The first anniversary of the assassination of

Islam’s Martyr, the author of more than one thousand two hundred books, the Second Shirazi Reviver, 2 Shawwaal 1423 Hejri[1]

Grief, sorrow and pain once again return to the hearts as they are reminded of his assassination at the criminal hands of the Iranian Intelligence Service, by the order of the Murderer Khamenei.

A year ago, the devious regime of Wahdat al-Mawjood[2], made its fourth attempt to take the life of Ayatollaah al-Odhmaa Sayyed Mohammad Shirazi, and succeeded.

The Second Shirazi Reviver, as he became known, has single-handedly enriched the Islamic library with more than one thousand two hundred titles, covering a large number of subjects, ranging from politics to worship, and from poetry to jurisprudence, and from history to astronomy. He wrote for Islamic scholars, as well as university lecturers; for adults, as well as children; for knowledgeable intellectuals, as well as the ordinary people... Some of his books run to more than seven hundred pages, whereas some have only fifty pages.

In his twenties, he started to write the al-Feqh encyclopedia on Islamic jurisprudence for scholars of the Islamic law, and he continued this project until his last years. With more than one hundred and fifty volumes, it is the largest of its kind. In this work too, as was his habit, he extended his pen to write on new themes; he compiled tens of volumes about subjects such as economics, politics, government, law, sociology, psychology, the Holy Qor’aan, the Holy Hadeeth, the environment… sciences never studied within the framework of the Islamic jurisprudence before.

And even in the more usual subjects of Islamic jurisprudence, he often brought up and discussed new issues and questions. For instance, he wrote about Islam’s opinion on the various aspects of cloning and human cloning, in particular, about thirty-five years ago.

He, directly and indirectly, founded as many as seven hundred Islamic institutions around the world: modern schools, religious academies, mosques, Hosayneyyahs, hospitals, interest-free lending banks, newspapers, magazines, etc.

In a special report about the Martyr, a secret publication of the Iranian Intelligence Service, wrote a few years ago, that Sayyed Mohammad Shirazi has founded more institutions around that world, than the government of Iran has worldwide.

Ayatollaah al-Odhmaa Sayyed Mohammad Shirazi became a marja’[3] on 29 Sha’baan 1380 Hejri. At only 33 years of age, he is the youngest person ever to become a marja’.

One of the things that distinguished his marja’eyyat[4] since its first days, from many other marja’eyyaat[5], was his brave and courageous stance against suppressive regimes both in Iraq and in Iran.

He denounced the regimes of Abdol-Kareem Qaasim and Abdol-Salaam Aarif and the Ba’thists in Iraq, as tools of colonialism, brought to power to serve their English masters and to further enslave Iraq and its people. And he denounced the Pahlawi and the Khomeini regimes in Iran, for the same reasons. But it the case of Khomeini’s regime, his opposition had a more serious cause and a much stronger reason which was, as he often explained, its ruling in the name of Islam, against Islam.

On the one hand, Khomeini did not believe in Islam as a religion, he believed in Wahdat al-Mawjood. And on the other hand, he built his regime on the idea of the Absolute Authority, which gave unlimited and unquestionable powers to its leader, the same as those of God, His prophets and Imaams. This meant Khomeini and his successors could do whatever they pleased and that their criticizers, whoever they maybe, suffer slow and painful deaths. And to make things worse, all of the above was to be done in the name of Allaah and Islam.

As a result of his strong and public opposition to the successive Iraqi regimes and the blood-drenched Iraqi Communist movement, he, his family, staff, supporters and followers suffered greatly.

His brother, the Martyr Ayatollaah Sayyed Hasan Shirazi, was the first Moslem leader to be arrested, shortly after the Ba’thist regime came to power in 1968. He, along with a number of his staff, were imprisoned by the Ba’thists, and viciously tortured. Some of them died under torture, and many were executed. According to the survivors who fled Iraq, he was the second person, within the group, to suffer the worst of the torture, as he was subjected to more than forty methods of torture in regular bouts for more than four months. When at the end of this period he was given a family visit, his own mother did not recognize him. Later he miraculously fled Iraq, but was assassinated in Beirut-Lebanon in 1980.

Finally, the Martyr and many of his supporters fled Iraq. He migrated to Kuwait and in 1979, and because of the very close relations between Kuwait and Iraq, which allowed the Iraqi Intelligence Service to arrest its opposition figures in Kuwait, he migrated to Iran.

And because of his strong and public opposition to Khomeini’s regime, the Martyr became the target of several assassination attempts by the Iranian Intelligence Service, the first in 1981.

Since Khomeini came to power, his regimes’ various terror tools, mainly the much dreaded “Special Court for the Clergy” arrested and tortured as many as three thousand of his family members, staff, supporters and followers. Some of them died as a result of heavy bouts of torture, such as the Martyr Abbaas Aameleyaan, who died on 1 Shawwaal 1416 Hejri. Some were sentenced to long prison terms in secret trials, in which even the prisoner was not allowed to defend himself, such as Hojjatol-Islam Shaykh Makki Aakhoond, who was sentenced to three years imprisonment. Some were kept in secret detention for long periods without any sort of trial, such as the Martyr’s second son, Ayatollaah Sayyed Mortadhaa Shirazi, who was detained in secret locations for nearly two years.

The Martyr’s successor, Ayatollaah al-Odhmaa Sayyed Saadiq Shirazi was himself arrested in 1411 Hejri. And following the Martyr’s assassination, he survived from an attempt on his life during his predecessor’s funeral procession in Qom-Iran, on 19 December 2001.

The “Special Court for the Clergy” also arrested his eldest son, Ayatollaah Sayyed Mohammad-Radhaa Shirazi in 1411 Hejri.

To my knowledge, the Martyr had not published anything about his struggle against Khomeini’s regime, considering the many dangers surrounding him, except this short passage in one of his memoirs:

“And in Iran, I became imprisoned in my home, and happened to me what happened. If I wanted to write about what I suffered, it would not be a book with less than five hundred pages.

And they were not content with what they had done to me, so they arrested my two sons Sayyed Mortadhaa and Sayyed Mahdi, and arrested a number of my relatives and friends, and forced a number of them into exile. They also prohibited a large number of scholars and students from attending my lecture, and coerced the staff in our institutions to stay away, after they had taken over many of them. They also pursued my two other sons, making it necessary for one of them to migrate to Kuwait and the other to migrate to Syria.

During the past century, our family has, indeed, paid a heavy price for being related to the Great Shirazi Reviver[6], and to Ayatollaah al-Odhmaa Mohammad-Taqi Shirazi, leader of the 1920 revolution in Iraq, my father’s maternal uncle, and for the books that we publish, and the institutions that we establish”[7].

The Martyr had stipulated in his will to be buried in his office, temporarily, until he could be moved to his permanent resting place in Karbala-Iraq. But the Iranian Intelligence Service feared that it might make it possible for his family to exhume the body and have an autopsy performed, which would make known the real cause of death. Therefore it tried to take his body from the hospital, but faced a tough resistance from the mourners.

However, during the funeral procession, several hundred agents seized the body from the mourners and took it inside the holy shrine of Sayyedah Ma’soomah to burry it in the bottom level of a three-level grave. Then they would burry two other, preferably famous, people in the upper levels, and as such make it impossible for anyone to exhume the body in future for an autopsy.

But the mourners succeeded in reclaiming the body and headed back to his office. Near his office, several hundred Secret Service agents were waiting, who mixed with the crowds and attempted to seize the coffin. But when the angry mourners refused to give in, a large number of Special Forces and Riot Police converged on them and started to beat them severely. Finally they succeeded to snatch the coffin, and hurried back to the shrine of Sayyedah Ma’soomah, where the three level grave had already been prepared.

This time, the crowds were kept well back and all the doors of the shrine were locked from the inside. So those inside could not leave, and those outside could not enter to help.

Thus the body of this oppressed Martyr was buried in haste without the presence of any of his family members or friends.

One year after his burial, his grave remains under people’s feet, in one of the corridors of the holy shrine, near one of its enterances, just as Khamenei had planned.

The Secret Service has changed many of the staff of the holy shrine with their agents, who continuously harass, threaten and often beat up the heart-broken pilgrims of the grave. Whenever these vicious dogs attack the crowds around the grave, they do not differentiate between adults and children, nor do they distinguish the men from the women. Or they simply do not care who it is that they are beating. About two months after his death, came one of these attacks during which, even, the Martyrs’ daughters were beaten.

It is also a high risk for anyone to give sweets, etc. to people in that corridor. So hardly any day passes without incidents at the gravesite.

Previously, this corridor, as other places inside the shrine, was well illuminated with many beautiful chandeliers and was covered with expensive rugs. But shortly after the burial, the chandeliers immediately over the grave, were turned off and remain turned off; and the rugs were taken away, making it difficult for mourners to sit on the cold marvel surface for a long time. This is why some people started to bring blankets to cover the cold ground, and this is when the blankets were pulled from underneath them and confiscated.

The agents are also quick to confiscate any camcorders or cameras used in that corridor. And every night, they take away any pictures or books of the Martyr, or any flowers that have been placed near the grave by pilgrims.

The gravestone remains unmarked, and level with the ground, and it is of the same kind and color marvel that paves all the grounds of the holy shrine. On many occasions, when there had been too much pressure from foreigners on the authorities of the holy shrine about the condition in which the gravesite is being kept, they said that they had strict orders from the very top.

Currently, there are talks that the government is planning to make changes inside the shrine, and only in that corridor. Informed sources warn that the plan, if carried out, will make the gravesite altogether inaccessible.

In short, the regime is going to great lengths to stop people from going to the Martyr’s grave to pay their respects.

On the morning of 1 November 2002, the Murderer Khamenei came to the holy shrine, and, especially, used this enterance among all the other entrances. And he walked by, and quite possibly, over the unmarked grave of his victim, to show his haughtiness and arrogance.

Just as a year ago when many mourners, in the Gulf countries, were denied visas to travel to Iran to participate in the ceremonies, and just as the Iranian chartered planes of some groups of visa holders were extraordinarily delayed with no explanation, this year, some Iranian chartered planes have also been cancelled to the surprise of the passengers…

To read a detailed report, based on eyewitness accounts, about the assassination of the Martyr Ayatollaah al-Odhmaa Sayyed Mohammad Shirazi by the Iranian Secret Service, the attempted assassination of his successor, and following events please click HERE

To see a collection of pictures about the above events please click HERE

[1] The Moslem lunar calendar. 2 Shawwaal 1423 Hejri is 7 December 2002.

[2] The belief that everything is God, even the excrement of a pig. Khomeini was a strong believer of Wahdat al-Mawjood, or the unity of all things, but he kept it a well hidden secret until he came to power. Once in power, he suddenly announced his faith in a serious of lectures transmitted through the government-controlled media. He followed this by publishing his books and poems on the subject which he had compiled as long ago as forty-five years earlier. He was very careful that the Iranian Moslem nation does not learn about his true religion and disperse from around him. During his rule, he publicly invited Mikhail Gorbachev to send a number of highly selected bright intellectuals to go to Iran and study the works of the advocates of his religion, Wahdat al-Mawjood, especially Ibn al-Arabi, who famously claimed to be God.

[3] A highest religious authority, compared with the Pope. There can be more than one marja’ at any one time.

[4] The leadership of a marja’.

[5] Plural of marja’eyyat.

[6] The Great or the First Shirazi Reviver, Ayatollaah al-Odhmaa Sayyed Mohammad-Hasan Shirazi started and led the tobacco revolution in Iran against the British Empire, which succeeded in defeating the British and forcing them out of Iran. British agents later poisoned him to death in Samara’-Iraq, and returned to Iran under a new cover.

[7] The Pursuit Of One And A Half Century.