Yasser Al-Habib
Sheikh Yasser al-Habib (Arabic: ياسر الحبيب) is a Muslim Shia cleric, the founder and the head of the London-based Khoddam Al-Mahdi Organization, as well as Al-Muhassin mosque in Fulmer, Buckinghamshire. Al-Habib is well known for his sharp way in expressing his religious views and his investigations and conclusions in the Islamic history, as well as his hard-work in promoting the Shia faith in the world by following a different method of the most of the contemporaneous Shia clerics, wherein he focuses in his lectures and articles in discussing controversial issues between Shias and Sunnis, especially the view regarding some figures in the early Islamic history such as Abu Bakr, Omar, Aisha and their likes whom are regarded as respected and holy figures for Sunnis but not for Shias.Nonetheless, Sheikh al-Habib is also known for criticizing governments and personalities who themselves speak in the name of Shiism, wherein he strongly condemns the human rights violations inside Iran for example, as well as criticizing personalities such as Ali Khamenei, Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, Hassan Nasrallah and Muqtada al-Sadr, and provides evidence to support his claims on the lack of religious credentials of such personalities.Al-Habib started his religious activities in Kuwait, wherein he founded a non-profit religious organization named Khoddam Al-Mahdi Organization, and he also expressed his religious views regarding Abu Bakr and Omar, and criticized them sharply, which led to anger the mainstream Sunnis in Kuwait and other Arabic-speaking Sunni communities, and finally led to the arrest of Al-Habib. Later, in February 2004 he was released under an annual pardon announced by the Amir of Kuwait on the occasion of the country's National Day, but his rearrest was ordered a few days later. Al-Habib fled Kuwait before he was sentenced in absentia to 10 years' imprisonment, and spent months in Iraq and Iran before gaining an asylum in United Kingdom which is his currently place of residence.
Personal facts
Birth date | January 01, 1979 |
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