Nedzib Sacirbey

national political campaigns. After 9/11, he led the American Muslim Task Force on Civil Rights and Elections’ efforts to oppose the erosion of civil liberties due to the “war on terror” and to encourage Muslim Americans to remain politically active. For many years, he was the face of their political engagement at countless Islamic conferences and meetings nationwide.

In 2003, despite the government-orchestrated fear and intimidation tactics, he insisted upon testifying during the bail hearing of Sami Al-Arian, a victim of government overreach. When the judge asked Saeed if he would still consider himself Al-Arian’s friend after his arrest, he replied, “Not only was I his friend, but his brother.” He was willing to give up all that he owned and pledged to do everything within his power to secure his friend’s release.

Over the years, Saeed devoted himself to opposing injustice, racism, Islamophobia and government repression. For example, his voice was unique among Muslim American leaders in advocating for the innocence and release of another victim of government overreach — Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani neuroscientist with degrees from MIT and Brandeis University who is serving an 86-year sentence for alleged “multiple felonies.”

In Sept. 2008, when Al-Arian was released and placed under house arrest, Saeed immediately flew there to celebrate with him. Over the following years, Saeed visited him several times each year as he continued to work on the community’s behalf. Only Parkinson’s was able to slow him down.

In 2010, he served as the first board chairperson of the Coalition for Civil Freedoms (CCF), an organization founded by Al-Arian to champion the cases of this country’s political prisoners and Muslim American victims of the government’s policy of entrapment. When Al-Arain was leaving for Turkey in Feb. 2015 Saeed, despite his deteriorating health, flew from California to Washington, D.C., to say a final goodbye.

Al-Arain considers it a tremendous honor that he was allowed to present Saeed with CCF’s Life Achievement award last October during its tenth anniversary celebration. He told the audience that people of Saeed’s caliber, whose lives are full of struggle and sacrifice, need to be embraced and remembered. Omar Ahmad (founder, CAIR) said, “Agha Saeed left us a legacy of leadership, courage and service. His visionary leadership shined during the most difficult of times, all while staying true to his Islamic principles. “His quest for truth and justice never stopped even when he fell ill. When he was confined to a wheelchair, he continued to speak and write. When he lost his ability to speak, he would write. When he struggled to write, he persisted through every letter taking minutes to write one sentence.”

Ahmad says he will be forever grateful to God for his experiences with his “good friend.” He visited Saeed regularly and would advise him to rest, but Saeed would shake his head and proceed to write him questions about the state of the Palestinians.

As his physical illness became worse, his resolve and mental fortitude stayed firm. Ahmad hopes that such resilience will inspire others to continue the work. Shakeel Syed (former executive director, Shura Council of Southern California) noted that unlike most young leaders/activists today, Saeed sought neither grants nor bursaries; rather, he spent his own funds and sacrificed his family life for the larger good. He also stressed that members of Saeed’s generation did community work out of their own volition and that their accomplishments deserve to be recognized.

Saeed, who authored “Pakistan in its Own Mirror: Elite Autobiographies and National Consciousness” and “Syncretic Self-Understanding of South Asian Muslims: Texts and Contexts,” is survived by his daughter, Sasha Mariam Saeed. ih

[Sources: Sami Al-Arian “Mourning Dr. Agha Saeed and celebrating his life” https:// www.facebook.com/397368287505947/ posts/872818669960904/ and https:// www.wrmea.org/001-august-september/personality-agha-saeed-harbinger-of-a-new-america.html]

A Founding Father of Bosnia

1926-2021

Nedzib Sacirbey, MD, considered a“founding father” of Bosnia, passed away on Feb. 23 at his son Muhamed’s home in Key West, Fla. According to sons Muhammad and Omar, this sad event was due to complications from Covid-19.

Born Nedžib Šaćirbegović on April 23, 1926, in Travnik, at the time part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, he shortened his name when he settled in the U.S. He was 9 when his journalist-businessman father moved the family to Sarajevo, now Bosnia’s capital.

Sacirbey, a psychiatrist, attended the Dayton, Ohio, peace conference in 1995 as a confidant, adviser and right-hand-man to Bosnia’s first president, Alija Izetbegovic (d. 2003). He then went on to serve as the new state’s global ambassador-at-large, including its first envoy to the U.S., although without the formal title of ambassador.

Sacirbey “made a powerful contribution to the emancipation of Bosnian political identity and to Bosnia’s independence and defense against aggression,” said Bakir Izetbegovic, Bosnia’s former president and son of the country’s first president and 1992-95 wartime leader Alija Iezetbegovic.

While practicing psychiatry, Sacirbey lobbied for Bosnia in Washington D.C., and at the UN. His elder son Muhamed, also a U.S. citizen, became Bosnia’s first ambassador to the UN. He used his position to enlist the support of such well-known American politicians like then-Senator Joe Biden (D-Del.) and Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.); key administration and international officials like Cyrus Vance, Brent Scowcroft and Boutros Boutros-Ghali; and other public figures like Muhammad Ali, Hakeem Olajuwan, Elie Wiesel and (future prime minister of Pakistan) Imran Khan.

Sacirbey attended a state school in Sarajevo where he, a Muslim, recalled that his two best friends were an ethnic Serb (Orthodox Christian) and an ethnic Croat (Roman Catholic) at a time when all of the country’s young people

mixed and played freely together. Both of them later emigrated to the U.S. as ethnic tensions flared in the 1990s, and the three of them met together regularly in the Washington D.C., area for the rest of their lives.

In 1943, aged 17, Sacirbey joined his friend Izetbegovic in the Mladi Muslimani (Young Muslims) movement during World War II, when Sarajevo was controlled by the Ustaša, well-armed Catholic Croation Nazi collaborators who perpetrated atrocities against Muslims, Jews, Serbs and Bosnia’s Roma population.

Jailed for three months for refusing conscription into the Ustaša army, in 1944 he married fellow Muslim activist Aziza Alajbegovic. In 1946, a year after the war ended, the couple, along with Izetbegovic and other Muslim rights activists, were jailed by Marshal Josip Broz Tito’s communist regime for their continuing involvement with the Young Muslims.

As Tito began distancing himself from the Soviet Union and Stalinism, Sacirbey was released after two years and his wife after one. Both of them resisted aggressive pressure to join the Communist Party.

In 1955, the couple enrolled at the University of Zagreb’s medical school. They both graduated in 1959. Returning to Sarajevo to practice medicine, they continued to advocate for greater freedom in communist Yugoslavia.

Sacirbey also taught psychiatry. Many years later, one of his students, Radovan Karadžić became the infamous leader of Bosnia’s Serbs during the Bosnian War (1992-95). In 2016 he was sentenced to life in prison.

Always under surveillance by Tito’s secret police for their pro-Muslim, anti-communist activism, and still refusing to join the Communist Party, Sacirbey and his wife decided to practice medicine elsewhere. Granted visas to work in Libya in 1963, they worked there as a district health officer and a gynecologist, respectively. One of Aziza’s patients was Queen Fatimah el-Sharif.

In June 1967, with their son Muhamed, they flew to New York City as political refugees. Their second son Omar was born in Columbus, Ohio, later that year, and the entire family, previously Yugoslav nationals, became U.S. citizens. They added Bosnian nationality after Bosnia became independent in 1992.

Both professionals continued practicing medicine, first at the Orient State Institute in Columbus and later at the Cleveland Psychiatric Institute.

In 1974, Sacirbey became a staff psychiatrist at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Washington, D.C., where one of his first priorities was dealing with the post-traumatic stress disorder affecting Vietnam War vets. His wife was a gynecologist at what is now Inova Fairfax Hospital in Virginia.

At the same time, Sacirbey continued to lobby on behalf of Bosnian Muslims, particularly during the 1992-95 war. Retiring in 1995 just before attending the Dayton peace conference, he spent the next two years as Bosnia’s envoy to the UN. Muhamed served as ambassador from 1992 to 2000, except for a seven-month stint as foreign minister in 1995.

Omar Sacirbey told The Washington Post that his father had told him how, in 1967, Libya had refused to extend his and his wife’s visas. Fearing further imprisonment in Yugoslavia, the couple had two choices of destination — majority-Muslim Turkey or the U.S.

“While living in a country where most people were Muslims like them was appealing,” Omar said, “they were more drawn to the opportunity to live in a pluralistic democracy where individual rights were respected regardless of race, religion or ethnicity.”

Former ISNA president Sayyid M. Syeed said Sacirbey “worked with us closely at local, national and international level. He was very involved in building the Muslim community in the Washington, D.C., area. He was our bridge with the Bosnia Muslim leader Dr. Izetbegovic. It was through him that we got directly involved in the Bosnian situation. The first president of Bosnia, Dr. Izetbegovic, visited ISNA and decided to get his book ‘Islam Between East and West’ published by ISNA, which is a monumental work written by a Western Muslim.

“Sacribey was a member of our ISNA family and we had the honor of working with him very closely at every level.”

His wife Aziza died in 1988. In addition to his sons, Muhamed and Omar, a Bostonbased journalist, a sister and two grandsons survive him. ih

[Sources: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/ obituaries/nedzib-sacirbey-dies/2021/03/04/955f433c7ba0-11eb-b3d1-9e5aa3d5220c_story.html; http:// icnab.com/index.php/vijesti/aktuelno/1071-in-memoriam-dr-nedzib-sacirbegovic-1926-2021] The world we live in is constantly evolving and ISNA is committed to being a positive driver of change. ISNA has long recognized the importance of engaging with other faith communities as a fundamental part of its mission, and therefore, we continuously host and participate in interfaith events, meetings and webinars to educate our friends, partners, officials and activists about Islam.

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