Fevzija Murić (; born 12 May 1959) is a politician in Serbia from the country's Bosniak community. He was the mayor of Novi Pazar from 1996 to 1997, a member of the National Assembly of Serbia from 1997 to 2001, and a secretary of state in the Serbian government from 2007 to 2008. He has also served several terms on the Novi Pazar city council (i.e., the executive branch of the city government). Murić has led the Party for Sandžak (Stranka za Sandžak, SZS) since 2001.
Early life and private career
Murić was born in Novi Pazar, in the Sandžak region of what was then the People's Republic of Serbia in the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia. He completed his early education in the community and later graduated from the Faculty of Stomatology at the University of Sarajevo in what was then the Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. He was president of the Muslim humanitarian organization Merhamet-Sandžak from 1991 to 2001.
Politician
Party of Democratic Action of Sandžak
Murić became politically active in the early 1990s as a member of the Party of Democratic Action of Sandžak (Stranka demokratske akcije Sandžaka, SDA). During this period, the political culture of Serbia and Yugoslavia was dominated by Slobodan Milošević and his allies, many Bosniaks were boycotting state institutions, and the SDA-dominated Muslim National Council of Sandžak had taken some steps toward establishing parallel institutions.
When the SDA split into rival factions led by party leader Sulejman Ugljanin and Rasim Ljajić in January 1995, Murić sided with Ugljanin, who was then in exile in Turkey following charges that he had distributed arms to the Bosniak community in the Sandžak. Murić was prominent in organizing a petition drive for Ugljanin and his allies to be amnestied. He criticized Ljajić's faction for entering into negotiations to the Serbian government in May 1995, arguing that negotiations could only take place after Milošević recognized Bosnia and Herzegovina and would need to be based on the Muslim National Council's Memorandum on the Establishment of Special Status for Sandžak, a strongly autonomist document.
Ugljanin ultimately returned to Serbia and was elected to the Assembly of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in the 1996 federal election. The SDA-led List for Sandžak coalition won a majority victory in the election for the Novi Pazar municipal assembly in the concurrent 1996 Serbian local elections; Murić was among the SDA candidates elected and was chosen as the assembly's president, a position that was at the time equivalent to mayor, on 26 November 1996. He did not serve in office for long; the Serbian government dissolved the local administration in July 1997, alleging that it had provoked national and religious intolerance. The specific point of contention was the municipal government's decision to fly the SDA flag between the flags of Serbia and Yugoslavia on a municipal building. Murić later said that the Serbian government had taken an antagonistic stance to the List for Sandžak's administration from the beginning.
Parliamentarian
Murić appeared in the lead position on the List for Sandžak's electoral list for the Kraljevo division in the 1997 Serbian parliamentary election and was elected when the list won two mandates. The List for Sandžak won three seats in total, and its members served in opposition to Serbia's coalition government led by Milošević's Socialist Party of Serbia (Socijalistička partija Srbije, SPS) in the term that followed.
Various Serbian opposition parties formed the Democratic Opposition of Serbia (Demokratska opozicija Srbije, DOS) coalition in early 2000. Murić criticized the DOS's platform in March of that year, describing it as "meagre and pretty disappointing" and arguing that it left little room for the recognition of Serbia's multi-ethnic character.
DOS candidate Vojislav Koštunica defeated Milošević in the 2000 Yugoslavian presidential election, a watershed moment in Serbian and Yugoslavian politics. The List for Sandžak won a majority victory in Novi Pazar in the concurrent 2000 local elections. Murić was re-elected to the municipal assembly, although he did not return to the mayor's office.
Serbia's government fell after the Yugoslavian election, and a new Serbian parliamentary election was called for December 2000. The List for Sandžak did not contest the election, and Murić's term in the national assembly came to an end in January 2001.
Murić was also a member of the Bosniak National Council during this time.