After his release, Alija completed his legal education. Through his professional life, he experienced firsthand the deep divide between the socialist regime’s state-centered conception of law and his own understanding of justice grounded in human dignity. This tension led him toward a quiet but continuous form of intellectual resistance.
At a time when “Muslim” was not recognized as an ethnic-national category in Yugoslavia, Alija contributed to the preservation of collective identity through thought rather than open political action. The official recognition of the “Muslim” identity in 1968 marked a historic turning point.
Through philosophical readings ranging from Kant to Dostoyevsky, he developed a line of thought that sought to bridge Eastern metaphysics and Western rationalism. Due to political pressure, he occasionally used pseudonyms, including “LSB.”
From the late 1960s onward, he worked on Islam Between East and West, approaching Islam as a civilizational vision that establishes balance between body and soul, and between the individual and society. The book resonated widely across the Islamic world after it was published and is thought to be one of the principal grounds for his arrest in 1983.