The passing of Grand Ayatollah Fayyaz, may Allah have mercy on him, is a multifaceted loss for the Shiite community of Afghanistan.<\/p>\n
In recent decades, he was the most prominent Afghan jurist among the renowned Shiite scholars in the seminary of Najaf\u2014a seminary filled with esteemed jurists. His well-established scholarly position among the jurists made him a reliable pillar for the Shiites of Afghanistan, a loss that will undoubtedly be difficult to compensate for years to come.<\/p>\n
Grand Ayatollah Fayyaz was the product of nearly a century of scholarly endeavor on one hand, and self-discipline and piety on the other. These qualities made his standing among jurists both exceptional and rare, which is why most of his followers were not merely Afghans but Shiites from other countries as well.<\/p>\n
He was one of those jurists whose marja’iyya (religious authority) was not attained through publicity, political ties, or factional backing, but through a long path of study, teaching, research, nurturing students, and professional testimony. This marja’iyya was the result of nearly a century of scientific and ethical struggle, which earned him trust beyond national and local affiliations across many Shiite communities worldwide.<\/p>\n
For this reason, unlike certain factions that pursue locally crafted religious authority for political goals, Grand Ayatollah Fayyaz was not a local marja’, but rather one universally recognized by Shiites around the world. This might explain why neither he was inclined to associate closely with certain compatriot groups, nor did they widely embrace his religious authority.<\/p>\n
Amid the clamor to localize marja’iyya\u2014often ignoring the scientific, juristic, and ethical prerequisites and considering only political or factional interests\u2014he remained relatively marginalized among Afghan Shiites while his reputation among other Shiites globally was not obscure.<\/p>\n
In my view, his passing is not only a great scientific and jurisprudential loss for the Shiite community but represents an even greater blow for Afghan Shiites because one of the most important examples of naturally arising religious authority through scholarship and jurisprudence has been taken from among them.<\/p>\n
The greatest lesson to learn from Grand Ayatollah Fayyaz\u2019s life is that Shiite marja’iyya is not a ceremonial title granted by political or media currents; rather, it is the result of decades of scholarly effort, ijtihad (independent reasoning), piety, and natural acceptance among scholars and believers. Whenever these criteria are undermined and replaced by non-scientific considerations, the first victim is the standing of jurisprudence itself.<\/p>\n
Grand Ayatollah Fayyaz reminded us that in the Shiite tradition, marja’iyya is neither attained by ethnic or national affiliation nor by political support; the only capital that can elevate a jurist to marja’iyya is knowledge, piety, and natural acceptance among the experts.<\/p>\n
We pray to Almighty God for the elevation of the soul of the late Grand Ayatollah Fayyaz.<\/p>\n
Seyed Ahmad Mousavi, Missionary<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Grand Ayatollah Fayyaz\u2019s passing is a major loss for Afghan Shiites and the global Shiite community, embodying the true path of scholarly religious authority.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14412,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,10,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-important-news","category-opinion","category-top-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14413"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14413\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}