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Former Bosnian president Alija Izetbegovic, who died this week at the age of 78, will be buried today, but the inter-ethnic Bosnian presidency, revealing how short Izetbegovic came from his dream of a united Bosnia, could not agree on declaring a national day of mourning. Eight years after the Dayton accords ended the Balkan wars, Izetbegovic’s goal of creating a safe space where Muslims could coexist with Croats and Serbs – as well as find a role for Islam in a modern democracy – is still in doubt. While Bosnian Muslims regarded Izetbegovic as a “father of the nation” who defended them against a Serbian-led genocide, Bosnian Serbs and Croats saw a Muslim fundamentalist – even though the Muslims he led and the government he helped to create were secular. “Without him,” commented Western peace envoy to Bosnia Paddy Ashdown, “I doubt if Bosnia and Herzegovina would exist today.” Izetbegovic was jailed for nine years by the Communist-led Yugoslav government for Islamic activism, but after the breakup of Yugoslavia he rose to power as Bosnian president with the help of the Bosnian Muslim SDA party. The bloodshed that followed the Bosnian declaration of independence in 1992 claimed 250,000 lives, until Izetbegovic, Croatia’s Franjo Tudjman, and Serbia’s Slobodan Milosevic signed the Dayton accords which created the fragile balance whose stability depends on NATO forces on the ground. In his last days, Izetbegovic pushed for reforms fromhis deathbed that would unite the republic’s ethnically separate armies and received old friends Bill Clinton and peace negotiator Richard Holbrooke. Izetbegovic was an advocate of co-existance between the Muslim and Western worlds, having authored “Islam Between East & West,” which was one of the earlier books on Islam & democracy. “Instead of hating the West, let us compete with it,” said Izetbegovic in 1997. “Let’s have a dialogue with it.”
Shahed Amanullah is editor-in-chief of altmuslim.com.
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