Notes from Prison, 1983-1988

A sample from Alija Izetbegovic's prison notes, when he was incarcerated under the communist regime of the former Yugoslavia in the 1980s:

"The history of Islam is yet to be written. What exists now under that title is everything but true history, which is not surprising. It was not written by an objective mind and with expertise, but either from passionate hatred or passionate love! Hatred and love write poetry, not history. In more than a thousand years, there were so many of those who reached for pen in order to slander, devaluate, or at least cover up. A lot of black paint was used to picture some events, or even entire ages, much darker than they had been.

Later on, some more objective minds occurred, but how could they get a real picture of a time that they were not able to know themselves (directly) and if all information that was available to them was full of bitter hate? Could they make objective and realistic judgements, even if they wanted to? On the other hand, devout and enthusiastic believers exaggerated in their way - glorifying successes of all kinds. But the real truth was most likely somewhere in between, because life as it is the case, had its ups and downs, its moments of light and shade. However, negative exaggeration was much more frequent and significant, so that it had a decisive influence upon the picture that was created on the developments that had taken place in the territories of the modern Islamic world"