Mohammad Va'ez Abaee-Khorasani

Who was Mohammad Va'ez Abaee-Khorasani?

Ayatollah Mohammad Va'ez Abaee-Khorasani was an Iranian cleric and reformist politician. He was a representative of Mashhad in the Majlis of Iran from 2000 to 2004.

Born in Mashhad in a religious family, he studied Islamic sciences in Mashhad and then moved to Qom to continue his studies there. Because of his religious-political speeches, he was arrested by the Pahlavi government twice, the first time in 1972 when he was sentenced to a short jail time. But the second time, in 1973, he was exiled to Bandar Deylam and Nain for three years. Abaee-Khorasani restarted his political speeches in 1976, with other cleric colleagues of his, specially Sadegh Khalkhali, Mehdi Karroubi, and Mohammad Mousavi-Khoiniha.

After the Iranian Revolution, Abaee-Khorasani's first governmental post was the Sharia ruler in Ahwaz. Shortly after, he moved back to Qom to head the provincial branch of Organization for Islamic Evangelization, which sent clerics to the whole country for speeches during the holy Shi'a months of Muharram, Safar, and Ramadan, and also published periodicals, which sometimes contained critiques of extremist or conservative factions of the hawza.