Hussein-Ali Montazeri - Early Life and Public Career

Early Life and Public Career

Born in 1922, Montazeri was from a peasant family in Najafabad, a city in Isfahan Province, 250 miles south of Tehran.

Muslim scholar
Hossein-Ali Montazeri
Title Grand Ayatollah
Born 1922
Died 19 December 2009 (aged 87)
Era Modern era
Region Iran
Madh'hab Shia Islam
Main interest(s) Fiqh, Irfan, Islamic philosophy, Islamic ethics, Hadith, politics
Notable idea(s) Guardianship of the Islamic Jurists, Islamic Democrasy, Dynamic Fiqh
Notable work(s) Al-Hodod, From Beginning to End, Hoghogh, Islam-Religion of mould
Influenced by
  • Seyyed Hossein Borujerdi, Ruhollah Khomeini, Mohammad Kazem Shariatmadari
Influenced
  • Ali Khamenei, Mohammad Beheshti, Morteza Motahhari, Akbar Hashemi, Mohsen Kadivar

His early theological education was in Isfahan. Montazeri then went to Qom where he studied under Khomeini and went on to become a teacher at the Faiziyeh Theological School. While there he answered Khomeini's call to protest the White Revolution of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in June 1963 and was active in anti-Shah clerical circles.

After Khomeini was forced into exile by the Shah, Montazeri "sat at the center of the clerical network" which Khomeini had established to fight the Pahlavi rule. He was sent to prison in 1974 and released in 1978 in time to be active during the revolution.

Read more about this topic:  Hussein-Ali Montazeri

Famous quotes containing the words early, life, public and/or career:

    In the course of twenty crowded years one parts with many illusions. I did not wish to lose the early ones. Some memories are realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again.
    Willa Cather (1873–1947)

    ... there is no point in being realistic about here and now, no use at all not any, and so it is not the nineteenth but the twentieth century, there is no realism now, life is not real it is not earnest, it is strange which is an entirely different matter.
    Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)

    Nature has ordained that the man who is pleading his own cause before a large audience, will be more readily listened to than he who has no object in view other than the public benefit.
    Titus Livius (Livy)

    I doubt that I would have taken so many leaps in my own writing or been as clear about my feminist and political commitments if I had not been anointed as early as I was. Some major form of recognition seems to have to mark a woman’s career for her to be able to go out on a limb without having her credentials questioned.
    Ruth Behar (b. 1956)