Ayatollah Mohseni's life and legacy

Senior Afghan cleric, Ayatollah Mohammad-Asef Mohseni, passed away due to an illness in ‎‎Kabul, his family confirmed on Monday, August 5th.‎

News ID: 446403

Date: 07 August 2019 - 08:39

RNA – Senior Afghan cleric, Ayatollah Mohammad-Asef Mohseni, passed away due to an ‎illness in ‎‎Kabul, his family confirmed on Monday, August 5th.‎

Ayatollah Mohseni was born in 1935 in the southern province of Qandahar and was widely ‎considered to be the most powerful cleric among the Shi’ahs in Afghanistan.‎

Ayatollah Mohseni who was the founder of the Islamic Movement of Afghanistan was one of ‎the prominent figures in the Afghan resistance against the Soviet occupation.‎

Ayatollah Mohammad-Asef Mohseni-Qandahārī (b. 1935) was a Shi’ah source of emulation in ‎Afghanistan. He is a Pashtun Shi’ah scholar, an advocate of proximity among Islamic ‎denominations, the head of the Council of Shi’ah Scholars in Afghanistan, and the founder of ‎the Islamic Seminary and the University of Khatam al-Nabiyyin in Kabul. He is also a member ‎of the Supreme Council of the Ahl al-Bayt World Assembly, former leader of the Islamic ‎Movement of Afghanistan, and the founder of the Tamadon television channel.‎

Ayatollah Mohseni was a student of Sayyid Muhsin al-Hakim and Sayyid Abol-Qasim Khoei in ‎jurisprudence and the principles of jurisprudence. He wrote books concerning rijal, ‎jurisprudence, and hadiths. Mahdi Mehrizi refers to his book, Buhuth fi ‘Ilm al-Rijal, as an ‎enduring work about dirayat al-hadith.‎

His life

Ayatollah Mohseni is the son of Mohammad-Mirza Mohseni. He was born on April 26, 1936 in ‎Qandahar in Afghanistan. He learned the preliminaries in a maktabkhaneh (scholar), and at ‎the age of ten, he was taught by his father how to read and write.‎

At the age of fourteen (1947), he and his family went to Pakistan, where he learned Urdu in ‎Quetta. After their return from Pakistan, he worked in an electricity company and then in ‎‎1951, he started working in Qandahar’s commerce chamber.‎

His Wife

Ayatollah Mohseni married the daughter of his paternal aunt in 1961. They had three sons: ‎Abdollah, Hafez, and Habib. His first wife has passed away.‎

His Education

Ayatollah Mohseni studied preliminaries of religious sciences in Qandahar for six months, and ‎then he went to a village in Jaghori in the Ghazni province in Afghanistan, where he learned ‎al-Hidayah, al-Suyuti, Hashiyah Mulla ‘Abdullah, and parts of Ma’alim and al-Lum’ah for eight ‎months. Ayatollah Mohseni entered Najaf on July 3, 1953, where he finished the rest of his ‎intermediary studies within about three years. As he says, seminary holidays were not ‎pleasant to him; thus, he seriously studied even on holidays. He studied al-Mutawwal from ‎Ayatollah Mohammad-Ali Modarres-Afghani, the first volume of Kifayah from Ayatollah ‎Mojtaba Lankarani, the second volume thereof from Sadra Badkubaei, al-Rasa’il from ‎Ayatollah Kazem Yazdi, and al-Makasib from a number of scholars. Ayatollah Mohseni was ‎interested in philosophy as well, but since teaching philosophy was banned in Najaf, he ‎personally studied philosophy and wrote commentaries on Bab Hadi ‘Ashr.

He also studied ‎other philosophical books such as al-Asfar al-Arba’ah and Hikmat al-Ishraq, as well as ‎theological works. His frequent interlocutors with whom he discussed his lectures were ‎Ayatollah Qorban-Ali Mohaqqeq-Kabuli, Ayatollah Ismail Mohaqqeq, and Ayatollah Musa ‎‎‘Alemi-Bamiyani. Ayatollah Mohseni attended the lectures of Ayatollah Sayyid Mohsen al-‎Hakim, Ayatollah ‎Khoei, Ayatollah Husayn al-Hilli, and Ayatollah ‎ Sayyid Abdol-A’la Sabzevari ‎in jurisprudence and principles of jurisprudence for nine years.‎

His Political Activities

After the communist coup d’état on April 27, 1978 when People’s Democratic Party of ‎Afghanistan took over the power, Ayatollah Mohseni left Afghanistan. He first went to Arabia ‎to perform the rituals of hajj. He then went to Syria and taught religious sciences in ‎Damascus.‎

Islamic Movement of Afghanistan

In April 1979, he went to Qom, where he and a number of Qom-based Afghan clergies ‎founded the Party of Islamic Movement of Afghanistan on April 8, 1979. The party consisted ‎of smaller groups and engaged in military combats with the communist government of ‎Afghanistan at the time. It created over hundred military bases in nineteen provinces of ‎Afghanistan and organized tens of thousands of armed forces against Soviet forces.‎

Ayatollah Mohseni was the leader of the party until 2005. When he resigned from the ‎leadership of Islamic Movement of Afghanistan, he put an end to his political activities.‎

Cooperation with Mujahidun Government

After the fall of the communist government of Dr. Najibullah on April 28, 1992, Ayatollah ‎Mohseni was the secretary and spokesman of the leadership council of the Islamic ‎government of Afghanistan in the first term of the Mujahidun government in Kabul. However, ‎after the outbreak of wars among different groups of Mujahidun, he left Kabul and went to ‎Islamabad in Pakistan.‎

His Religious Activities

Ayatollah Mohseni played different religious roles in Afghanistan, for examples as the head of ‎the Council of Shi’ah Scholars in Afghanistan, his attempt to announce Shi’ism as an official ‎denomination in Afghanistan, the foundation of the education and cultural institute of Khatam ‎al-Nabiyyin in Kabul, the launch of Tamadon TV channel, and his attempt for the proximity ‎of Islamic denominations.

Council of Shi’ah Scholars in Afghanistan: Ayatollah Mohseni held ‎the first great assembly of Shi’ah scholars in Afghanistan in Kabul in 2003, and after three ‎days of negotiations, the foundation of the Council of Shi’ah Scholars in Afghanistan was ‎approved. ‎

The Council of Shi’ah Scholars in Afghanistan has representatives in sixty five places in ‎Afghanistan with over two thousand members. Ayatollah Mohseni ‎is the head of the council. ‎

Shi’ism as an official denomination in Afghanistan: in the constitution of the Islamic Republic ‎of Afghanistan, which was approved on January 4, 2004, Shi’ism was recognized an official ‎denomination for the first time in the history of Afghanistan. ‎

Khatam al-Nabiyyin Institute: the Institute for Higher Educations and the Seminary of Khatam ‎al-Nabiyyin, with an area of forty thousand square meters, is a center built under the ‎supervision of Ayatollah Mohseni, and was opened in 2008. The complex includes a Islamic ‎seminary, a university, a library, and a Jami’ mosque.‎

Tamadon Channel: Tamadon TV channel was founded by Ayatollah Mohseni ‎in 2008, and ‎its contents are mostly news, reports, and religious programs. Unlike other TV channels in ‎Afghanistan, this channel refuses to broadcast any music.‎

The law of the status of Shi’ahs: Ayatollah Mohseni, the head of the Council of Shi’ah ‎Scholars in Afghanistan, submitted a bill under the law of the status of Shi’ahs in Afghanistan, ‎to Hamid Karzai’s government. Based on Article 131 of the Afghan Constitution, the bill was ‎first approved by the Afghan government. However, after oppositions by some people in ‎Afghanistan as well as human rights institutes, it was revised.‎

Proximity among Islamic denominations: Ayatollah Mohseni ‎is a well-known figure in ‎Afghanistan who tries to establish proximity among Islamic denominations. Parts of his ‎effects for the proximity include the establishment of the Council of Islamic Brotherhood in ‎Afghanistan, publication of a book under Proximity among denominations, from theory to ‎practice, as well as the foundation of Khatam al-Nabiyyin University in which Sunni and Shi’ah ‎students can study together.‎

His Works

Along with his political as well as religious and cultural activities, Ayatollah Mohseni wrote ‎many books and essays, more than sixty of which have been published. Thus, he received ‎an “academician medal,” the highest scholarly medal in Afghanistan.‎

His works were written in Persian and Arabic and encompass a wide variety of subjects, ‎including hadiths, jurisprudence, rijal, beliefs, and politics. Here are some of his works:‎

Buhuth Fi ‘Ilm al-Rijal: it contains principles of rijal, and according to Mahdi Mehrizi, it is an ‎enduring book about dirayat al-hadith.‎

Mashra’ah Bihar al-Anwar: according to the author, it is a commentary on Bihar al-Anwar, in ‎which he tries to separate out reliable hadiths from unreliable ones in Bihar al-Anwar in ‎accordance to his own principles of rijal as elaborated in his Buhuth Fi ‘Ilm al-Rijal. He ‎discusses different issues in reliable hadiths.‎

His other works include ‘Aqa’id Baraye Hami (religious beliefs for everyone), Taqrib-e ‎Mazaheb, az Nazar Ta ‘Amal (Proximity Among Denominations, From Theory to Practice), ‎Zan Dar Shari’at-e Eslami (Woman In Islamic Law), Tawzih al-Masa’il-e Siyasi (essay of ‎political fatwas), and Khasa’is Khatam al-Nabiyyin (Characteristics Of The Last Prophet).‎

Source: Ijtihad Net ‎

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