Ayatollah Kazem Shariatmadari
Encyclopedia
Tabriz
Tabriz is the fourth largest city and one of the historical capitals of Iran and the capital of East Azerbaijan Province. Situated at an altitude of 1,350 meters at the junction of the Quri River and Aji River, it was the second largest city in Iran until the late 1960s, one of its former...
– 3 April 1986, Tehran
Tehran
Tehran , sometimes spelled Teheran, is the capital of Iran and Tehran Province. With an estimated population of 8,429,807; it is also Iran's largest urban area and city, one of the largest cities in Western Asia, and is the world's 19th largest city.In the 20th century, Tehran was subject to...
), was an Iran
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
ian Grand Ayatollah.
Biography
Born to an Azeri family in TabrizTabriz
Tabriz is the fourth largest city and one of the historical capitals of Iran and the capital of East Azerbaijan Province. Situated at an altitude of 1,350 meters at the junction of the Quri River and Aji River, it was the second largest city in Iran until the late 1960s, one of its former...
, he was among the most senior leading Twelver Shi'a clerics in Iran
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
and Iraq
Iraq
Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....
and was known for his forward looking and liberal views. After the death of Supreme and Grand Ayatollah Borujerdi (Marja' Mutlaq) in 1961 he became one of the leading marja
Marja
Marja , also known as a marja-i taqlid or marja dini , literally means "Source to Imitate/Follow" or "Religious Reference"...
s, with followers in Iran, especially Pakistan
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...
, India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
, Lebanon
Lebanon
Lebanon , officially the Republic of LebanonRepublic of Lebanon is the most common term used by Lebanese government agencies. The term Lebanese Republic, a literal translation of the official Arabic and French names that is not used in today's world. Arabic is the most common language spoken among...
, Kuwait
Kuwait
The State of Kuwait is a sovereign Arab state situated in the north-east of the Arabian Peninsula in Western Asia. It is bordered by Saudi Arabia to the south at Khafji, and Iraq to the north at Basra. It lies on the north-western shore of the Persian Gulf. The name Kuwait is derived from the...
and the southern Persian Gulf
Persian Gulf
The Persian Gulf, in Southwest Asia, is an extension of the Indian Ocean located between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula.The Persian Gulf was the focus of the 1980–1988 Iran-Iraq War, in which each side attacked the other's oil tankers...
states. In 1963, he prevented the Shah
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi
Mohammad Rezā Shāh Pahlavi, Shah of Iran, Shah of Persia , ruled Iran from 16 September 1941 until his overthrow by the Iranian Revolution on 11 February 1979...
from executing Ayatollah Khomeini by recognizing him as a Grand Ayatollah, since according to the Iranian constitution a Marja' could not be executed. Khomeini was exiled instead. As the leading Mujtahid he was the head of Qom's seminary until Khomeini's arrival. He was in favour of the traditional Shiite view of keeping clerics away from governmental positions and a vehement critic of Khomeini. He headed the Centre for Islamic Study and Publications and was the administrator of the Fatima Madrasa in Qum. At the time of the Iranian revolution in 1979, Shariatmadari was the leading Grand Ayatollah in Qom.
Shariatmadari was at odds with Khomeini's interpretation of the Leadership of Jurists (Wilayat al-faqih) advocating that clerics can strive to reform the government when it was going against the benefit of people as taught by Twelver Shiite views. Otherwise, the role of clerics was above that of government and therefore the latter should not be made up of clerics. Furthermore, according to Shariatmadari, one cannot force the public to accept a system however morally correct it may be but the people should freely accept it themselves. He believed a democratic government where the people administer their own affairs is perfectly compatible with the correct interpretation of the Leadership of the Jurists. Before the revolution Shariatmadari wanted a return to the system of constitutional monarchy
Constitutional monarchy
Constitutional monarchy is a form of government in which a monarch acts as head of state within the parameters of a constitution, whether it be a written, uncodified or blended constitution...
that was enacted in the Iranian Constitution of 1906. He encouraged peaceful demonstrations to avoid bloodshed. According to such a system the Shah's (King's) power was limited and the ruling of the country was mostly in the hands of the people through a parliament system. Mohammad Reza Pahlavi
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi
Mohammad Rezā Shāh Pahlavi, Shah of Iran, Shah of Persia , ruled Iran from 16 September 1941 until his overthrow by the Iranian Revolution on 11 February 1979...
, the then King (Shah) of Iran, and his allies, however, took the pacifism of clerics such as Shariatmadari as a sign of weakness. Shah's government declared a ban on Muharram commemorations
Mourning of Muharram
The Mourning of Muharram is an important period of mourning in Shia Islam, taking place in Muharram which is the first month of the Islamic calendar. It is also called the Remembrance of Muharram...
hoping to stop revolutionary protests. After a series of severe crack downs on the people and the clerics and the killing and arrest of many, Shariatmadari criticized Shah's government and declared it non-Islamic, tacitly giving support to the revolution hoping that a democracy would be established in Iran.
Shariatmadari, unlike recent accusations by mostly Baluchi
Baloch people
The Baloch or Baluch are an ethnic group that belong to the larger Iranian peoples. Baluch people mainly inhabit the Balochistan region and Sistan and Baluchestan Province in the southeast corner of the Iranian plateau in Western Asia....
and Kurdish
Kurdish people
The Kurdish people, or Kurds , are an Iranian people native to the Middle East, mostly inhabiting a region known as Kurdistan, which includes adjacent parts of Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey...
Sunni groups, had no intention of gaining autonomy for Azarbaijan who considered themselves Iranian and Shia before anything else. He criticized Khomeini's system of government as not being compatible with Islam or representing the will of the Iranian people. He severely criticized the way that a referendum was conducted to establish Khomeini's system of government. This led Khomeini to put him under house arrest, imprison his family members and torture his daughter in-laws. This led to mass protests in Tabriz which were quashed toward the end of January 1980 when under the orders of Khomeini tanks and the Army moved into the city. Shariatmadari not wanting an internal civil war or armed fighting and unnecessary killing of fellow Shiites ordered a stop to the protests.
In April 1982, Sadegh Ghotbzadeh
Sadegh Ghotbzadeh
Sadegh Ghotbzadeh was a close aide of Ayatollah Khomeini during his 1978 exile in France, and Iranian Foreign Minister during the Iran hostage crisis following the Iranian Revolution...
was arrested on charges of plotting with military officers and clerics to bomb Khomeini's home and to overthrow the state. Ghotbzadeh denied any intentions on Khomeini's life and claimed he had sought to change the government, not overthrow the Islamic Republic. He, under torture, also implicated Ayatollah Shariatmadari, who, he claimed, had been informed of the plan and had promised funds and his blessings if the scheme succeeded. However, the confession extracted under torture did not match with Shariatmadari's character and views as a pacifist. Shariatmadari's son-in-law, who was accused of serving as an intermediary between Ghotbzadeh and the Ayatollah, was sentenced to a prison term and a propaganda campaign was mounted to discredit Shariatmadari. Shariatmadari family members were arrested and tortured. According to a new book containing the memoirs of Mohammad Mohammadi RaiShahri, a leading player in the Iranian Government and the head of the Hadith University in Iran, the Ayatollah himself was beaten with Raishahri doing the beating.. All this forced the aging Ayatollah to go on national television and read out a confession and asking forgiveness from the man he had saved from death two decades ago. Because of his position as a mujtahid, the government could not publicly execute him. His Centre for Islamic Study and Publications were closed, and he remained under house arrest until his death in 1986. He is buried in a simple grave in a cemetery in Ghom. Clerics were prevented from attending his funeral prayer, drawing criticisms from Grand Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri
Grand Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri
Grand Ayatollah Hussein-Ali Montazeri Najafabadi was a prominent Iranian scholar, Islamic theologian, Shiite Islamic democracy advocate, writer and human rights activist. He was one of the leaders of the Iranian Revolution in 1979...
, one of the lead players in the Iranian revolution.
Sources
- Michael M. J. Fischer. Iran: From Religious Dispute to Revolution. Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003.
- Moojan Momen Shi'i Islam Yale University Press 1986
- Shaul BakhashShaul BakhashShaul Bakhash , PhD, is a historian and leading expert in Iranian studies at George Mason University where he is a "Clarence J. Robinson Professor of History."...
, Reign of the Ayatollahs, ISBN 0-465-06887-1 - Nikki KeddieNikki KeddieNikki R. Keddie is an professor of Eastern, Iranian, and women's history. She retired from the University of California, Los Angeles after 35 years of teaching...
, Modern Iran