Syed Aqeel-ul-Gharavi

Early Life

Born 2 February 1964 in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, India (birth name Syed Ghulam Mohammad Qaim Rizvi). He received his early Islamic education in Najaf, Iraq, and secondary education in Banaras (Varanasi), India.

Syed Aqeel-ul-Gharavi is a leading Indian Twelver Shia scholar, writer, orator and mujtahid, born on 2 February 1964 in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, India. After early religious education in Najaf, Iraq, and schooling in Varanasi, he graduated from Jamia Millia Islamia University in Delhi and pursued advanced religious studies in the seminaries of Qom and Mashhad in Iran. In 1994 he received his ijazah for ijtihad from Grand Ayatollah Naser Makarem Shirazi, attaining the status of mujtahid. He served as principal of Hawza-e-Ilmia Jamia-tus-Saqalain in Delhi and is chairman of the Safinatul Hidaya Trust, India. He has also held positions as Vice-President of the All India Muslim Majlis-e-Mushawarat and as a member of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board. Gharavi is widely known for his intellectual majalis and lectures delivered across India, Pakistan, Iran and internationally, and for years has spent much of his time in London teaching, preaching and writing while maintaining his institutional base in India. He is the author of more than twenty books on Islamic philosophy, theology, jurisprudence and ethics.