Lebanon’s Shia leader Ayatollah Mohammaed Hussein Fadlallah died in a Beirut hospital on Sunday. He was admitted on Friday for internal bleeding. Fadlallah was 75 years old.
Sheik Fadlallah was a staunch and early supporter of Ayatollah Khomeini’s Islamic revolution and led the corresponding Islamic movement in Lebanon. Later in life, as an ayatollah, he distanced himself from Khomeini’s Velayat-e Faghih, the absolute rule of top Shia religious leader as the country’s supreme leader, as in Iran.
Fadlallah’s early teachings had a profound effect on the creation of Hezbollah in 1982, although he later denied being the pro-Iranian militant group’s spiritual leader. He became one of the founders of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki’s governing Dawa Party, and was believed to be Maliki’s religious guide.
6 comments:
May he rest in Peace. He was a towering figure in Shia Islam and a very principled man. A great loss for the Muslim world.
RIP. Sayed Hussein Fadlallah was a giant theologian in Lebanon and many parts of the Shia Islamic world and he was revered as the most eminent spiritual guide.
A vocal critic of the United States, Ayatollah Fadlallah used to slam US warmongering policies in the Middle East, particularly its alliance with Israel.
Born in Najaf, Iraq, Fadlallah studied Islamic sciences in Najaf before moving to Lebanon in 1952.
In the following decades, he delivered many lectures, engaged in intense scholarship, wrote dozens of books, founded several Islamic religious schools, and established the Mabarrat Association.
Through that association he established a public library, a women's cultural center, and a medical clinic.
The Grand Ayatollah was the target of several assassination attempts, including the CIA-sponsored and Saudi-funded March 8, 1985 Beirut car bombing that killed 80 people.
He had a reputation for piety and scholarship through his teaching and the many books and treatises he wrote.
But he was also a socio-political activist, a Lebanese nationalist, and a modertate pan-Islamist.
He established religious schools and foundations, clinics and libraries. He was in favour of the Islamic revolution in Shia Iran, and advocated armed resistance to Israel and struggle against the brutal occupation of Palestine.
On social issues he was also known for relatively liberal views on women.
He issued a fatwa forbidding female circumcision, and was opposed to the "honour killings" of women by their families.
In 2009, as France was debated whether to ban the full body veil, Fadlallah accused the French president of "banning women from choosing their own clothes".
He also had opposed the call to "jihad," or holy war, by Osama bin Laden, the Afghan Taliban, and Salafists (Wahabbis) whom he considered to be a sect outside Islam.
He will be mourned by millions of Muslims around the world and by the Shia community as a whole, to whom he has left a rich legacy of institutions and written works.
CNN fire her Reporter "Octavia Nassr" she was some Arab lady reporter in that place, for admiring and claiming sorrow for the death of Fazllolah.
talkin about Freedom of Expression :)
as the famous saying goes; its not fascism when we do it.
Dariush London
In the US police state telling the TRUTH is a crime. First the respected journalist Helen Thomas was fired for exposing Zionist Gaza atrocities and now Octavia Nasr of CNN. Talk about third-rate dictatorship and media censorship.
The losers in Pentagon have even barred reporters from war zones after the Rolling Stones magazine interview with General Stanley McChrystal. US is just like a totalitarian USSR, just more dumb, respressive and ignorant.
A British envoy has drawn the ire of Israelis by describing Lebanon's late Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah as a "decent" man and her "favorite politician."
Frances Guy, who has been the UK's ambassador to Lebanon since 2008, wrote an obituary that venerated Hezbollah's recently-deceased spiritual leader.
“Sheikh Fadlallah passed away yesterday. Lebanon is a lesser place the day after but his absence will be felt well beyond Lebanon's shores," the ambassador wrote in her blog.
"If I was sad to hear the news I know other peoples' lives will be truly blighted. The world needs more men like him willing to reach out across faiths, acknowledging the reality of the modern world and daring to confront old constraints. May he rest in peace," Guy added.
The Israeli government responded by denouncing the ambassador's comments.
An Israeli foreign ministry spokesman, Yigal Palmor, in strongly-worded comments snubbed the envoy saying, "The British ambassador thinks he was a man of peace and the world needs more of him," The Daily Telegraph quoted, as saying on Thursday.
British Foreign Office was quick to respond by saying that the ambassador's remarks were her personal comments.
"The ambassador expressed a personal view on Shiekh Sayyid Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah describing the man as she knew him," a Foreign Office spokesman said last night.
Moreover, in a move to please the Israeli government, the Foreign Office removed Guy's post from his page on the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office website.
The post entitled "The passing of decent men" was formerly accessible here; however the page now returns an error message reading, "Sorry! We couldn't find your document."
On Wednesday, CNN fired its senior editor for Middle Eastern affairs, Octavia Nasr, after she published a 140-character Twitter message praising the late Lebanese Shia cleric.
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