Mohammad Kazem Shariatmadari

Born to an Azeri family in Tabriz , he was among the most senior leading Twelver Shi'a clerics in Iran and Iraq and was known for his forward looking and liberal views. After the death of Supreme and Grand Ayatollah Borujerdi (Marja' Mutlaq) in 1961 he became one of the leading marjas , with followers in Iran, especially Pakistan , India , Lebanon , Kuwait and the southern Persian Gulf states. In 1963, he prevented the Shah from executing Ayatollah Khomeini by recognizing him as a Grand Ayatollah , since according to the Iranian constitution a Marja' could not be executed. Khomeini was exiled instead. As the leading Mujtahid he was the head of Qom's seminary until Khomeini's arrival. He was in favour of the traditional Shiite view of keeping clerics away from governmental positions and a vehement critic of Khomeini. He headed the Centre for Islamic Study and Publications and was the administrator of the Fatima Madrasa in Qum . At the time of the Iranian revolution in 1979, Shariatmadari was the leading Grand Ayatollah in Qom. Shariatmadari was at odds with Khomeini's interpretation of the Leadership of Jurists ( Wilayat al-faqih ) advocating that clerics can strive to reform the government when it was going against the benefit of people as taught by Twelver Shiite views. Otherwise, the role of clerics was above that of government and therefore the latter should not be made up of clerics. Furthermore, according to Shariatmadari, one cannot force the public to accept a system however morally correct it may be but the people should freely accept it themselves. He believed a democratic government where the people administer their own affairs is perfectly compatible with the correct interpretation of the Leadership of the Jurists. Before the revolution Shariatmadari wanted a return to the system of constitutional monarchy that was enacted in the Iranian Constitution of 1906 . He encouraged peaceful demonstrations to avoid bloodshed. According to such a system the Shah's (King's) power was limited and the ruling of the country was mostly in the hands of the people through a parliament system. Mohammad Reza Pahlavi , the then King (Shah) of Iran, and his allies, however, took the pacifism of clerics such as Shariatmadari as a sign of weakness. Shah's government declared a ban on Muharram commemorations hoping to stop revolutionary protests. After a series of severe crack downs on the people and the clerics and the killing and arrest of many, Shariatmadari criticized Shah's government and declared it non-Islamic tacitly giving support to the revolution hoping that a democracy will be established in Iran. After the revolution it had become clear that Khomeini did not intend to offer democracy to the Iranian people. Shariatmadari, unlike recent accusations by mostly Baluchi and Kurdish Sunni groups, had no intention of gaining autonomy for Azarbaijan who considered themselves Iranian and Shia before anything else . The Kurdish and Baluchi resistance was made up of small and mostly extremists groups who were and still are today Sunni. He criticized Khomeini's system of government as not being compatible with Islam or representing the will of the Iranian people. He severely criticized the way that a referendum was conducted to establish Khomeini's system of government. This led Khomeini to put him under house arrest, imprison his family members and torture his daughter in-laws. This led to mass protests in Tabriz which were quashed toward the end of January 1980 when under the orders of Khomeini tanks and the Army moved into the city. Shariatmadari not wanting an internal civil war or armed fighting and unnecessary killing of fellow Shiites ordered a stop to the protests. In April 1982, Sadegh Ghotbzadeh was arrested on charges of plotting with military officers and clerics to bomb Khomeini's home and to overthrow the state. Ghotbzadeh denied any intentions on Khomeini's life and claimed he had sought to change the government, not overthrow the Islamic Republic. He, under torture, also implicated Ayatollah Shariatmadari, who, he claimed, had been informed of the plan and had promised funds and his blessings if the scheme succeeded. However, the confession extracted under torture did not match with Shariatmadari's character and views as a pacifist. Shariatmadari's son-in-law, who was accused of serving as an intermediary between Ghotbzadeh and the Ayatollah, was sentenced to a prison term and a propaganda campaign was mounted to discredit Shariatmadari. Shariatmadari family members were arrested and tortured. According to a new book containing the memoirs of Mohammad Mohammadi RaiShahri, a leading player in the Iranian Government and the head of the Hadith University in Iran, the Ayatollah himself was beaten with Raishahri doing the beating.. All this forced the aging Ayatollah to go on national television and read out a confession and asking forgiveness from the man he had saved from death two decades ago. Because of his position as a mujtahid , the government could not publicly execute him.¹ His Centre for Islamic Study and Publications were closed, and he remained under house arrest until his death in 1986.² He is buried in a simple grave in a cemetery in Ghom. Clerics were prevented from attending his funeral prayer, drawing criticisms from Grand Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri , one of the lead players in the Iranian revolution.³