MARCUS :
But who was Alija Izerbegovic? Born in 1925, in his youth he was part of the feared Nazi units made up of Muslims in Bosnia, called the Handschar Division, attached to the Waffen SS. These units participated in both the crimes committed in the Balkans and on the Eastern Front. During Tito's time, the same Alija would be the protagonist of a scandal with the publication of the book "Islam between East and West", which claimed that Bosnian Muslims had been assimilated by the Serbo-Croat population. The protests that took place, including among Bosnian Muslim intellectuals, were followed by the arrest of the group led by Alija, on charges of plotting to transform Bosnia into an Islamic state. According to other sources, the former Bosnian leader is said to have declared that: "There can be no peace or coexistence between the Islamic faith and non-Islamic social and political institutions!Moreover, the Bosnian-born director Emir Kusturica (a Muslim who later converted to Orthodoxy), in his memoirs, mentions, in addition to accusations of religious extremism, Izerbegovic's plan to create a purely Muslim state, modeled on the 1922 population exchanges between Greece and Turkey. These were to be carried out with Serbia proper, which had a significant Muslim minority in the Sandjak region.
2026-04-17 20:37:20