SOME OF HIS RENOWN STUDENTS
It is no exaggeration to indicate here that 70% of Shi'a scholars worldwide are
either graduates of al-Khoei's hawza or students of such graduates, and each one of them is like a bright star. Only Allah knows the exact numbers of those taught directly by al-Khoei or by his students, but we would like here to indicate some of the most renown scholars who were students of Imam al-Khoei and who are very well known throughout the Islamic world:
1) The great Islamic philosopher, theologian and economist Martyr Ayatullah Sayyid Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr,
2) Ayatullah Sayyid Ali Beheshti,
3) the authority-referee, scholar and philosopher Hujjatul-Islam Shaikh Muhammad Taqi al-Ja'fari,
4) the scholar Hujjatul-Islam Shaikh Muhammad Mahdi Shamsud-Deen,
5) Ayatullah Sayyid Taqi al-Qummi,
6) Ayatullah Sayyid Ali al-Sistani,
7) Ayatullah Sayyid Muhammad al-Roohani,
8) Hujjatul-Islam Shaikh Muhammad Asif al-Muhsini,
9) Hujjatul-Islam Sayyid Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah,
10) Ayatullah Shaikh Hussein al-Waheed,
11) Hujjatul-Islam Sayyid Muhyi al-Deen al-Ghuraifi,
12) Hujjatul-Islam Shaikh Muhammad Ishaq al-Fayyad,
3) Hujjatul-Islam Sayyid Ali Mekki,
14) Martyr Sayyid Abdel-Sahib al-Hakim, to name only a few.
IMAM'S DEMISE
After the failure of the Intifada of March 1991, the Grand Ayatullah was briefly imprisoned then forced to appear on television with the Butcher of Baghdad Saddam Hussein who always kept pressuring him to issue fatawa, religious verdicts, supportive of Saddam and his government, something which he never did despite all the persecution to which he, his representatives and family members were subjected. Because of refusing to cooperate with the dictatorial government of Saddam Hussein, he was put under house arrest till his death. Saddam also exiled, jailed, or assassinated many of the gifted students, representatives and distinguished followers of al-Khoei and ordered the destruction of their mosques and libraries particularly those in Najaf and Kerbala. As if the Iraqi government predicted the death of al-Khoei, it cut off all telephone connections with his Kufa residence in the morning of Saturday, August 8, 1992 and with the houses of those who were close to him. Having performed the afternoon prayers that day, the health of his late holiness suddenly deteriorated and a severe chest swelling was visible.
Doctors in the medical team charged with supervising his health conditions was called in, but they could not tend to him early enough. He informed his family and those in his presence that last night he felt that it was the last night he was spending with his family. He asked for water to perform his ablution, and as soon as he finished his ablution his soul passed away to its Maker exactly at 3:13 pm. Throngs of the believers started pouring into Kufa, surrounding his residence, and it was not long before the whole country came to know about the sad news. Military units of Saddam's "Special Forces" moved quickly to close all highways leading to both Najaf and Kufa as well as other cities in Iraq's central regions, then they moved to disperse the thronging crowds in the pretext of making preparations for the Grand Ayatullah's funeral the next morning.
Curfew was enforced in the cities of Najaf, Kufa and other central cities, and heavily armed police and military units started patrolling the streets. Armed forces stationed at Baghdad and in central and southern Iraqi cities were all placed under maximum alert in anticipation of a popular reaction to the sad news and to the ambiguous way it happened and was handled by the Iraqi government. Patrol vehicles were visible throughout the streets of al-Thawarah, al-Shu'lah and al-Kazimiyyah, all of which are major Shi'a towns in metropolitan Baghdad. Iraq's radio and television stations suspended their usual programs to announce the sad news of the demise of the great leader, informing the public that his funeral services were scheduled for Sunday morning. At midnight on Saturday, however, the family of the deceased was ordered to bury the Imam before sunrise. Local government authorities prohibited the public in Najaf and Kufa from taking part in his funeral services, angering the faithful in Iraq and the world.
His body was washed Saturday evening at his Kufa house in the presence of a handful of his family members, and the funeral prayers were conducted by his eminence Ayatullah Ali al-Sistani, one of his closest aides and a member of his four-member juristic Shura (Consultative) Committee. (The other three members have been: Ayatullah Shaikh Murtada al-Burujardi, Ayatullah Shaikh Ali Azghar al-Ahmadi, and, of course, Ayatullah al-Uzma al-Khoei himself.)
A three-day mourning period was announced by the government which prohibited the family of the deceased dignitary from holding the traditional Fatiha majlis, while the Ministry of Awqaf (Islamic Trusts) declared that it would conduct such majalis for his soul.
Telephone connections between the cities of Kufa and Najaf and the rest of the world were by now cut off, too, till Sunday evening. The hypocritical news media of the Butcher of Baghdad Saddam Hussein was busy circulating lies about the demise of Imam al-Khoei, claiming that he had received a great funeral service wherein the people and representatives of the Iraqi government participated, that his corpse was carried around all religious sites in the area, and even calling him "the martyr of the nation and the country." Baghdad's official newspaper Al-Jumhuriyyah called him "the martyr of Islam and the nation," publishing his photograph on its front page. International news agencies, on the other hand, published photographs of his coffin escorted by no more than six persons.
Shortly before his death, the greatest scholar and leader al-Khoei expressed no concern about anything in this vanishing life more than the possibility of the loss of his precious manuscripts the writing of which had exhausted so many years of his life... Surely the Islamic world will find it very hard to compensate for the loss of such a man, nay, a legendary institute and a lighthouse of knowledge and scholarship... Inna Lillah wa Inna Ilyahi Raji'oon.
Back to Main Page
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9
Email: AkilKanani@aol.com
