A family shaped by the Ottoman legacy, a country whose identity was systematically suppressed, and intellectual searching that began at a young age… Alija Izetbegović’s childhood and youth laid the moral and intellectual foundations of a figure who would later be remembered as the “Wise Leader”
Alija was born on 8 August 1925 in Bosanski Šamac. His family’s history traced back to Muslim communities expelled from Belgrade, and his grandfather’s service in the Ottoman army played a formative role in his early sense of identity. When his father moved the family to Sarajevo, Alija was carried from a provincial town into a multicultural Ottoman-Balkan city. He grew up in a religious environment, receiving Qur’anic education from an early age.
During the period of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, Muslim identity in Bosnia and Herzegovina was systematically rendered invisible. The notion of a “single Yugoslav people” was imposed, and Bosniaks were forced into Serb or Croat identities. The abolition of Bosnia’s historical borders in 1929 and the relocation of the Islamic Community’s headquarters to Belgrade became emblematic steps in this process of erasure.
In his secondary school years, Alija underwent brief ideological explorations but rejected communist thought due to its conception of a “godless universe.” This period of questioning did not distance him from faith; rather, it marked an inner journey through which he consciously chose Islam anew. At a young age, he joined the Ittidal/Trezvenost association and the Young Muslims movement that emerged from it.
After the war, the communist regime viewed independent Muslim organizations as a threat. On 1 March 1946, Alija was arrested and sentenced to three years in prison. In his early twenties, he thus encountered imprisonment for his ideas and beliefs.
In 1949, he married Halida Hanım.