Rusmir Mahmutćehajić is a Bosnian academic, author, and former statesman. Considered one of Bosnia’s leading intellectuals and public figures, he is the foremost advocate of the idea of Bosnia as a community constituted out of diversity and founded on mutual respect between individuals and between ethnic and confessional groups. A profoundly insightful scholar of the Muslim intellectual tradition, considered as a branch of religio and philosophia perennis, Dr. Mahmutćehajić is widely recognized as a major contributor to contemporary Muslim thought and the liberal interpretation of islam as the divine injunction of peaceful co-existence in love.

Professor Mahmutćehajić was born in the southern Bosnian town of Stolac on 29 June, 1948 to a notable local family with a strong tradition of participation in public life. Over the generations, his ancestors have served as public officials for the Ottoman, the Royal Yugoslav, and the Socialist Yugoslav regimes, as he did for the newly independent state of Bosnia and Herzegovina from 1991 to 1994.

As an academic, Mahmutćehajić has been professor of both Electrical Engineering and Islamic Phenomenology and was Dean of the Electrical Engineering Faculty of Osijek University. As a statesman, he served his country as Deputy Prime Minister and as Energy minister through the process of independence and four of the five years of war (1991-5). For the past 12 years, he has been President of International Forum Bosnia, a prominent civil society organization dedicated to the development of critical intelligence and a plural society in Bosnia. He is the author of more than 20 books in Bosnian, some 12 of which have been published in English, French, Italian, and Turkish translations. Rusmir Mahmutćehajić is also the author of several hundred academic articles and essays, both in his original field of electrical engineering and on the social and political issues affecting his country, on political philosophy more generally, on religious phenomenology, the critique of ideology, the religious traditions and the potential for interfaith dialogue viewed from a Muslim perspective, literary criticism, and the history of his country.

Dr. Mahmutćehajić is the author of numerous works in Bosnian on traditional subjects and his recent books, Bosnia the Good: Tolerance and Tradition and Sarajevo Essays are available in English. He is also the author of the World Wisdom title, Maintaining the Sacred Center.