Sheikh Yasser al-Habib | |
|---|---|
ياسر الحبيب | |
 Sheikh Yasser al-Habib giving a lecture during Muharram in London. | |
| Personal | |
| Born | 20 January 1979 |
| Religion | Islam |
| Nationality | Stateless Bedoon (formerly Kuwaiti) |
| Denomination | Shia |
| Sect | Twelver |
| Jurisprudence | Ja'fari (Usuli) |
| Movement | Shirazi[1] |
| Alma mater | Kuwait University |
| Organization | |
| Institute | Mahdi Servants Union |
| Founder of | Fadak (TV channel) |
| Muslim leader | |
| Based in | London |
Sheikh Yasser al-Habib (Arabic: ياسر الحبيب born 20 January 1979) is a Kuwaiti Shia scholar, and the head of the London-based Mahdi Servants Union, as well as Al-Muhassin mosque in Fulmer, Buckinghamshire, and the writer of The Lady of Heaven.[2][3][4][5] Al-Habib's work focuses on Islamic history, drawing on Shia and Sunni sources.
Al-Habib started his religious activities in Kuwait, starting off as a member of the Dawah Party, later he founded a non-profit religious organization named Khoddam Al-Mahdi Organization, and he also expressed his religious views regarding Abu Bakr and Umar, and criticized them sharply. This resulted in anger from several Sunni speakers in Kuwait, such as Othman al-Khamees, and other Arabic-speaking Sunni communities, which finally led to the arrest of al-Habib. Later, in February 2004 he was released under an annual pardon announced by the Emir 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,[6] and spent months in Iraq and Iran before gaining asylum in the United Kingdom.
- ^ Linge, M., 2016. Sunnite-Shiite Polemics in Norway. FLEKS-Scandinavian Journal of Intercultural Theory and Practice, 3(1).
- ^ Haddad, Fanar (2020). Understanding 'Sectarianism': Sunni-Shi'a Relations in the Modern Arab World. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 179. ISBN 9780197510629.
Even a figure as unrelentingly and unapologetically anti-Sunni as Shi'a cleric Yasser al-Habib does not frame Sunnis as a threat.
- ^ Shanneik, Yafa (2022). The Art of Resistance in Islam: The Performance of Politics Among Shi'i Women in the Middle East and Beyond. Cambridge University Press. p. 42. ISBN 9781009034685.
Yasser al-Habib, for example, is a well-known Shi'i cleric who at the beginning of the twenty-first century attracted public attention through a series of sectarian anti-Sunni statements.
- ^ Wehrey, Frederic (2014). Sectarian Politics in the Gulf: From the Iraq War to the Arab Uprisings. New York: Columbia University Press. p. 167. ISBN 9780231165129.
A young cleric (he was only twenty-one when he first attracted public attention), al-Habib issued a series of vitriolic, anti-Sunni statements that over the course of the next six years would place Shi'a moderates under pressure, provoke the vitriol of Sunni extremists, and force the government to take the role of referee and arbiter.
- ^ "Is "The Lady of Heaven" true in its claim?". Tehran Times. 29 December 2020. Archived from the original on 29 January 2021. Retrieved 24 January 2021.
- ^ "International Religious Freedom Report 2004 – Kuwait". Amnestyusa.org. Archived from the original on 18 February 2011. Retrieved 27 September 2010.