Ayatollah Fadlallah

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4 July 2010

Spiritual leader to Hizbollah dies condemning Israel

Reuters News Agency - Lebanon's Grand Ayatollah Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, one of Shia Islam's highest religious authorities and an early mentor of the militant group Hizbollah, died in a Beirut hospital yesterday.

Ayatollah Fadlallah, who was 74, had a wide following beyond Lebanon's Shia, extending to central Asia and the Gulf. He had been too frail to deliver his regular sermon at Friday prayers for several weeks, and had been in hospital since Friday suffering from internal bleeding.

Crowds gathered at his Hassanein mosque in southern Beirut to pay condolences, and Hizbollah said it would mark his death with three days of mourning.

Black banners hung outside mosques in Shia areas of southern Lebanon and the eastern Beqaa valley, as well as at Ayatollah Fadlallah's many charitable institutions. "He was a guide not just for Lebanon but for the whole world and for Muslims," said a mourner, Abu Muhammed Hamadeh, outside the Hassanein mosque. "With his death, he has left a very large void in the Arab and Muslim world."

Ayatollah Fadlallah was a supporter of Iran's Islamic revolution and the spiritual leader and mentor of the Shia guerrilla group Hizbollah when it was formed after Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982, though he later distanced himself from its ties with Iran.

Hizbollah's al-Manar television interrupted its programmes and showed a picture of the white-bearded, black-turbanned cleric. "He stood with great courage and clarity as a supporter of the resistance against the Zionist enemy and of the heroic mujahedin," Hizbollah said.

A fierce critic of the United States, which formally designated him a terrorist, Ayatollah Fadlallah used many of his Friday sermons to denounce US policies in the Middle East, particularly its alliance with Israel.

But he was also quick to denounce the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US, which killed some 3,000 people.

Ayatollah Fadlallah survived several assassination attempts, including a 1985 car bomb which killed 80 people in south Beirut. US news reports said the attack was carried out by a US-trained Lebanese unit after attacks on US targets in Lebanon.

He distanced himself from the abduction of Westerners by Islamic militant groups in Lebanon during the 1980s, saying he was against kidnappings, and repeatedly called for their release.

He was known in Shia religious circles for his moderate social views, especially on women. He issued several notable fatwas, or religious opinions, including banning the Shia practice of shedding blood during the mourning ritual of Ashura. Lebanon's prime minister, Saad al-Hariri, a Sunni Muslim, said Ayatollah Fadlallah "contributed to the consolidation of the values of right and justice to resist injustice".

Ayatollah Fadlallah was born in 1935 in the Iraqi Shia city of Najaf, where he studied before moving to Lebanon in 1966.

In his final sermon, delivered by a deputy on Friday, he condemned Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem and criticised the US for "giving cover to the enemy (Israel)".

A doctor at the Bahman hospital, to which he was admitted on Friday, said that when a nurse asked the cleric what he needed, he replied: "For the Zionist entity to cease to exist."


AP - Lebanon's top Shiite cleric Fadlallah dies at 75

BEIRUT — Lebanon's Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, one of Shiite Islam's main religious figures who had a strong following world over, died Sunday after a long illness. He was 75.

Fadlallah, known for his staunch anti-American stance, helped in the rise of Lebanon's Shiite community in the past decades. He was one of the founders of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's governing Dawa Party and was believed to be its religious guide until the last days of his life.

He was described in the 1980s as a spiritual leader of the Lebanese militant Hezbollah — a claim both he and the group denied.

Fadlallah was born in Iraq in 1935 and lived in the Shiite holy city of Najaf, where he was considered among the top clergymen, until the age of 30.

His family hailed from the southern Lebanese village of Ainata and he later moved to Lebanon, where he started lecturing on religion and prodded Shiites, who today make up a third of Lebanon's population of four million, to fight for their rights in the 1970s and 80s.

During Lebanon's 1975-90 civil war, he was linked to Iranian-backed Shiite militants who kidnapped Americans and other Westerners, and bombed the U.S. Embassy and Marine base in Lebanon, killing more than 260 Americans.

Although he adamantly denied involvement in those events, he contended such acts were justifiable when the door is closed to dialogue. "When one fires a bullet at you, you cannot offer him roses," he had said.

Fadlallah later lost much of his 1980s militancy — his sermons, once fiery diatribes denouncing American imperialism, took on a pragmatic tone.

Because of the his ties to the militants, then-President Bill Clinton in Jan. 1995 froze Fadlallah's assets in America, along with those of 17 other people as part of an anti-terror campaign.

The stocky, gray-bearded cleric with piercing brown eyes below his black turban, rejected being described in Western media as Hezbollah's mentor. He claimed his relationship with the group was the same as with any other Shiite faction but that it simply was more obvious because of his physical presence in Lebanon.

"I reject it not because I reject Hezbollah, but because I refuse to be given a title that I don't possess," he said.

Fadlallah escaped several assassination attempts, including a March 1985 car bomb near his home in the Bir el-Abed district of south Beirut that killed 80 people.

The bomb, planted between his apartment block and a nearby mosque Fadlallah was attending that day, was timed to go off as he passed by. But Fadlallah stopped to listen to an old woman's complaints and escaped the 440 pound (200 kilograms) explosives' blast.

In Lebanon, the CIA was widely believed to have been behind the bombing, and American author Bob Woodward wrote in his book, "Veil: The Secret War of the CIA," that the late CIA director William Casey ordered Lebanese agents to plant the car bomb in retaliation for attacks on U.S. interests in the Middle East.

Fadlallah long advocated boycotting American and Israeli products. Yet, despite being a harsh critic of U.S. policy, he condemned the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States as acts of terror.

During the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war, Israeli warplanes bombed his two-story house in Beirut's southern Haret Hreik neighborhood. Fadlallah was not at home at the time of the bombing, which reduced the house to rubble.

Announcing Fadlallah's death at a Beirut news conference, Bahraini Shiite cleric Abdullah al-Ghuraifi, described him as a "father, religious authority and spiritual leader to all Islamic movements in the Arab and Islamic world."

Outside the hospital and at the Al-Hassanayn mosque in Beirut's suburb of Haret Hreik, where Fadlallah gave religion lessons and Friday sermons, black banners were hung up in a sign of mourning. Thousands of Fadlallah's supporters, including women, wept openly. Fadlallah's Al-Bashaer radio station and Hezbollah's Al-Manar TV started broadcasting Quranic verses.

For long, the cleric suffered from diabetes and high blood pressure. He was in hospital for the past two weeks but his condition deteriorated on Friday when complications from a liver problem led to an internal hemorrhage. One of his doctors, Hashem Noureddine, told The Associated Press he died from stomach bleeding.

"This is a dark day," said Mahmoud Malak, 44, a civil servant. "I don't think anyone will be able to fill the vacuum he will leave behind."

A grandfatherly figure, Fadlallah was also known for his bold fatwas, or religious edicts — including one that gave women the right to hit back their husbands if they attacked them. He issued an edict banning smoking and another saying the Baghdad government has no right to "legitimize" the presence of foreign troops but should call for an imminent and unconditional withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq.

He supported the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979 but distanced himself from the key principle advocated by its leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, which placed the Iranian cleric as a supreme, undisputed spiritual leader for the world's Shiites.

Among his followers are many of Iraq's Shiite leaders, including al-Maliki.

In Iraq, a prominent leader in al-Maliki's Dawa Party, Ali al-Adeeb, said Fadlallah's death was a major loss to the Islamic world and that it "will be hard to replace him." Lebanon's Prime Minister Saad Hariri called him "a voice of moderation and an advocate of unity" among Lebanese and Muslims in general.

Fadlallah's title was "sayyed" — reflecting a claim of direct descent from the Prophet Muhammad's daughter Fatima and her husband Imam Ali, revered by Shiites as a saint.

In his youth, Fadlallah studied theology in Iraq under prominent scholars. He also worked closely with Mohammed Baqir al-Sadr, a co-founder of the Dawa Party that Saddam Hussein later crushed. In Lebanon, he founded the "Family of Brotherhood" charity and his Al-Mabarrat network of charities, orphanages, schools, and religious institutions in Beirut, south Lebanon and the eastern Bekaa Valley, where many Shiites live.

Fadlallah's is survived by his wife Najat Noureddin and 11 children. His eldest son followed in his footsteps as a Muslim scholar.

Funeral arrangements were not immediately decided.


AFP: Lebanon cleric, listed as 'terrorist' in US, dead

Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, a former spiritual mentor of the Shiite militant group Hezbollah and branded a "terrorist" by Washington, died in hospital on Sunday aged 75, officials said.

A top authority of Shiite Islam revered in Lebanon and the region, including his native Iraq, Fadlallah was a "sayyed" to denote direct lineage with the Prophet Mohammed and known for his moderate social views.

A fiery anti-US and anti-Israeli critic, he died in a Beirut hospital where he was admitted on Friday for internal bleeding.

"Sayyed Fadlallah has died this morning," senior aide Ayatollah Abdullah al-Ghurayfi told a news conference, flanked by the late cleric's son, Sayyed Ali Fadlallah, who could not hold back his tears.

"The father, the leader, the marjaa (religious authority), the guide, the human being is gone," Ghurayfi said.

Hezbollah's Al-Manar television interrupted its regular broadcasts to announce his death, posting a picture of the black-turbaned Fadlallah and airing Koranic verses.

The group urged supporters to turn out in huge numbers for the funeral ceremony on Tuesday and called for three days of mourning, as the militant party's leader hailed Fadlallah as a "father and guide."

"He was a merciful father and a wise guide... who taught us to support dialogue, reject injustice and resist (Israeli) occupation," Hezbollah supremo Hassan Nasrallah said in a statement.

Fadlallah and Nasrallah are both blacklisted as "terrorists" by the United States.

Ghurayfi described the Shiite cleric as "the brains behind the launch of the resistance" against Israel -- including Hezbollah's campaign against the Jewish state's occupation of Arab land.

"I will only rest when the Zionist entity falls," Fadlallah once said, according to Ghurayfi.

Fadlallah is to be buried on Tuesday at southern Beirut's Hassanein mosque following the funeral, his office said, adding that a convoy would set off from the cleric's home in the Haret Hreik suburb at 1030 GMT.

News of his death prompted hundreds of followers to rush to the Hassanein mosque where family and associates were receiving condolences in a sombre mood as officials eulogised the grand ayatollah.

"Lebanon has lost a great national and spiritual authority," Prime Minister Saad Hariri said in a statement.

Health Minister Mohammed Khalifeh said: "Sayyed Fadlallah represented independence and progress and was a partisan of science and development, while still respecting the fundamentals" of religion.

Condolences also poured in from abroad.

The provincial council of the holy Iraqi city of Najaf where Fadlallah was born in 1935 said: "This loss is a catastrophe. He defended Muslim unity through his work and his ideas."

Iraq's firebrand anti-US cleric Moqtada Sadr called on supporters in Iraq to observe three days of mourning for Fadlallah.

Arab League chief Amr Mussa sent a message of condolences praising the "patriotism" of Fadlallah who he said contributed to efforts to make multi-confessional Lebanon "a model of coexistence."

Fadlallah rose in the ranks of Lebanon's Shiite community decades ago and was considered the spiritual guide of Hezbollah when it was founded in 1982 with the support of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard.

He gained political leverage during Lebanon's 1975-1990 civil war, but his ties to Hezbollah strained as the war progressed and he distanced himself from the party's ideological ties to Iran.

But Fadlallah remained an advocate of suicide attacks as a means of fighting Israel and last issued a fatwa, or religious decree, forbidding the normalisation of ties with the Jewish state.

In the 1980s, the US media alleged Fadlallah was behind the taking of American hostages by Iranian-backed radical Islamic groups. Other reports suggested he was a mediator but his real role remained elusive.

Fadlallah frequently blasted US policies in the Middle East, especially the US-led invasion of Iraq and Washington's ties with Israel.

He held particular sway with the Dawa Party of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, which he helped to found in 1957.

His followers revered him for his moderate social views, openness and pragmatism. Fadlallah issued religious edicts forbidding female circumcision and saying women could hit abusive husbands.


BBC: Hezbollah 'mentor' Fadlallah dies in Lebanon

Lebanon's top Shia Muslim cleric, seen as a key figure in the founding of militant group Hezbollah, has died at the age of 74.

Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah was regarded as Hezbollah's spiritual guide after its founding in 1982, something they both denied.

An implacable critic of the US, he had a wide following among Shias and backed the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran.

But he was known among Shias for his moderate social views.

He held particularly progressive views on the role of women in Islamic society.

Bombing attempt

The ayatollah had been ill for weeks, reports said, and was too frail to deliver his weekly sermon at Friday prayers.

He was admitted to hospital on Friday, reportedly suffering from internal bleeding.

As new of his death emerged, Hezbollah's TV station, al-Manar, interrupted its programming to broadcast his picture and recitations from the Koran.

Medical sources at Beirut's Behman hospital told news agencies Fadlallah had died, before a spokesman for the cleric emerged from the hospital to confirm the reports.

In the suburb of Haret Hreik, where the ayatollah preached at the al-Hassanayn mosque, black banners were hung in mourning and women wept openly in the street, the Associated Press reported.

Born to Lebanese parents in the Shia holy city of Najaf, in Iraq, Fadlallah moved to Lebanon in 1966 after completing his studies.

He won followers both in his home country and in Lebanon, extending his influence to Central Asia and the Gulf, Reuters reported.

He became regarded as the spiritual mentor to Hezbollah when it emerged as a Shia miliant group in 1982.

His views chimed with the strident anti-Israeli tone of the new movement, bringing him to the attention both of the Lebanese public and of Western intelligence agencies.

A 1985 car bombing in Beirut that killed some 80 people was widely thought to have been an attempt to assassinate the ayatollah.

The bombing was alleged to have been the work of the CIA, possibly in conjunction with regional intelligence agencies friendly to the US.

In his later years, Fadlallah distanced himself from Hezbollah over the group's links to Iran, but remained an outspoken critic of US policy in the Middle East and of Israel.

He welcomed the election of Barack Obama as US president in 2008, but last year expressed disappointment with his lack of progress in the Middle East, saying he appeared to have no plan to bring peace to the region.


Analysis: Jim Muir, BBC News, Baghdad

The US may have regarded him as embroiled in terrorism, but in Lebanon and many parts of the Shia Islamic world he was revered as the most eminent spiritual guide.

Moving to Lebanon in 1966, he rapidly gained a reputation for piety and scholarship. But he was also an activist. 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 after its invasion of Lebanon in 1982.

He was not officially part of that movement, but there were certainly shared ideals and aspirations.

He will be mourned, not just by militants but in Lebanon and around the world by the Shia community as a whole, to whom he has left a rich legacy of institutions and written works.


BBC - 4 July 2010

Obituary: Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah

The ayatollah declared himself disappointed in Barack Obama's Mid-East policy

He was a fierce critic of the United States and Israel, and used many of his Friday prayer sermons to denounce US policies in the Middle East.

He was targeted by unknown assassins in 1985, at the height of Hezbollah's suicide bombing and hostage-taking campaign in Lebanon.

Yet Lebanon's Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, who has died aged 74, was also known for his moderate position on women and Islam.

Among his fatwas, or religious edicts, was one that allowed women to wear nail polish during prayers.

But he was also branded a terrorist by the US, and named on a 1995 blacklist.

Fadlallah, who held the title "sayyed" to indicate claims of direct lineage with the Prophet Mohammed, died at Bahman hospital in Beirut on 3 July.

He had been a supporter of Iran's Islamic revolution and was customarily described as the spiritual leader of the militant movement Hezbollah when it was formed in 1982.

That was a claim which both he and the group denied.

Assassination attempts

Fadlallah was born in the Iraqi city of Najaf in 1935, where he studied religious sciences.

He also studied jurisprudence, logic, Arabic and philosophy before moving in 1966 to Lebanon, where he rose swiftly up the clerical hierarchy.

In the 1980s, at the height of the Lebanese civil war, US media claimed he was behind the seizing of American hostages by Iranian-backed radical Islamic groups. Other reports named him as a mediator in the crisis, but his real role never became clear.

However, in interviews and writings throughout his life he often made reference to the need for those resisting oppression to fight back with equal or greater force, even as he denied direct involvement with militant attacks.

In later years Fadlallah's links with Hezbollah became strained as he distanced himself from its ideological links to Iran's Islamic republic, and his views became more moderate.

But the cleric retained his opposition to the US and Israel, calling for a boycott of American and Israeli products.

He also continued to advocate suicide attacks as a means of fighting Israel, and only last year he issued a fatwa forbidding the normalisation of ties with the Jewish state.

He survived several assassination attempts, including a bombing apparently aimed at him in 1985 in Beirut, in which some 80 people were killed.

He appeared to welcome the election of Barack Obama in the US, telling the Wall Street Journal in 2009 that "some of his statements show that he believes in the method of dialogue".

He added: We don't have a problem with any American president, but our problem is with his policy that might affect our strategic interest."

Reputation for piety

Yet in another interview given in 2009, the ayatollah spoke of his disappointment at President Obama's Middle East policy, accusing him of being "under pressure" from Israeli supporters and "not a man who has a plan for peace".

The Americans may have regarded Fadlallah as embroiled in terrorism, but in Lebanon and many parts of the Shia Islamic world he was revered as the most eminent spiritual guide, says the BBC's Jim Muir in Beirut.

He rapidly gained a reputation for piety and scholarship through his teaching and the many books and treatises he wrote.

But he was also an activist, our correspondent adds.

He established religious schools and foundations, clinics and libraries. He was in favour of the Islamic revolution in Shiite Iran, and advocated armed resistance to Israel.

Away from politics, the white-bearded Fadlallah 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 and the Afghan Taliban, which he considered to be a sect outside Islam.


BBC: Mixed legacy of Ayatollah Fadlallah

Hussein Fadlallah commanded huge respect in Lebanon

The death of the eminent Lebanese Shia religious authority, Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, resonated almost as much in the West as it did in the Arab and Islamic worlds - but for entirely different reasons.

For many in the West, Sayyid Fadlallah's name was irrevocably linked with acts of violence against the American presence in Lebanon in the early 1980s.

Many bomb attacks, hijackings and kidnappings were attributed to the militant Shia movement Hezbollah, whose spiritual leader the bespectacled cleric was reputed to be in its early phases.

But in Lebanon and among Shia communities further afield, his passing was mourned as the loss of a spiritual giant whose teachings and writings placed him in the top rank of "sources of emulation", religious leaders whose edicts and prescriptions on spiritual and other matters are followed implicitly by the Shia faithful.

In addition to more than 40 books and treatises, the ayatollah also leaves a rich legacy of charitable institutions and theological schools through which he will be long remembered.

His undoubted influence across the Shia world was attested by tributes from Iraq, the Gulf and other communities where his influence was felt.

But his broader stature became evident from glowing praise and condolences from such figures as Amr Mousa, head of the largely-Sunni Arab League, who lauded him as a patriot and conciliator, and from Lebanon's Sunni Prime Minister, Saad Hariri, who called him "a voice of moderation and an advocate of unity".

Sayyid Fadlallah was the only eminence in Lebanon on a par with the Grand Ayatollahs in the two major centres of Shia learning, Iraq and Iran.

Since someone of his stature cannot simply be replaced, Lebanon will thus lose its status as a place to which Shia turn in search of guidance, until such time as another eminence might emerge.

Hezbollah ties

In the West, Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah was widely seen as the "godfather" of Hezbollah, and his name became well known during the turbulent and dramatic events that followed Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and the subsequent ill-fated insertion of an American-led Multinational Force.

Lebanon was turned into a proxy battleground for a wider regional and international struggle.

Iran at the time was embroiled in an all-out war with neighbouring Iraq which it believed was launched by Iraq in 1980 on behalf of the US and its allies to stifle the 1979 Islamic revolution in its infancy. Iran's regional strategic ally Syria was deeply threatened by the Israeli invasion and US presence on its western doorstep.

To drive the Israelis and Americans out, Tehran and Damascus cooperated to set up Hezbollah, drawn from the Lebanese Shia community and funded and trained by Iran and its Revolutionary Guards, working through Syria.

Suicide attacks on the US embassy and Marine barracks in Beirut were instrumental in persuading the Americans to withdraw. With the Israelis it took much longer - only in 2000 did they complete a unilateral pullout, seen as a triumph for Hezbollah's "Islamic Resistance" and its Iranian and Syrian backers.

Sayyid Fadlallah supported the Iranian revolution and was enthusiastic about the birth of Hezbollah, which he saw as a vehicle through which the oppressed could fight occupation.

But his exact relationship with Hezbollah in its early years remains opaque.

He was never part of its formal hierarchy. But they came from the same background and environment, and shared many of the same ideas and ideals.

His outspoken denunciation of Israeli occupation and American policy certainly amounted to a spiritual blessing for Hezbollah's activities.

At the time of the huge car bomb attempt on his life in 1985 - for which CIA-trained Lebanese agents were reported to be responsible, and in which 80 people were killed - it was said that Imad Mughnieh was among Sayyid Fadlallah's bodyguards.

Mughnieh swiftly acquired notoriety for his reported involvement in numerous bombings, hijackings and kidnappings in the 1980s.

When he was killed in a mysterious car bomb explosion in Damascus in 2008 - after years of public silence about his activities - he was hailed as Hezbollah's top military commander.

But Sayyid Fadlallah always denied implication in any of Hezbollah or Mughnieh's alleged doings.

He also specifically denied, certainly in later years, that he was Hezbollah's "spiritual leader".

It certainly appeared that his relations with Hezbollah in the 1990s were ambivalent, if not troubled.

Social advocate

As he became increasingly eminent in the clerical hierarchy, Sayyid Fadlallah established himself as an independent authority, a marja al-taqlid, the "source of emulation" to which the faithful turn for guidance on religious and other matters.

While he backed the Iranian revolution, he did not support the Iranian invention of the concept of Wilayet al-Faqih, which gives unchallengeable authority in temporal matters to the Supreme Leader, currently Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was only a mid-ranking cleric when he attained the leadership.

Hezbollah by contrast pays allegiance to the Iranian leader. When Israeli troops pulled out of Lebanon in 2000, the Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, travelled to Tehran to congratulate Ayatollah Khamenei.

Few Hezbollah rank and file members took Ayatollah Fadlallah as their marja.

But he commanded huge respect among the Shia masses in Lebanon, and relations with Hezbollah remained warm.

Al-Manar, the Hezbollah TV station, interrupted its programmes to announce his death, and dropped its normal output in favour of Koranic recitations and live pictures of condolences being received at Ayatollah Fadlallah's south Beirut mosque.

Despite his unrelenting hostility to Israel and to American policy in the region, Ayatollah Fadlallah's views on social and other matters were more liberal than was to the taste of some hard-liners.

He took a strong stand on many women's issues, and set up a number of women's centres.

Some of the fatwas (religious edicts) he issued were against female circumcision and "honour" killings, and he ruled that women had the right to hit back if beaten by their husbands. He also opined that abortion could be permitted in cases where a woman's health was at risk.


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