The Simon Wiesenthal Centre, a human rights organization, was outraged by Hasanbegovic's appointment and called for his immediate removal.
His mother's side of the family moved from Gračanica (modern-day Bosnia and Herzegovina) to the Croatian capital of Zagreb in 1941.
During World War II, the Prohić family helped hide a Jewish girl from Gračanica in their house in Zagreb.
Sabrija Prohić tried to escape to Argentina, but was caught and later killed as a class enemy, while their entire property was confiscated.
Hasanbegović researched the Muslim component of Croatian bourgeois culture until 1945 and the political and ethno-religious relations in Bosnia and Herzegovina since the 1878 Austro-Hungarian rule until the communist takeover in the 1940s.
[13][14] Hasanbegović has published Croatian translations of several essays: Against Democracy and Equality: The European New Right by Tomislav Sunić, The Holocaust Industry by Norman Finkelstein, Intellectual Terrorism by Jure Vujić, Communism and Nazism by Alain de Benoist, and Wahhabism: A Critical Essay by Hamid Algar.
Civic initiative Platform 112, which brings together 70 NGOs, held a protest in front of the Parliament on the day when the new Government was approved, urging MPs to vote against the cabinet of Tihomir Orešković because of Hasanbegović.
[24] The Croatian Journalists' Association issued a statement in which they strongly opposed the nomination of Hasanbegović as Minister of Culture.
[25] The Israel-based Simon Wiesenthal Center urged the Government of Croatia to dismiss Hasanbegović, saying he took a disdainful attitude towards Croatian resistance to fascism during World War II.
[26] The Croatian Helsinki Committee (HHO) and the Initiative EU 1481 of Matica hrvatska dismissed the accusations against Hasanbegović as unfounded.
In the aftermath, newly elected president of HDZ, Andrej Plenković, formed a new government with new Minister of Culture being Nina Obuljen Koržinek and not Hasanbegović for which he expressed his dissatisfaction.
In May 2017, Hasanbegović decided to participate in the Zagreb local elections on the independent list of Bruna Esih, who ran against the official HDZ candidate.
Hasanbegović also criticized the HDZ leader Andrej Plenković, saying that his path "is wrong and leads to moral quagmire".
[41] In 1996, Hasanbegović wrote at least two articles in the magazine Nezavisna Država Hrvatska, named after the fascist Independent State of Croatia (NDH), in which he glorified the Ustashas as heroes and martyrs.