Grand Ayatollah Fazel Lankarani

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Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Fazel Lankarani (born 1931 in Qom, Iran) is the son of the late Ayatollah Fazel Lankarani and was a student of Grand Ayatollah Borujerdi. He is an ethnic Azeri.^[1]

Grand Ayatollah Fazel Lankarani was declared as the most knowledgeable specialist in the field of the Islamic law (Marja al-taqlid) by the central Shi'a school of religious studies in Qom, Hawza 'Ilmiyyah, after the death of Ayatollah Khomeini. Lankarani has been teaching in the areas of the science of Islamic law (fiqh) and Usul al-fiqh for the last 25 years. He received his ijtihad, the permission of independent interpretation of the legal sources (the Qur'an and the Sunnah), from Ayatollah Boroujerdi at the age of 25. He leads the prayer in the haram of Bibi Masouma A.S in Qom.

His Resalah, the book including his interpretation of Islamic Laws on different topics, is available in Arabic, English, Persian, Turkish, Urdu, and other languages.

In November 2006 Lankarani issued a fatwa calling for the deaths of Rafiq Tağı, an Azeri writer, and Tagi's editor, Samir Sədaqətoğlunu, who were accused of criticizing Islam.^[2] Tagi's writings sparked recent demonstrations outside the Azerbaijani embassy in Teheran.

He also believes that women do not have the right to watch soccer at stadiums.^[3]