Photograph Source: Julian Nyča – CC BY-SA 4.0

In the Sarajevo Canton Assembly, it remains impossible to pass a motion to rename streets that currently honor individuals compromised by their collaboration with the Croatian fascist occupation regime of the Independent State of Croatia. Among those commemorated are: Reis-ul-Ulema (the supreme Muslim religious leader) Fehim Spaho; Ustaša colonel Sulejman Pačariz; Mustafa Busuladžić, a Croatian conservative intellectual of pro-fascist persuasion and a member of the Young Muslims movement; Muhamed ef. Pandža, a Nazi propagandist and one of the principal co-authors of the Bosnian Muslim memorandum to Adolf Hitler; Alija Nametak, a cultural figure, writer, Croatian nationalist, and director of the Croatian National Theatre in Sarajevo; Asaf Serdarević, an officer in Pandža’s unit; and Osman ef. Rastoder, a convicted war criminal.

Additionally, a stele (nišan) has been erected for Mustafa Busuladžić at Sarajevo’s Kovači memorial cemetery, serving as one of the central monuments, with the evident aim of elevating his ideological values to a national symbolic axis. This move attempts to establish a symbolic continuity between Busuladžić and Alija Izetbegović, the wartime leader of the Bosnian Muslims (1992–1995), who also emerged from the Young Muslims milieu.

But what precisely is the ideology—or, rather, the axiology—being celebrated here?

So let us turn directly to Mustafa Busuladžić himself—a figure today remembered in broader internet circles almost exclusively for his World War II-era writings on the “greed of the Jews,” the “animalistic nature” of the Serbs, and other stereotypes that fit neatly into the postwar Izetbegović-era narrative—rather than for his core ideological framework.

Writing in the Gazette of the Islamic Religious Community back in 1938, Busuladžić observed:

“People are losing themselves in empty formalities. Boxing matches, football games, and sporting sensations occupy the minds of a vast multitude. Greed and the frantic pursuit of wealth have become hallmarks of the modern man. Slavery to material things has degraded humanity and its dignity. Economic goods have been elevated to the highest principle of life.
Extremist ideologies, whether leftist or rightist, with their one-sided views of nation or economic class, deny the very idea of man, of individuality, of freedom. The essential values that make a man human are being lost. The denial of God and spiritual reality, as well as the brutal attacks on religion, are now seen as marks of scholarship and enlightenment. The chasm of hatred and hostility is growing ever deeper.”

What we are dealing with here, then, are the standard tropes still often heard today in average sermons across mosques and churches alike: everything has gone to hell, people have lost their way, the “good old days” are behind us, the young no longer respect the old, and godless ideologies now reign supreme. However, in the context in which these words were written, they acquire a completely different, far more dangerous and destructive meaning.

For instance:

“Materialism and atheism gained dominance across broad sectors of society only with the triumph of individualist thought. Once the individual became the measure of social value, thereby undermining the natural communities within which alone it could properly develop, it used its dynamic force to destroy the spiritual order of the preceding society, which had been founded on organic rather than individualist thinking. Indeed, it is difficult for the individualist not to fall into materialism and atheism once he has overthrown so many values greater than himself. Through Marxism, moreover, materialism and atheism have come to characterize vast masses of the people.”

These words, however, were not........

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