Active Islamic Youth

Last updated November 02, 2024

Active Islamic Youth (Bosnian : Aktivna islamska omladina) was a small youth organization based in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It was active in the Bosnian postwar period. According to some media reports, it was described as a front for the Saudi High Commission for Relief and the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation.^[1]

AIO was the first publisher of the Islamic magazine Saff, with an estimated circulation of 9,000.^[2]

The AIO was launched after the 1992-1995 Bosnian war, when a group of young Bosnian Muslims decided to form the organization to promote the Islamic teachings they learned from the Arab volunteers who fought on the Bosnian side during the war. The volunteers were also Islamic missionaries. They distributed Islamic literature. Some of the literature tend to designate dozens of habits of the Bosnian Muslims that had nothing to do with the Wahabi teachings and that had to be corrected. These Arab fighters and missionaries influenced some of the young Bosniaks who joined the Bosnian Mujahideen during the war. After the war, these young people went on to form AIO.^[3]

AIO's mission is to awaken the religious feelings of Bosnian Muslims - who, the organization believes, have been deprived of the real Islam for too long, first by the Communist regime of the former Yugoslavia, and later by the traditional mainstream Bosnian Muslims. The AIO emphasises that it aspires to original Islamic teachings as preached by Mohammed, and that it does not accept any "novelties" in Islam. Members of the AIO are known for their atypical way of praying, and for their Middle-East-style clothes and long beards. The men do not shake hands with women, and the women wear headscarves in public.^[3]

People associated with AIO are reported to have behaved violently, including during demonstrations. Leaders of AIO are said to have made inflammatory statements in which they criticized Bosnian Muslims for accepting too many habits of their Christian neighbours. On 24 December 2002 a young Muslim fanatic, Muamer Topalović, shot three members of a Croat returnee family in Konjic, 80 km south of Sarajevo. Topalovic, who confessed to the killing, said that he wanted to do something against Croats. He was subsequently arrested and sentenced to 35 years in prison. Police said that Topalovic told them during the investigation that he was a member of AIO. That was later proven false. AIO leaders, however, acknowledged the possibility that Topalovic might have attended some of the courses the group organized.^[3]

After 11 September 2001, Bosnian police have taken a keener interest in AIO's activities. It became clear that some of the Arab teachers who had impressed AIO's founders were potential threat. AIO premises were raided several times, and its finances were thoroughly audited. It has been established that AIO received donations in the past from large Saudi charities, such as the Al Haramain Foundation. In the fall of 2002, U.S. authorities declared Al Haramain a sponsor of terrorist networks and froze its assets in the United States and Bosnia and Herzegovina.^[3]

Today, the number of people associated with AIO is shrinking. The organization is experiencing financial troubles, as many of its former donors have stopped sending money because of the bad reputation that AIO has acquired. It covers its expenses through internet clubs and from selling Islamic magazines and literature, but its future is uncertain.^[3]

Related Research Articles

Alija Izetbegović was a Bosnian politician, Islamic philosopher and author, who in 1992 became the first president of the Presidency of the newly independent Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. He later served as the first chairman of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Hasan Čengić was a Bosniak politician who served as Deputy Prime Minister and Deputy Defence Minister of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. During the Bosnian War, Čengić was the main fundraiser and weapons buyer for Alija Izetbegović's administration.

Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation (AHIF) was a charity foundation, based in Saudi Arabia. Under various names it had branches in Afghanistan, Albania, Bangladesh, Bosnia, Comoros, Ethiopia, India, Kenya, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia, Tanzania, and the United States, and "at its height" raised between $40 and $50 million a year in contributions worldwide. While most of the foundation's funds went to feed poor Muslims around the world, a small percentage went to Al-Qaeda, and that money was "a major source of funds" for the terrorist group. In 2003, Saudi authorities ordered Al-Haramain to shut down all overseas branches, and by 2004 Saudi authorities had dissolved Al-Haramain. However, US intelligence officials believed it had reopened branches under new names.

The Catholic Church in Bosnia and Herzegovina is a part of the worldwide Catholic Church under the spiritual leadership of the pope in Rome.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mehmed Spaho</span>

Mehmed Spaho was a Bosnian politician and leader of the Yugoslav Muslim Organization. He was the first Bosnian Muslim politician in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. Spaho was described as the "undisputed leader of the Bosniaks between the two world wars" by the newspaper Oslobođenje in 2013. He died under mysterious circumstances in a Belgrade hotel.

This article is about the Demographic history of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and deals with the country's documented demographics over time. For an overview of the various ethnic groups and their historical development, see Ethnic groups in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Mustafa ef. Cerić is a Bosnian imam who served as the Grand Mufti of Bosnia and Herzegovina from 1993 to 2012, and is currently president of the World Bosniak Congress. In the 2014 general election, he ran for a seat in the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina as a Bosniak member, but was not elected.

Bosniaks are a South Slavic ethnic group, native to the region of Bosnia of which the majority are Muslims (90%). The term Bosniaks was used to describe everyone in that region regardless of their religion until late 1800s. It was established again after decades of suppression in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The Bosniak Assembly adopted the ethnonym to replace "Bosnian Muslims." Scholars believe that the move was partly motivated by a desire to distinguish the Bosniaks from the term Muslim to describe their nationality in the former Yugoslavia. These scholars contend that the Bosniaks are distinguishable from comparable groups due to a collective identity based on a shared environment, cultural practices and experiences.

The Jewish people of Bosnia and Herzegovina are one of the minority peoples of Bosnia and Herzegovina, according to country's constitution. The history of Jews in Bosnia and Herzegovina spans from the arrival of the first Bosnian Jews as a result of the Spanish Inquisition to the survival of the Bosnian Jews through the Holocaust and the Yugoslav Wars. Judaism and the Jewish community in Bosnia and Herzegovina have one of the oldest and most diverse histories of all the former Yugoslav states, and is more than 500 years old, in terms of permanent settlement. Then a self-governing province of the Ottoman Empire, Bosnia was one of the few territories in Europe that welcomed Jews after their expulsion from Spain.

Bosnian mujahideen, also called El Mudžahid, were foreign Muslim volunteers who fought on the Bosnian Muslim side during the 1992–95 Bosnian War. They first arrived in central Bosnia in the latter half of 1992 with the aim of helping their Bosnian Muslim co-religionists in fights against Serb and Croat forces. Initially they mainly came from Arab countries, later from other Muslim-majority countries. Estimates of their numbers vary from 500 to 5,000 with most estimates in the 1,000–2,000 range.

The most widely professed religion in Bosnia and Herzegovina is Islam and the second biggest religion is Christianity. Nearly all the Muslims of Bosnia are followers of the Sunni denomination of Islam; the majority of Sunnis follow the Hanafi legal school of thought (fiqh) and Maturidi theological school of thought (kalām). Bosniaks are generally associated with Islam, Croats of Bosnia and Herzegovina with the Roman Catholic Church, and Bosnian Serbs with the Serbian Orthodox Church. The State Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) and the entity Constitutions of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Republika Srpska provide for freedom of religion, and the Government generally respects this right in ethnically integrated areas or in areas where government officials are of the majority religion; the state-level Law on Religious Freedom also provides comprehensive rights to religious communities. However, local authorities sometimes restricted the right to worship of adherents of religious groups in areas where such persons are in the minority.

Since the 1980s Saudi Arabia has provided foreign assistance to many countries and organizations.

The Bosniaks are a South Slavic ethnic group native to the Southeast European historical region of Bosnia, which is today part of Bosnia and Herzegovina, who share a common Bosnian ancestry, culture, history and language. Predominantly adhering to Sunni Islam, they primarily live in Bosnia, Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia, Kosovo as well as in Austria, Germany, Turkey and Sweden. They also constitute a significant diaspora with several communities across Europe, the Americas and Oceania.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mehmed Handžić</span> Bosnian Islamic scholar, theologian and politician

Mehmed Handžić was a Bosnian Islamic scholar, theologian and politician. Handžić was the leader of the Islamic revivalist movement in Bosnia and the founder of the religious association El-Hidaje. He was one of the authors of the Resolution of Sarajevo Muslims and the chairman of the Committee of National Salvation.

Al-Qaeda in Bosnia and Herzegovina was the al-Qaeda branch based in Bosnia and Herzegovina, formed during the Bosnian War in 1992. During the Bosnian War, the group contributed volunteers to the Bosnian mujahideen, a volunteer detachment of the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. After the war, the group operated through the Saudi High Commission for Relief of Bosnia and Herzegovina (SHC).

Following the embargo by Arab oil exporters during the Israeli-Arab October 1973 War and the vast increase in petroleum export revenue that followed, the international propagation of Salafism and Wahhabism within Sunni Islam favored by the conservative oil-exporting Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf monarchies achieved a "preeminent position of strength in the global expression of Islam." The Saudi interpretation of Islam not only includes Salafiyya but also Islamist/revivalist Islam, and a "hybrid" of the two interpretations.

Foreign support in the Bosnian War included the funding, training or military support by foreign states and organizations outside Yugoslavia to any of the belligerents in the Bosnian War (1992–95).

The Kazani pit killings were the mass murder of predominantly ethnic Serbs living inside besieged Sarajevo by the forces of Mušan Topalović, commander of the 10th Mountain Brigade in the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina during the Bosnian War.

The Esperanto League of Bosnia and Herzegovina is the national Esperanto association in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which represents Esperanto speakers, Esperanto societies, and friends. Since its establishment in 1910, it helps advancement of Esperanto language learning and usage in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Young Muslims was an Islamist organization that was established in 1941 in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, and was active during World War II in the Independent State of Croatia and after the war in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The organization continued to operate as an underground network in the Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and eventually disappeared after its leadership was arrested by the communist Yugoslav authorities in 1949. Although ideologically pan-Islamist, the Young Muslims had a strong nationalistic component, advocating the autonomy of a Muslim-dominated Bosnia and Herzegovina.

References

↑ Harry de Quetteville in Sarajevo, "US hunts Islamic militants in Bosnia", Daily Telegraph, London, 26 July 2004.
↑ Bosnia and Herzegovina—Islamic Revival Archived February 28, 2008, at the Wayback Machine , International Advocacy Networks and Islamic Terrorism, by CPT Velko Attanassoff, Bulgarian Armed Forces, for Strategic Insights, Volume IV, Issue 5 (May 2005).
1 2 3 4 5 Ena Latin, "Suspicious Islamic Missionaries: Active Islamic Youth", Southeast European Times in Sarajevo, 30 June 2003.

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.

[1] Harry de Quetteville in Sarajevo, "US hunts Islamic militants in Bosnia", Daily Telegraph, London, 26 July 2004.

[2] Bosnia and Herzegovina—Islamic Revival Archived February 28, 2008, at the Wayback Machine , International Advocacy Networks and Islamic Terrorism, by CPT Velko Attanassoff, Bulgarian Armed Forces, for Strategic Insights, Volume IV, Issue 5 (May 2005).

[ena_latin-3] 1 2 3 4 5 Ena Latin, "Suspicious Islamic Missionaries: Active Islamic Youth", Southeast European Times in Sarajevo, 30 June 2003.

[1]

[2]

[3]