Mehmed ef. Handžić

Mehmed ef. Handžić - Bosniak theologian, historian, journalist, folklorist, educator, initiator of the Sarajevo Resolution, and one of the leaders of the National Salvation Committee. He was one of the most significant and influential Bosniak personalities of the 20th century. Mehmed Handžić is one of the most prominent Bosniak intellectuals and religious authorities, whose activities marked Islamic thought and the general social activity of Bosniaks in the first half of the 20th century. Mehmed Handžić was the president of the Ilmia Association and the editor of the magazine El-Hidaje. We remember Mehmed Handžić as the initiator and author of the Sarajevo Resolution in 1941, which raised its voice against the terrible crimes against Bosniaks, and fiercely condemned the crimes against Serbs, Jews and Roma during the Second World War. With these resolutions, Bosniak disorientationism in the difficult time of the Second World War ends, but also the mature and responsible social action of Bosniaks, in which Mehmed Handžić has a great merit. Mehmed Handžić was one of the editors and initiators of El-Hidaja, the official journal of the Association of Scholars. In 1939, Mehmed Handžić was elected president of the Association of Ilmije. During the Second World War, after the death of reisu-l-ulema Fehim Spaha, as well as due to the impossibility of organizing elections for the religious leader of Bosnian Muslims, the Ilmia El-Hidaje Association became the leading spiritual intellectual force of Bosnian Muslims with its activities and actions. In that period, when Bosniaks have neither political nor religious authority, El-Hidaja gathers Bosniaks, fights for their rights, raises his voice against terrible crimes against Bosnian Muslims, condemns crimes, and raises his voice through numerous resolutions, in which they condemn the crimes and murders of other peoples. With the resolutions initiated by Mehmed Handžić and his collaborators, the political and social loss and disorientation of Bosniaks ends. Mehmed Handžić died on July 26, 1944 in a Sarajevo hospital after an abdominal operation and was buried at Hambina carina cemetery in Sarajevo.