Allama Hassan Turabi

Early Life

Reported to have been born in 1953 (some sources give 1940) in the Baltistan region of northern Pakistan, in the area of Shigar. He completed his secondary schooling before enrolling in religious seminary education.

Allama Hassan Turabi was a Pakistani Shia Muslim cleric and community leader based in Karachi. He is most widely remembered as a divisional president of Tehrik-e-Jafaria Pakistan, a Shia religious-political organization, and as a prominent figure in the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) alliance in the province of Sindh. According to available biographical accounts, he was born in the Baltistan region of northern Pakistan. Sources differ on his year of birth, with some giving 1953 and others 1940. He completed his secondary education before entering seminary study, receiving his religious training at Jamia Imamia in the Nazimabad area of Karachi. He also earned a master's degree from the University of Karachi. From 1976 he served as a khateeb (preacher) at a Shia mosque in the Mehmoodabad area of Karachi, and over the following decades he became a well-known figure in the city's Shia religious and community life. Within the Tehrik-e-Jafaria movement he held organizational responsibilities at the Karachi divisional and Sindh provincial levels. Turabi was active in the broader religious-political landscape of Pakistan through the MMA, a coalition of religious parties. He participated in public political activity, including rallies and demonstrations on national and international issues. On 14 July 2006, Turabi was killed in a suicide bombing in Karachi. The attack took place shortly after he returned from a demonstration held to protest against Israel during the 2006 Lebanon War. A suicide bomber detonated an explosive device outside his residence; Turabi and his young nephew were killed in the blast. His killing was one of a number of attacks targeting religious figures in Pakistan during that period, and it prompted expressions of grief within the Shia community. In the ensuing legal proceedings, an anti-terrorism court convicted several men in connection with the assassination, sentencing three to death and three others to life imprisonment; the death sentences were subsequently upheld on appeal. Allama Hassan Turabi is remembered by many in Pakistan's Shia community as a religious leader and preacher whose life ended in an act of sectarian violence.

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