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Concept
Ahmad Azari Qomi
Summary
Grand Ayatollah Ahmad Azari-Qomi-Bigdeli was an Iranian cleric. Born in 1925 in Qom, after the 1979 Iranian Revolution he served on the Special Clerical Court, and Assembly of Experts, founded the conservative Resalat Newspaper. He was arrested in November 1997 after an open letter by him was published in Britain criticizing Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei for allowing torture and "moral corruption" among officials and clerics. Shortly after Khamenei denounced him in a televised speech for allegedly committing "treason against the people, the revolution and the country." His renewed candidacy for the Assembly of Experts was rejected by the Guardian Council the next year and he died in 1999.
Azari was born to a family of Sh'ia clerics in Qom in 1925.
Azari started his studies at Qom in 1941 under Ayatollahs Borujerdi, Mohaqqeq-Damad and Tabatabai. Upon finishing his clerical studies, he emigrated to Tabriz in northwest Iran to work as a religious teacher in a boarding school.
Azari was a founding member of the Society of Seminary Teachers of Qom, and a Combatant Clergy Association member. Between 1965 and 1979 he was imprisoned several times. He was judge in the Special Clerical Court after the 1979 revolution. He was a member of the Assembly of Experts that originally elected Khamenei as Khomeini’s successor. He also founded the Resalat Foundation, a religious organisation which owns the Resalat newspaper. Azari-Qomi was originally a staunch conservative. Allegedly, in the midst of the struggle over the Land Reform which the leftist parliament envisioned in the early 1980s, Azari-Qomi asked for Khomeini's permission to found a conservative newspaper, but Khomeini declined. Azari-Qomi tried again a year later. This time, Khomeini did not react to the request, which Azari-Qomi interpreted as a permission. This was the birth of Resalat Newspaper, together with Keyhan one of the most conservative newspapers in Iran.
Official source
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