Lebanese Shias mourning death of leader Fadlallah

BEIRUT - Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, the leading Shia cleric in Lebanon and a figure seen as being a spiritual mentor to Hezbollah, died Sunday aged 75.

Fadlallah was admitted Friday to a hospital in Beirut’s southern suburbs, suffering from liver problems.

Mourners began gathering Sunday at the Imam al-Hassanein mosque in Haret Hreik, a suburb in the south of Beirut.

Roads near the mosque in Beirut’s southern suburbs, where Fadlallah died, were closed to traffic, with many members of the public wearing black.

Hajj Hani, Fadlallah’s press officer and close aide, told DPA, “he is a great loss to all the Lebanese”.

“He was a great scholar, who always tried to unite the Lebanese with his great wisdom,” Hajj Hani told DPA.

The cleric was regarded as a religious guide for the militant Islamist group Hezbollah, since its founding in 1982. He was an outspoken critic of US and Israeli actions in the region. Fadlallah is blacklisted as a terrorist in the US.

Hezbollah in statement Sunday described Fadlallah as “a man who stood courageously with the resistance against the enemy Israel, who always … warned against the plots planned for this region”.

Hezbollah in a second statement called on their followers “for the greatest participation in Ayatollah Fadlallah’s funeral” and announced three days of mourning.

Fadlallah’s funeral is schedled to take place Tuesday at the Imam al-Hassanein mosque, after the noon prayer.

In recent years Fadlallah, who was born in the Iraqi city of Najaf, distanced himself from Hezbollah, and promoted moderate social views, including on the role of women.

He rejected the Iranian Shia doctrine of the rule of the

clerical elite.

“No Shia religious leader, not even Khomeini, has a monopoly on the truth,” he argued.

Lebanon’s Prime Minister Saad Hariri, a Sunni Muslim, said that Fadlallah had worked to bring Lebanese together.

Lebanon has lost “a major national and spiritual authority that has effectively contributed to consolidating the values of right and justice, and resisting injustice”, Hariri said.

“In all stages and circumstances, he was a voice of moderation and an advocate of the unity among the Lebanese in particular, and among Muslims in general.”

The Lebanese Sunni Grand Mufti Sheikh Mohammed Rashid Qabbani mourned Ayatollah Fadlallah and said: “He was a great scholar among Muslim jurisprudents.”

Fadlallah, in his weekly Friday prayer sermons had frequently called for armed resistance against the Israeli occupations of Lebanon, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip, along with opposition to the existence of Israel. He was also an open critic of the American policies in the region.

But despite his strong statement against Israel and the US, the Shia clergyman has always denounced terrorist acts.

“…Beside the fact that these acts (terrorism) are forbidden by Islam, these acts do not serve those who carried them out but their victims, who will reap the sympathy of the whole world. Islamists who live according to the human values of Islam could not commit such crimes,” Fadlallah was quoted as saying in one of his sermons.

Fadlallah was the target of several assassination attempts, including the allegedly CIA-sponsored and Saudi-funded March 8, 1985 Beirut car bombing that killed 80 people.

In addition to his academic religious texts, Fadlallah has established a number of schools, Islamic centers, and orphanages in Lebanon.