RNA – In a speech on the seventh anniversary of Allamah Sayyid Murtadha Sharif al-Askari (1914-2007), Hujjat al-Islam Ali-Reza Panahian told a gathering of university professors about the great revolutionary and leading scholar of the Islamic world.
Hujjat al-Islam Panahian explained that Allamah Askari served Islam and the Islamic Revolution in an extraordinary. With the sad state that the Islamic world is currently in, we could have certainly made use of his great character, knowledge and revolutionary thought and we need to take advantage of the lessons he taught. He was an eminent historian, traditionist, and one of the Islamic Seminary’s most learned masters who is expert in so many fields and had compiled many other books in imamate, wilayah, and reasoning and other traditional fields.
Allamah Askari realized the importance of the propagation of Islam and began his mission by establishing schools and colleges in his hometown of Samarra, Iraq in which he pioneered modern methods of teaching. By establishing modern schools, he educated specialists in Islamic sciences in order to convey these sciences to the greater society. He also issued regularly issued bulletins whose goal was to elevate the teachers’ scientific level. He supported the use of new technologies and methods which can be used to propagate Islam, and realized the benefits the internet has in the field of Islamic propagation.
He became acquainted with the beginnings of the cultural assault of the Western colonial forces against Islamic world. He began a long fight with this assault on Islam by recommended that the people return to the Holy Quran and ahadith (narrations) and established banks which issue interest free loans in order to help society. He also discussed new issues in Islamic theology which helped battle against the influence of Western thought. He realized that they are striving to propagate their secular and liberal ideas among Muslim youth and that more needs to be done to bring the youth back to Islam.
Hujjat al-Islam Panahian explained that Allamah Askari did not make any difference between Shi’ites and Sunnis as he believed strongly in the unity between Shi’ites and Sunnis against the plots of the arrogant powers to divide Muslims as part of their evil plan to distance Muslims away from true and pure Islam.
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