GALIJAŠEVIĆ: DESTRUCTIVE AND HARMFUL ACTIONS OF THE PROMOTER OF RADICAL POLITICAL ISLAM, ALIJA IZETBEGOVIĆ, ON PEACE IN BiH

SARAJEVO, APRIL 4 /SRNA/ - Alija Izetbegović, in various ways and through many activities on the domestic and international level, preached and advocated the ideas of political radical Islam for almost half a century, first secretly and then publicly, counter-terrorism expert Dževad Galijašević told SRNA.

Galijašević emphasized that through political practice and Islamist theory, his idea of the emergence and development of an Islamic society in a "hostile-Christian environment" crystallized as an important step in building the Islamic State in the territory of Yugoslavia, but which would be part of a much broader concept of a world caliphate.

“Pursuing his goals, Alija did everything he could to first bring about war in BiH, which he himself confirmed with his statement, which every normal person was disgusted by, that he would `sacrifice peace for a sovereign and independent BiH,` thus practically declaring war on the Serbs and all those who were in favor of the survival of Yugoslavia, in order to justify his evil intention to acquire weapons and then request the help of Islamic countries with the aim of creating a unitary BiH.

The mujahideen arrived from all over the world. Some fought, some preached radical Islam, the majority did both, but the real goal of their overall actions was completely clear - it is even clearer today - and that was to fundamentally change the Muslims in BiH of that time, as well as the foundations of the political system and social order of BiH itself, through an aggressive process of Islamization," Galijašević recalled.

That happened in the end, he says, and little "civility" that existed in BiH cowered before the elements of Islamization, and then disappeared in the flames of war and the social divisions that the war brought.

On the other hand, the war brought unity of Muslims that Izetbegović had already planned and written in his book called “Islamic Declaration”: "There is no historical goal unless it contradicts natural or historical facts that people could not achieve by common will and common work. A utopia that is believed in and worked for ceases to be a utopia. And our weaklings neither can believe nor will they work, and therein lies the explanation for their degrading `realism`. When they say that Muslim unity is a dream that cannot be realized, they are in fact only expressing the impotence they feel themselves.

This impossibility is not in the world, but in their hearts. The idea of the unity of all Muslims is not anyone's invention, nor is it the beautiful wish of this or that reformer or ideologist. It was founded by the Quran itself with the famous motto `Muslims are brothers,` and Islam has continuously maintained it in the consciousness of people through joint fasting, pilgrimage to Mecca and the Kaaba as a unique spiritual center, creating in this way a constant and uniform sense of belonging to the community throughout the Muslim world.”

Galijašević pointed out that this Muslim community, hinted at by Alija Izetbegović, forged by ideological and religious violence, in war and peace, manifested itself in various ways - first through the joint struggle of several thousand so-called "holy warriors," or mujahideen from all Islamic countries in the ranks of the Bosniak army in the early 1990s, and then in other countries and other wars.

He also recalled that several hundred Muslims from BiH fought for the Islamic State, Al-Qaeda and Jabhat al-Nusra.

ALIJA IZETBEGOVIĆ, REPRESENTATIVE OF POLITICAL ISLAM IN BiH

Alija Izetbegović was born in 1925 and died in 2003. He represented a radical, yet latent, advocate of political Islam, known for the political ideas expressed in the "Islamic Declaration" and as the founder of the SDA.

The leader of the Serbian Renewal Movement Vuk Drašković presented information that Alija Izetbegović is of Serbian origin and that his roots originate from Belgrade, from which his family fled to the then Bosanski Šamac, after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

Drašković said that Alija Izetbegović personally admitted this to him.

In his early years, Izetbegović was ostensibly engaged in issues of affirming the rights of Muslims to their faith. At the age of 16, he started the organization "Young Muslims". During World War II, he was mainly engaged in pro-fascist and destructive activities that put him in the radical circle gathered around Husein Effendi Đoza and Mustafa Busuladžić.

Because of those activities, he was arrested and convicted in 1946 for significant activity in founding the Islamic journal "Mujahid", which published general topics about Islam, and cooperation with radical Islamist and Nazi circles in occupied BiH.

During World War II, he worked for Ustasha government of Nazi NDH, to whom, as a member of the "Young Muslims" organization, he reported young Sarajevo communists and prominent people from Sarajevo, regardless of their nationality.

According to Alija's peers and neighbors in Sarajevo, the victims of Alija's denunciations in World War II were arrested and deported to the infamous Ustasha camp Jasenovac, from which they never returned to Sarajevo.

A witness of the time and former Partisan officer Adil Zulfikarpašić spoke about that back in 2005, without fear of possible reprisals from the authorities and the SDA in Sarajevo, who mockingly rejected the claims that appeared in the BiH public that Alija was in the Partisans in the last months of World War II.

"This incredible lie was spread by the writer Abdullah Sidran, while he was editing Alija's biography. They were connected by the arrests in the 1980s. So, it is a lie that the writer thought Alija needed in the future when attempts were made to turn his name and his role into a myth. The truth is that the communist authorities, in late 1945 and early 1946, sent Alija to serve his military service in the newly created JNA. If he had been in the Partisans, the authorities would certainly not have arrested him in 1946 and convicted him as a member of the `Young Muslims,`" Zulfikarpašić said.

Galijašević said that during the 1990s, immediately after winning power in the first multi-party elections, Alija Izetbegović, the "Young Muslims" and the SDA leadership opened direct channels of communication and cooperation with the "Muslim Brotherhood" and the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

One of the Izetbegović’s followers and a member of “Young Muslims,” after which the main bypass in the so-called multi-ethnic Sarajevo is named today and whose goal was to establish an Islamic order in BiH, Ismet Kasumagić, who was convicted in a 1983 trial, announced that together with Omer Behmen, another convicted member of "Young Muslims," at the request of Alija Izetbegović himself, he met with representatives of the "Muslim Brotherhood" during his specialization in England.

"This so-called specialization of the `Young Muslims,` carried out in England, certainly had a significant impact on many events in the war of the 1990s and in BiH, in which the British and their services played a hostile role, first towards the Serbs, and then towards any possible agreement between Serbs and Muslims, which was disastrous for the future of the country," Galijašević pointed out.

At the meeting with the "Muslim Brotherhood" from Egypt, Turkey and Syria, which Kasumagić mentions, it was determined that the SDA and "the whole of Bosnia" have the same ideological commitments, and Kasumagić defines them as follows: "We look at the `Muslim Brotherhood` and with great respect and with much sympathy, we follow their efforts to make the Arab countries Islamic republics and to unite in a pan-Islamic mind, exactly as advocated in our `Islamic Declaration.`"

Galijašević pointed out that this sentence is undoubtedly the most important thing to understand if one wants to talk about Alija and his destructive and harmful effects on the peace and stability of BiH today.