11.08.06
Ayatollah Sayyid Mortadha Al-Qazwini
The Ayatollah will be speaking in San Diego this thursday. He is currently in the United States due to health conditions. If anyone has any specific questions for him, let me know and inshaAllah, I will try to ask. A brief biography is below.
Ayatollah Sayid Mortadha Al-Qazwini was born in one of the holiest cities in the Islamic world—Karbala, Iraq—in 1931 to a family well known in the Shia world for its knowledge, wisdom, and piety. His father, the grand Ayatollah Sayid Sadiq Al-Qazwini (shown to the right), was one of Iraq’s most popular and educated Mujtahids. As a distinguished and respected scholar, masses of people congregated to follow him in the daily prayers he led at the shrine of Al-Abbas (as). A void was left in the mosques of Iraq and the hearts of thousands of Muslims when Ayatollah Sayid Sadiq was captured by Saddam’s regime at the age of 80 and detained there indefinitely as one of the oldest political prisoners.
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Upon the toppling of Saddam’s regime in 2003, Ayatollah Sayid Mortadha Al-Qazwini immediately returned to his hometown of Karbala, Iraq, where he was welcomed by thousands of people anxious to be guided under his strong leadership. Due to the request of the citizens of the holy city of Karbala Ayatollah Al-Qazwini became the Imam of the daily prayers at the shrine of Imam Hussein in Karbala. Along with leading the prayers, he conducts daily sermons and devotes his time to educating and guiding the Iraqi population, filling the void of Islamic knowledge that came about during the dictatorship of the corrupt regime of Saddam.
source: http://alqazwini.org/biography.htm