šamac, one of five children born to a distinguished but impoverished family descended from former Ottoman aristocrats from Belgrade who moved to Bosnia after Serbia gained independence from the Ottoman Empire. His grandfather, Alija, was the mayor of Bosanski Samac. His father, an accountant, declared bankruptcy in 1927 and the family moved to Sarajevo. Izetbegović became closely involved in Bosnian Muslim society as he grew up during the 1930s and 1940s. However, he received a secular education, eventually graduating from law school in Sarajevo.
In 1941, when Izetbegović was 16, Nazi Germany invaded Yugoslavia and incorporated Bosnia into the "Independent State of Croatia" ruled by the fascist Ustase movement. The largely Croatian Ustase, the Serbian Chetniks and the Communist partisans of Josip Broz Tito all vied for the support of Bosnia's Muslims.
During the war, Izetbegović joined the Young Muslims (Mladi muslimani), an organisation headed by the conservative cleric Mehmed Handžić. It advocated a "purer" form of Islam and could be described as a Bosniak nationalist movement. As such, while it was not officially pro-fascist in orientation, the Young Muslims generally supported the Nazi/Ustase efforts to promote a Bosniak national identity in opposition to the Chetnik and Partisan guerrillas.
Immediately after the war, Tito's government undertook a severe crackdown on ethnic, religious and non-Communist political activity, executing tens of thousands and imprisoning hundreds of thousands more. Izetbegović was caught in the net in 1946: he had joined with a fellow Muslim activist, Nedžib Šaćirbegović, to publish a dissident Islamic journal entitled Mudžahid (from the Arabic mujahid, in English Mujahideen, meaning "Soldier of God"). This was eventually shut down by the Yugoslav secret police and its publishers imprisoned. Izetbegović himself was sentenced to prison for three years for anti-communist activities, including "statements against the Soviet Union". He was released in 1949 and began studying at the University of Sarajevo where he gained a BS in Law in 1956. He worked for most of the next 30 years as a lawyer, but continued to promote an essentially Bosniak and Islamic viewpoint, publishing a number of dissident works during this period.
One of Izetbegović's most consistent concerns as a dissident, and later as President, related to the casual way in which Islam was practised in Yugoslavia and campaigned for a more purist approach. He argued that Bosnia's Muslims needed to be more rigorous in their practice of Islam, pointing out that their Bosniak identity was defined by their Islamic adherence. He warned that if they did not make more of an effort to differentiate themselves, they would risk being submerged by Croatian and Serbian nationalism. Much of his activity during his years as a dissident concerned attempts to define (or perhaps redefine) what it meant to be a Yugoslav Muslim.
In 1970, Izetbegović published a manifesto entitled The Islamic Declaration, a work which contributed greatly to his later portrayal as an Islamic fundamentalist. He highlighted the decayed state of Islam and called for an religious and political regeneration across the Muslim world, although the book made no reference to Bosnia. In two particularly controversial passages, he declared that "there can be neither peace nor coexistence between the Islamic faith and non-Islamic social and political institutions" and that "the Islamic movement must and can, take over political power as soon as it is morally and numerically so strong that it can not only destroy the existing non-Islamic power, but also to build up a new Islamic one". He promoted the idea of a "united Islamic community" in which non-Muslims would have their rights guaranteed.
From an Islamic point of view, this was nothing new - many similar manifestos were circulating in the Muslim countries - and it was very much in accordance with traditional Qur'anic principles. It was also not a programme of Islamic fundamentalism in a sense that is generally understood by fundamentalists themselves: Izetbegović explicitly accepted innovation and the "achievements of Euro-American civilization." He spoke approvingly of the high educational and economic standards prevailing in the West and urged that "instead of hating the West, let us proclaim cooperation instead of confrontation." However, his arguments were fundamentally at odds with both the anti-nationalist ideology of Communist Yugoslavia and with the later nationalist sentiment in Croatia and Serbia, which emphasized both nations' Christian heritage. Islam was widely perceived by non-Bosniak Yugoslavs as an alien influence introduced under the Turkish occupation, so Izetbegović's call for an Islamic revival came to be seen as a threat by many in the countries' Catholic and Orthodox communities.
Izetbegović wrote what is generally regarded as his major work, Islam Between East and West, in 1980. He declared that this was not a "book of theology" but a serious attempt to define the "place of Islam in the general spectrum of ideas." Like The Islamic Declaration, it focused on the importance of Islam and the need to serve God; it consisted primarily of a dialectical argument placing Islam as the synthesis of two opposing poles in human ideals, which he placed under the headings of "Moses" and "Jesus". Unfortunately for Izetbegović, its appearance coincided with a spate of nationalist unrest following the death of Tito, which resulted in a widespread crackdown on nationalists and dissidents across Yugoslavia. Nationalists from many parts of Yugoslavia were tried and imprisoned for activities deemed harmful to Yugoslav "brotherhood and unity."
In April 1983, Izetbegović and twelve other Muslim activists including Melika Salihbegović and Hasan Čengić were tried before a Bosnian court for a variety of offences, principally "hostile activity inspired by Muslim nationalism", "association for purposes of hostile activity" and "hostile propaganda." Specifically, the defendants were accused of intending to create "an ethnically pure Muslim Bosnia-Herzegovina," an assertion based chiefly on Izetbegović's Islamic Declaration. Izetbegović was further accused of organizing a visit to a Muslim congress in Iran. All of those tried were convicted and Izetbegović was sentenced to 14 years in prison. The verdict was strongly criticised by Western human rights organisations, including Amnesty International and Helsinki Watch, which pointed out that the accused were not charged with either using or advocating violence. The following May, the Bosnian Supreme Court conceded the point with an announcement that "some of the actions of the accused ... did not have the characteristics of criminal acts" and reduced Izetbegović's sentence to 12 years. He was pardoned in 1988 as communist rule faltered and was released from prison, but not before he had suffered serious and lasting damage to his health. The trial had another unfortunate consequence: it was widely perceived within Yugoslavia as a trial of Islam as a political system, contributing to a growing paranoia about the trustworthiness of the country's Muslims. Nationalist politicians were to capitalise on this in the 1990s as Yugoslavia descended into civil war. (http://www.ciaonet.org/conf/iec03/iec03_04-96.html)
...(more on Wikipedia)
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This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Alija Izetbegovic".
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