Grand Ayatollah Fazel Lankarani
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| Place of birth: | 1931 |
| Birth Location: | Qom Qom Qom is a city in Iran. It lies by road southwest of Tehran and is the capital of Qom Province. At the 2006 census, its population was 957,496, in 241,827 families. It is situated on the banks of the Qom River.... , 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... |
| Died | June 16, 2007 (aged 75-76) |
| Place of death | Qom Qom Qom is a city in Iran. It lies by road southwest of Tehran and is the capital of Qom Province. At the 2006 census, its population was 957,496, in 241,827 families. It is situated on the banks of the Qom River.... , 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... |
| Official Website | Lankarani |
Grand Ayatollah
Ayatollah
Ayatollah is a high ranking title given to Usuli Twelver Shī‘ah clerics. Those who carry the title are experts in Islamic studies such as jurisprudence, ethics, and philosophy and usually teach in Islamic seminaries. The next lower clerical rank is Hojatoleslam wal-muslemin...
Mohammad Fazel Lankarani (1931 in Qom
Qom
Qom is a city in Iran. It lies by road southwest of Tehran and is the capital of Qom Province. At the 2006 census, its population was 957,496, in 241,827 families. It is situated on the banks of the Qom River....
, 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...
— June 16, 2007 in Qom
Qom
Qom is a city in Iran. It lies by road southwest of Tehran and is the capital of Qom Province. At the 2006 census, its population was 957,496, in 241,827 families. It is situated on the banks of the Qom River....
, 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...
) was an Islamic 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 cleric. He was student of Grand Ayatollah Borujerdi. He was an ethnic Azeri
Azerbaijani people
The Azerbaijanis are a Turkic-speaking people living mainly in northwestern Iran and the Republic of Azerbaijan, as well as in the neighbourhood states, Georgia, Russia and formerly Armenia. Commonly referred to as Azeris or Azerbaijani Turks , they also live in a wider area from the Caucasus to...
.
Biography and clerical activities
Lankarani was born in Qom, Iran. Both of his parents were immigrants. His father was an Azeri-speaking native of Soviet Azerbaijan who studied in NajafNajaf
Najaf is a city in Iraq about 160 km south of Baghdad. Its estimated population in 2008 is 560,000 people. It is the capital of Najaf Governorate...
and Qom
Qom
Qom is a city in Iran. It lies by road southwest of Tehran and is the capital of Qom Province. At the 2006 census, its population was 957,496, in 241,827 families. It is situated on the banks of the Qom River....
and eventually settled in the latter. His mother, was a woman of Sayed descent. Despite lingual pressures 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...
during the Pahlavi regime, Lankarani was raised fluent in Arabic, Azeri
Azerbaijani language
Azerbaijani or Azeri or Torki is a language belonging to the Turkic language family, spoken in southwestern Asia by the Azerbaijani people, primarily in Azerbaijan and northwestern Iran...
, Persian
Persian language
Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...
, Pashtu
Pashto language
Pashto , known as Afghani in Persian and Pathani in Punjabi , is the native language of the indigenous Pashtun people or Afghan people who are found primarily between an area south of the Amu Darya in Afghanistan and...
and Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
.
Lankarani received his ijtihad
Ijtihad
Ijtihad is the making of a decision in Islamic law by personal effort , independently of any school of jurisprudence . as opposed to taqlid, copying or obeying without question....
, the permission of independent interpretation of the legal sources (the Qur'an and the Sunnah), from Ayatollah Boroujerdi at the age of 25. He led the prayer in the haram of Bibi Masouma A.S in Qum.
Grand Ayatollah Fazel Lankarani was declared as the most knowledgeable specialist in the field of the Islamic law (Marja al-taqlid) by the central Shi'a school of religious studies in Qom, Hawza
Hawza
Hawza or ḥawza ʻilmiyya is a seminary of traditional Islamic school of higher learning. It is a term used mostly by the Shi'a Muslims communities to refer to a traditional Shi'a centre where clerics are trained...
'Ilmiyyah, after the death of Ayatollah Khomeini. At the time of his death he was one of seven Grand Ayatollahs in Iran. His Resalah
Resalah
A Resalah , also resalah amaliyah is a book written by a Shia Marja that contains his practical rulings arranged according to topics dealing with ritual purity, worship, social issues, business, and political affairs, and outlining the principles used to derive specific rulings.All resalahs begin...
, the book including his interpretation of Islam
Islam
Islam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...
ic laws on different topics, is available in Arabic, English, Persian, Turkish, Urdu, and other languages. Lankarani taught in the areas of the science of Islamic law (fiqh
Fiqh
Fiqh is Islamic jurisprudence. Fiqh is an expansion of the code of conduct expounded in the Quran, often supplemented by tradition and implemented by the rulings and interpretations of Islamic jurists....
) and Usul al-fiqh
Usul al-fiqh
Uṣūl al-fiqh is the study of the origins, sources, and principles upon which Islamic jurisprudence is based. In the narrow sense, it simply refers to the question of what are the sources of Islamic law...
for the last 25 years of his life.
As a Shia Grand Ayatollah, he received generous contributions from his many followers. According to author Hooman Majd
Hooman Majd
Hooman Majd, born 1957 in Tehran, is currently an Iranian-American journalist and author based in New York City, from where he makes frequest trips to Iran...
"one of Lankarani's aides" told him that "approximately ten million dollars a month flows" into Lankarani's treasury "from his supporters alone."
Fazel Lankarani was a strong supporter of the Ayatollah Khomeini, being jailed several times and exiled once prior to the Iranian revolution
Iranian Revolution
The Iranian Revolution refers to events involving the overthrow of Iran's monarchy under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and its replacement with an Islamic republic under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the...
. After the Iranian Revolution, he was a member of the Assembly of Experts
Assembly of Experts
The Assembly of Experts of Iran , also translated as Council of Experts, is a deliberative body of 86 Mujtahids that is charged with electing and removing the Supreme Leader of Iran and supervising his activities.Members of the assembly are elected from a government-screened list of candidates by...
, Iran's leading religious body.
As his health conditions deteriorated he moved from the holy city of Qom to Tehran and then to London to receive medical treatment then on Friday 15 June, 2007 he moved to Qom and he died on Saturday June 16, 2007.
Views
Politically, Lankarani followed the traditions of the Islamic Republic in criticizing western corruption in the Islamic world.Fazel Lankarani supported Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwa
Fatwa
A fatwā in the Islamic faith is a juristic ruling concerning Islamic law issued by an Islamic scholar. In Sunni Islam any fatwā is non-binding, whereas in Shia Islam it could be considered by an individual as binding, depending on his or her relation to the scholar. The person who issues a fatwā...
calling for the death of Salman Rushdie following the publication of The Satanic Verses in 1989, and called on Muslims to kill that author. He (along with some other senior clerics) continued to call the killing of Rushdie a "duty" for all Muslims although the Iranian government itself ceased to do so in a 1998 compromise with the British government. In 1998, Lankarani called for the Iranian government to do "its utmost" to protect Shiites in his maternal homeland of Afghanistan
Afghanistan
Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...
, then reportedly endangered by the Taliban.
Lankarani also issued a fatwa
Fatwa
A fatwā in the Islamic faith is a juristic ruling concerning Islamic law issued by an Islamic scholar. In Sunni Islam any fatwā is non-binding, whereas in Shia Islam it could be considered by an individual as binding, depending on his or her relation to the scholar. The person who issues a fatwā...
calling for the deaths of another author, Rafiq Tağı
Rafiq Tagi
Rafiq Tağı, born Rafig Nazir oglu Taghiyev was an Azerbaijani journalist who worked for Sanat newspaper until police arrested him and Sanat editor Samir Sadagatoglu for "Europe and Us", an article that was deemed to be critical of Islam and the Prophet Muhammad...
, an Azeri
Azerbaijan
Azerbaijan , officially the Republic of Azerbaijan is the largest country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded by the Caspian Sea to the east, Russia to the north, Georgia to the northwest, Armenia to the west, and Iran to...
writer, and Tagi's editor, Samir Sədaqətoğlu, who were accused of criticizing Islam
Islam
Islam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...
. Tagi's writings sparked recent demonstrations outside the Azerbaijani embassy in Teheran. According to Iranian and Islamic law, these sentences are only applicable if either individual freely and willfully enters Iran and submit themselves to the authorities.
Lankarani believed strongly in separation of sexes and opposed President Ahmadinejad's declaration that women have the right to attend soccer matches at stadiums despite the fact that they would see male soccer players. He "famously refused for weeks" to meet with President Ahmadinejad in early 2007 after the president attempted to open soccer events to women.
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