KHARTOUM (Sudanow) - Once again Dr. Alfatih Ali Hassanain has occupied the media  after the President of Turkey,  H.E. Recceb Tayeb Erdogan

, visited and dined with him at his Khartoum home, during the Turkish leader’s  recent visit to the Sudan.

Dr. Alfatih is famed as a genuine Islamist who firmly shouldered his responsibility towards the nation of Islam, devoting his life to the defense and support of oppressed Moslems in Eastern Europe. One fruit of Alfatih’s endeavors for the well being of  Eastern Europe’s Moslems was the formation of the Republic of Bosnia, for which he became interim president for a period of time when its President, the late Ali Izzat Begovic, was besieged by Serbian militias..     

Dr. Alfatih was born in the village of Karkoaj of Sinnar State in 1946. During the democratic period that followed the October 1964 popular uprising, Alfatih joined the Islamic movement which was united under the Islamic Charter Front that brought together the Tijania Sufi Order, The Moslem Brotherhood and the Ansar al-Sunnah group  all in one body to challenge the then widely growing leftist current. He then left for former Yugoslavia to study medicine, where he came to realize the magnitude of oppression perpetrated by the communist regime against the Bosnian Moslems, under the slogan of progressiveness. He decided challenge this maltreatment of Moslems. Alfatih first launched the Union of Eastern Europe Moslem Students composed mainly from the Sudanese Islamist students there. His bid in this was to guard himself and his fellow youths, who travelled to Yugoslavia for learning, from being influenced by communist ideas. Later on he started to recruit Yugoslav Moslems for his movement.

In the district of Hamam Bar in Sarajevo, Alfatih launched with his friend Ali Izzat Begovic ‘the Islamic Movement in Yugoslavia’, as a result of the confederation of the Sudanese Islamic union  with the Association of Moslem Youths in Bosnia. Alfatih and Begovic then wrote “The Islamic Manifesto” in defiance of  the “Communist Manifesto”,  written by Karl Marx and Fredric Angels. Alfatih and Begovic adopted the book ‘al-Islam Deen al-Mustaqbal’ (Islam is the Religion of the Future), written by Egyptian Islamist Sayyid Qutb,  as the official book of their movement, which Begovic translated into Bosnian and printed and distributed in secret.

Taking notice of Alfatih’s activity, the Yugoslav security put him under arrest. Luckily at that time he had already graduated from the university, so he returned to the Sudan. But his organization remained active, Alfatif running it at a distance in cooperation with Ali Izzat Bigovic.

Alfatih then found a doctor’s job in the United Arab Emirates where he had time to write a collection of books describing the conditions of Moslem minorities in Eastern Europe that received wide readership. Some of those books are:

-The Moslem Minorities in Bulgaria, Poland and Greece.

-Belene, the Island of the Devil.

-Bridge on the Drina River

-Calamity of Bulgaria’s Moslems

He  had also published the interpretations of the Holy Koran in the languages of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania, Bulgaria, Romania and  Czech. He also oversaw the translation of many Islamic books to the East European languages and published the magazine Al-Shahida (the Witness) that published news about the Islamic minorities of Eastern Europe.

When Begovic was arrested Alfatih contributed to the publication of his book’ Islam Between East and West’ that shocked  the communist government.

When Yugoslavia started to fall apart, Alfatih returned to Bosnia to help his friend Begovic establish a nation state. He gave  Begocvic advise and moral support. He also launched the Vienna-based Third World Relief Agency which helped Bosnians a good deal during the war. The Agency had used to receive aid from Moslem countries and distribute it in war-affected Bosnian territories where the UN refused to do so under the pretext that its workers cannot operate during the fighting. Even the scarce international aid had used to be given to the Serbian minority. That is why analysts conclude that the Agency is credited for the establishment of the State of Bosnia and Herzegovina and for supporting Moslems in Eastern Europe, in Albania and Kosovo in particular.

Alfatih had also launched the Islamic Council For Eastern Europe and the High School in the Bihaj region of Bosnia and the Alghazi Ali Ezzat Bek School in Istanbul.

When President Begovic was besieged by the Srebian militias in Sarajevo in the early 1990s, Alfatih became Bosnia’s interim president for a number of months.

Alfatih’s relationship with President Reccep Tayeb Erdogan dates back to the late 1970s when the two men joined the meetings for coordination among Eastern European Islamic movements and when Erdogan was active within the Islamic Millî G?rü? Movement. It was at that time that Alfatih predicted a bright future for his friend Erdogan. And when Erdogan became president of Istanbul Municipality and his foes conspired against him and imprisoned him, Alfatih visited him in jail. Here Alfatih remembers to have visited Erdogan  in prison before he became prime minister of Turkey and greeted him: “Welcome the future President of Turkey!”.   He says Erdogan was surprised by his (Alfatih’s) remark, saying:” I am now in jail, and banned from political work, then how can I become President of Turkey?”

“I visited Erdogan months ago, sat with him for five hours and reminded him of that incident,” says Alfatih.

Relations between the two men grew stronger when Erdogan was in charge of the Bosnia dossier in the Refah (Welfare) Party, launched by the Late Islamic Leader Necmettin Erbakan.

The strength of Alfatih’s friendship with Erdogan had prompted him to set the Sudanese-Turkish Society, thus establishing himself as the man for Sudanese- Turkish understanding and cooperation.

Alfatih’s Bosnia life story also took him into a friendship with today’s Saudi Arabia’s King Salman bin Abdelaziz who at the time chaired a commission to collect donations for Bosnia. Salman had used to continuously consult Alfatih on the Balkan  issues.

Alfatih has a wide network of relationships around the World. He is also well versed in Arabic, English, Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian, beside a reasonable knowledge of Turkish and German.

These are glimpses from the life history of an Islamist mujahid who shunned easy life and took his soul in his own hands, defending a cause he believed in; understanding how Islam could become an international message and that a Moslem is brother to his fellow Moslem. It is a pride for Moslems to have a man like Alfatih Hassanain.