# Hossein Noori Hamedani

Grand Ayatollah Hossein Noori-Hamedani (Persian: آيت الله العظمى حسين نورى همدانى) (also Hossein Nuri-Hamedani) (born March 21, 1925) is an Iranian Twelver Shi'a Marja known for his conservative views.
He has expressed his disapproval of Sufis and dervishes, Jews, the intellectual Abdolkarim Soroush and the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women; His support for the purge of "anti-Islamic and atheist professors" from Iranian universities. He has been noted as the only grand ayatollah to congratulate Mahmoud Ahmadinejad when Ahmadinejad was first declared victor in the controversial June 12, 2009 election; and also as "celebrated by the central government for his wholehearted support of the leader and the president".

## Biography

Hosein Nuri-Hamadani was born in Hamadan, Iran. After finishing elementary studies in Hamadan, at the age of 17 he moved to Qom, Iran to continue his religious studies. He studied in the seminaries of Allameh Tabatabai and Grand Ayatollah Borujerdi. He currently resides and teaches in the Seminary of Qom.

## Views and activities

Noori Hamedani has been called "aligned" with the Islamic Republic’s "ultra-conservative establishment" and known for "strongly" backing Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on "several occasions — notably during the 2009 protests against the reelection of former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad".
Among his reported views are that Iran "must purge universities of anti-Islamic and atheist professors." In September 2006, he called for a clampdown on dervish groups in Qom. He also issued a fatwa against the attendance of women in stadiums. In early 2008, he issued what some see as an implicit death threat against Iranian intellectual Abdolkarim Soroush, saying "Soroush’s writings are worse than Salman Rushdie's", and "Abdolkarim Soroush’s religious theories have undermined the roots of prophecy, the Quran and holy revelations".
In 2006, Hamedani stated that by not engaging in politics, Sufis weaken Islam, and during another speech to a group of seminarians, claimed "that the adherents of Sufism are 'enemies' of Islam and promoting them in any form is forbidden". (RLRFE reports that Sufi dervishes "houses of worship have been destroyed and members detained" in Iran.
Noori Hamedani made a comment about fighting and vanquishing Jews in 2005 that was later removed from the Fars news agency website. In a meeting with members of the Mahdaviyat Studies Institute (which studies the Shiite doctrine of the Hidden Imam, who is to reappear as Mahdi, i.e., the rightly guided one), circa 14 April 2005, Noori Hamedani praised the work of the institute and urged howza (seminaries) in Qom to carry out more research of religious texts and hadith concerning the Hidden Imam. He also claimed that a way to create conditions that would lead to the return of the Hidden Imam (i.e. an activity which Muslims should do) is to '... fight the Jews and vanquish them so that the conditions for the advent of the Hidden Imam be met.' His comments were published on Fars news agency website. (However, Fars "took the report off its web site several hours after its publication, and other Iranian media outlets close to the conservatives refrained from citing it".)
In connection with the Iranian legislature's ratification of a bill on Iranian membership in the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), ISNA reported Nuri-Hamadani issued a statement on 2 August 2003 describing the convention as "calamitous and tragic", as well as "a Western and U.S. ploy to harm Islam." According to him, when the convention was brought to Qom, all the religious authorities opposed it as contrary to Islam.
He called the protest burning of the Quran in Sweden, an illustration that all claims on freedom of expression, like human rights claims, are nothing but a "sheer lie" and a pretext to justify the crimes of the protesters.
In contrast to other hardline views, in 2022 he was quoted by the state-run IRNA news agency as stating in regards to the Mahsa Amini protests, “it is necessary for officials to listen to people’s demands and solve their problems and be sensitive to their rights”.