Mohammad-Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi - Career

Career

Mesbah-Yazdi has been described as close to Ayatollah Mohammad Beheshti, Khomeini's first designated heir who was assassinated in 1981 (despite being considered a moderate). Mesbah Yazdi helped Beheshti establish the Haghani School (also Haqqani) in Qom to train the future cadres of the regime, and is (or was) a member of the school's board of directors. The Haghani School is very influential and has been described as "a kind of Ecole Nationale d'Administration for the Islamic Republic" whose alumni "form the backbone of the clerical management class that runs Iran's key political and security institutions."

Mesbah-Yazdi is the author of many books on fiqh, Quran exegesis, divinity and general issues of Islam. His "Amuzesh-e Falsafeh" is used widely in the philosophy classes of Qom's hawza. It broadly covers the same ground as Allameh Tabatabaei's Arabic-language works in philosophy "Bidayat al-Hikmah" and "Nihayat al-Hikma". Mesbah-Yazdi's "Amuzesh-e Falsafeh" has been published in English translation by Mohammad Legenhausen and Azim Sarvdalir as "Philosophical Instructions," Binghamton University 1999.

He publishes the "archconservative" weekly Parto-Sokhan, is the director of the Imam Khomeini Education and Research Institute in Qom, founded in 1995, and a member (since 1990) of the Iranian Assembly of Experts. In addition, Mesbah Yazdi sometimes speaks before Khutbah in Tehran's Friday prayers.

After the presidential election of June 1997 in the relatively more open political atmosphere in that time, Mesbah Yazdi's students played an important role as the critics of the former president Mohammad Khatami. As a result, Mesbah Yazdi's name appeared more often in the media and became more well known. He issued a fatwa in support of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's presidential bid, and meets with the president frequently. In December 2006, he was elected to the Assembly of Experts, the group of Ayatollahs responsible for choosing a successor for the Supreme Leader.