Promjena vlasništva vakufa na području Gornjeg Rahića u socijalističkom periodu (1945-1990)
Authors:   Faculty of Philosophy, University of Tuzla, Šabotić Izet 
Published: June 2023

One of the important measures of the communist government after the Second World War was the change of ownership of private property and the property of religious communities. For the mentioned changes in the field of ownership, numerous regulations were passed, which related to the nationalization, confiscation and expropriation of real estate. The regulations were for the purpose of the legitimate action of the state in terms of changing the ownership of real estate. With these measures, the entire waqf property, which until then was outside the scope of state interventions regarding the change of ownership, came under attack. The aforementioned processes were carried out in a short period of time and very radically, whereby in many cases the established legal procedures adopted by the communist authorities were not followed. Through nationalization, confiscation and expropriation, significant property of the Islamic community in Bosnia and Herzegovina was usurped. The usurpation of property significantly weakened the Islamic community economically, which had an impact on the work of its most important institutions. Due to additional government measures, the most important religious and educational institutions of the Islamic community, such as madrasahs and sharia courts, ceased to exist, while the number of schools was significantly reduced. With the usurpation of property, the Islamic community lost a significant economic support, which had an impact on its further functioning and influence on the wider masses, which to a good extent were very quickly affected by the process of atheism, which was one of the important goals of the communist government. The Islamic community in the Brcko region had significant waqf property at its disposal. It was about various properties, which were of great importance in the religious, educational, economic and social segments in the places where the waqfs were located. The Islamic community in the area of the municipality of Gornji Rahic, which was located in the Brcko region at the time, had significant waqf real estate, especially land holdings. Until the establishment of the communist government, they were used to support religious buildings in this area. With the establishment of the new government, according to the available data of a significant land area, four waqfs in this area were hit by the measures of the new communist government. It was about the foundation of the Gornji Rahic mosque, the foundation of the Ograđenovac mosque, the foundation of the Iptidaija school in Gornji Rahic and the Fatima Kujundzic foundation. The aforementioned waqfs came under attack based on the Law on Agrarian Reform and Colonization, because they had more land than was determined by the said regulation. Therefore, already in 1946, the government carried out the process of expropriation of the land of the mentioned waqfs and took a total of 66 dunums of land and 320 m2 from them, while leaving a total of 17 dunums and 532 m2 of land to the Islamic community, i.e. the mosque waqf in Gornji Rahic. The Islamic community sent a series of complaints to the competent institutions regarding this attitude of the authorities, which were not accepted. So it was left without an important economic basis necessary for its continued existence. The aforementioned expropriated land was included in the land fund as state property, which was allocated to various users: agrarian interests, agricultural cooperatives and other state institutions. It is interesting that the waqf property, which had the status of a cemetery (cemetery), was the subject of expropriation in this case. In the process of cadastral marking of expropriated land, numerous mistakes were made, which in the later period represented a problem in the implementation of the process of registering the allocated land in the ownership of agrarian stakeholders. The mentioned problem in the paper is treated on a micro level, but the available facts indicate that it was an established practice of the communist government, which was widely used immediately after the Second World War, related to the change of property ownership of religious communities, including the Islamic community. In this way, the economic strength of the Islamic community was significantly reduced, which will have an impact on its overall status in the time of socialism, which was also shown in the example of the usurpation of the Islamic community's waqf in the municipality of Gornji Rahic in Brcko county.