Alija Izetbegovic’s Biography

Alija Izetbegovic was born on 8 August 1925 in Bosanski Samac in a reputable bey family. Two years after Alija’s birth, his father Mustafa, a tradesman by profession, decided to move to Sarajevo with his nine-member family. He had two sons from a previous marriage and three daughters and two sons from his marriage to Alija’s mother Hiba. Alija was their fifth child.

Izetbegovic attended Sarajevo First Grammar School for Boys, and even then, he began to face the dilemmas of the “social justice and injustice” on one hand, and faith in God on the other. He read a lot, and the literary and philosophical works he read in the final years of grammar school played an important role in his education. In literature, these were Dostoyevsky’s novels and in philosophy, The Decline of the West by Oswald Spengler and Creative Evolution by Henri Bergson. Yet, after a period of youthful dilemmas and wanderings, he returned to the “new-found faith” that he never lost again.

Shortly after leaving prison in 1949, Izetbegovic, although more interested in law, enrolled in the agronomy studies and started a family. For the next ten years, he worked on construction sites, mostly in Montenegro where he managed the construction of the “Perucica” Hydro Power Plant near Nikšić for seven years. He studied and supported his family at the same time. He left Agronomy on the third year and enrolled in Law studies where he graduated within two years, in 1956. In the meantime, he had three children – two daughters and a son.

As a lawyer, Izetbegovic continued to work in the construction sector (NISKOGRADNJA, PUT, IPSA, CONSULTING). He passed the bar exam but did not practice law professionally. In a wide range of interests – from following space programs, political events in the world and the country, the development of science and technology, to learning foreign languages, but also hobbies such as chess – Islam and the state of the Muslim nations remained a focus of Izetbegovic’s attention. He also wrote and published (under the pseudonym L.S.B. – composed of the initial letters of the names of his daughters and son), several articles on that particular subject (later compiled under the title “Problems of Islamic Revival”), and in 1969 he made a draft of the “Islamic Declaration”, which he completed and released in 1970. This small text (about 40 pages,) relating to the Muslim world “from Morocco to Indonesia” aroused quite a lot of interest only after the “Sarajevo Trial” in 1983. Although the prosecution did not offer any valid evidence, Izetbegovic was convicted of the so-called “Islamic fundamentalism” and “association to overthrow the constitutional order”.

The book “Islam between East and West” was published in English in the United States in 1984 and in Bosnian in Belgrade in 1988, while Izetbegovic was still in prison. In the book, which has been translated into at least nine languages, the author deals with Islam and its place in the modern world, while opening up a series of topics and questions regarding mankind in general. Although the prosecution used the text of the “Islamic Declaration” in the staged trial against Izetbegovic, he believed that, in fact, the book “Islam between East and West” was the reason for his arrest.

During his second term in prison, Izetbegovic began writing down notes. They were reflections on life and destiny, religion and politics, the read works and their authors. At the end, there were thirteen small A5 notebooks, which Izetbegovic edited and published in 1999 under the title “My Escape to Freedom”.

In prison, Izetbegovic continued his struggle to reduce his sentence. He wrote to the Federal Court of the SFRY (Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia), pointing to the illegality of the court process. Following the appeal, the Supreme Court of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina symbolically reduced the sentence from 14 to 12 years in prison; the Federal Court of SFRY reversed the verdict and reduced it to a ‘verbal delict’, for which he was sentenced to nine years. Shortly after, the Criminal Law provision on ‘verbal delict’ was repealed. Izetbegovic stayed in prison for five years and eight months and was finally released on 25 November 1988.

On 17 June 1991, a brief war broke out in Slovenia, marking the beginning of the breakup of Yugoslavia and the aggression of the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) against republics that had declared independence. Izetbegovic’s view was that B&H would not remain in Yugoslavia without Slovenia and Croatia, because it would no longer be Yugoslavia but Greater Serbia. He publicly opposed the mobilization of Bosnian-Herzegovinian youth for the war against Croatia, which was decided by the Presidency at the time. In addition to his party, he had the support of a majority of the civilian-provenance intellectuals in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Retreating from Slovenia and parts of Croatia, the JNA, which was becoming increasingly less of the Yugoslav Army and increasingly more of the Serbian army, began accumulating forces and weapons in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Izetbegovic intensively participates in the negotiations and diplomatic activities, in an effort to end the war and preserve peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina and to protect the legality and legitimacy of the state institutions of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

As the President of the Presidency of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, he carried the burden and responsibility of the Commander in Chief. He insisted on a respect for the international conventions and international humanitarian law, and especially on the protection of civilians and cultural and religious sites. He continued to participate in the peace talks; despite all the military and political pressures and the arms embargo, he remained consistent regarding the principle of liberty and the commitment to ‘Bosnia and Herzegovina as a whole country in which no one will be persecuted because of their religion, nation and political conviction’.

In February 1996, he suffered a heart attack. He recovered and continued to work for another 4 years. In the summer of 2000, he began to consider stepping down and on 15 October that year he withdrew from the B&H Presidency and from his position as the President. Summarizing his life, he wrote: “If I were offered to live again, I would refuse. But if I had to be born again, I would choose my life.”

He continued his political activities and work on the autobiographical book “Memories.” He assisted in resolving open issues of the internal relations and the international position of Bosnia and Herzegovina by acting with the power of political authority and the broadest international reputation he enjoyed. He was a respected participant in the epoch, a holder of high honors from the East and the West, for his contributions to democracy and a more just world. Almost all statesmen who came to Bosnia and Herzegovina sought to include a meeting with Izetbegovic in their protocol.