Modern Muslim Thought in the Balkans: The Writings of Mehmed ef. Handžić in the El-Hidaje Periodical in the Context of Discrimination and Genocide

Abstract

The withdrawal of the Ottoman Empire from the Balkans in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries left a significant impact on the population of the region, especially on the Muslims. Muslim intellectual life was strongly influenced by the arrival of a new political and social order and cultural and religious value system. During this period, Balkan Muslims painfully and irreversibly became an administrative part of Europe. The aim of this paper is to examine the main themes which characterized the writings of Bosnian Muslim intellectuals in the post-Ottoman period, particularly on the eve of and during the Second World War. This work examines the writings of Mehmed Handžić, a prominent Bosnian scholar that were published in the El-Hidaje Periodical from 1939 to 1945. The paper brings the scholar's views and commentaries on a variety of topics such as the impoverished Muslim state, the history of Islam and Muslims, and patriotism and nationalism from the Muslim point of view. In most ofHandžić’swritings the focus is on Muslim intellectual responses to the new political and social changes as well as challenges of the ongoing Second World War. However, hiswritings and reflections continue to have far-reaching effects on Bosnian Muslims and remain relevant to the Bosnian Muslim situation at the beginning of the twenty-first century as the world observes the 20th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre in 2015.