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:

    Early to bed, early to rise, work like hell and organize.
    Albert Gore, Jr. (b. 1948)

    [The sceptic] must acknowledge, if he will acknowledge any thing, that all human life must perish, were his principles to prevail. All discourse, all action would immediately cease, and men remain in a total lethargy, till the necessities of nature, unsatisfied, put an end to their miserable existence.
    David Hume (1711–1776)

    When the Revolutionaries ran short of gun wadding the Rev. James Caldwell ... broke open the church doors and seized an armful of Watts’ hymnbooks. The preacher threw them to the soldiers and shouted, “Give ‘em Watts, boys—give ‘em Watts!”
    —For the State of New Jersey, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)

    “Never hug and kiss your children! Mother love may make your children’s infancy unhappy and prevent them from pursuing a career or getting married!” That’s total hogwash, of course. But it shows on extreme example of what state-of-the-art “scientific” parenting was supposed to be in early twentieth-century America. After all, that was the heyday of efficiency experts, time-and-motion studies, and the like.
    Lawrence Kutner (20th century)