Mahmoud K. Muftić

Mahmoud Kamal Muftić (or Mahmut Kemal Muftić; born 14 January 1919 – died September 1971) was a Bosnian Muslim medical researcher and political activist during the Cold War. He worked in biomedical science, combining it with unconventional research into hypnosis and metaphysical topics, and was a key figure bridging pan-Islamist, anti-communist, and Croatian nationalist exile movements. Muftić spent most of his adult life between Europe and the Middle East, involved in exile communities, revolutionary politics, and intelligence networks. He died in 1971 under circumstances that remain unclear, reportedly having claimed to suffer from radioactive poisoning.

Muftić grew up in Sarajevo in a prominent Bosnian Muslim family rooted in Islamic scholarship and the Naqshbandi Sufi tradition. He reportedly earned a medical degree in Zagreb in 1944. Following the collapse of the Independent State of Croatia and the communist takeover of Yugoslavia, he fled the country amid a broader wave of political displacement. By 1948, he had joined the Arab Liberation Army during the Palestine war and was granted asylum in Egypt, marking the start of a twelve-year exile across the Middle East, with periods in Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Palestine. In Egypt Muftić quickly embedded himself in Islamist circles tied to the Muslim Brotherhood, and married a cousin of the Brotherhood's preeminent leader from the 1950s, Said Ramadan. He later moved to West Germany and Switzerland, becoming a director at Schering (now Bayer) in West Berlin. He was living in Dublin at the time of his death.

Between the 1950s and early 1970s, Muftić published extensively on enzymology, immunopathological processes, and disease mechanisms, particularly in relation to tuberculosis, fungal infections, and drug development. At the same time, he pursued research into the biochemical basis of hypnosis alongside more speculative investigations into psychokinesis and aura phenomena. He also wrote on Islamic theology, showing an interest in medical ethics from an Islamic perspective. His work reflected an unusual attempt to bridge conventional medical science with experimental and fringe fields. William Joseph Bryan described Muftić as "a true scientist in every way [who] always looked for physical and chemical explanations of psychological problems. He frequently took as his motto Gerard's famous statement, 'there can be no twisted thought without a twisted molecule.'"

Muftić is best known for his attempt to forge a Cold War alliance between pan-Islamist movements and the Croatian radical nationalist diaspora. As secretary-general of the Croatian National Resistance (HNO), he served as the key link between the Muslim Brotherhood and Croatian émigré networks. In the early 1960s, he launched Operation Orient, a bold campaign of guerrilla diplomacy to form a Croatian government in exile that would be recognized by Arab states and admitted to the Arab League as an Islamic state. In this government he would serve as its envoy to the Arab world, effectively its foreign minister. The initiative collapsed as a result of HNO infighting, and Muftić—suspected by both allies and enemies of intelligence ties—was eventually left politically isolated. The Empire Never Ended podcast episode "Mustasha Brotherhood – The Mahmut Muftić Story" described him as "the enigmatic Ustasha who forged an unlikely alliance between the Muslim Brotherhood and Croatian National Resistance." Despite his efforts to connect worlds that few others ever combined, Muftić ended as a restless and isolated exile, shaped by the shadow conflicts of the Cold War.