Mustafa Ceric was born in 1950 and graduated from Sarajevo's medresa, studied theology and philosophy in Cairo, and received his doctorate in Chicago. He has sought to portray Bosnian Islam as a tolerant, European Islam, open to both East and West, while remaining very clear about its beliefs.

Nonetheless, many secular Bosnian citizens of all backgrounds, as well as religious Serbs and Croats, remain deeply suspicious of him, saying that he has quietly worked to put an Islamic religious stamp on Bosnia.

In any event, Ceric's public statements generally lack the anti-Western bias that some other prominent Islamic leaders from former Yugoslavia still retain from the communist period.

At the same time, he has often noted that Bosnian Muslims acquired their Islam from the Ottoman Empire and not from Arabia, which places them in a different tradition from Islamic groups with their roots directly in Arabia.

Ceric's frequent public statements can be found in the biweekly "Preporod" (Rebirth), which the Islamic Community publishes in Sarajevo, and on its website (http://www.preporod.com).