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About the Author
Sayyid Mujtaba Musavi Lari is the son of the late Ayatullah Sayyid
Ali Asghar Lari, one of the great religious scholars and social personalities of Iran. His
grandfather was the late Ayatullah Hajj Sayyid Abd ul-Husayn Lari, who fought for freedom
in the Constitutional Revolution. In the course of his lengthy struggles against the
tyrannical government of the time, he attempted to establish an Islamic government and
succeeded in doing so for a short time in Larestan. Sayyid Mujtaba Musavi Lari was born in 1314/1925 in the city of Lar
where he completed his primary education and his preliminary Islamic studies. In
1332/1953, he departed for Qum to continue his study of the Islamic sciences, studying
under the professors and teachers of the religious institution, including the main
authorities in jurisprudence (maraji'). In 1341/1962, he became a collaborator of Maktab-i-lslam, a
religious and scientific journal, writing a series of articles on Islamic ethics. Thee
articles were later collected into a book published under the title Ethical and
Psychological Problems. Nine editions of the Persian original of this book have been
published, and it has also been translated into Arabic and, most recently, English. In 1342/1963, he travelled to Germany for medical treatment, and
returning to Iran after a stay of several months, he wrote a book called TheFace of
Western Civilization. Thebook includes a comparative discussion of Western and Islamic
civilization, and in it, the author seeks to prove, by way of a comprehensive, reasoned,
and exact comparison, the superiority of the comprehensive and multidimensional
civilization of Islam to that of the West. This book has recently been reprinted for the
seventh time. In 1349/1970, it was translated into English by a British Orientalist, F. G.
Goulding, and it aroused much attention in Europe. Articles concerning the book appeared
in several Western periodicals, and the BBC arranged an interview with the translator in
which the reasons for translating the book and the reception accorded it in England were
discussed. The English version of the book has up to now been printed three times in
England, five times in Iran, and twice in America. About three years after the publication of the English translation,
Rudolf Singler, a German university professor, translated it into German, and the version
he produced proved influential in Germany. One of the leaders of the Social Democratic
Party informed the translator in a letter that the book had left a profound impression
upon him, causing him to change his views of Islam, and that he would recommend the book
to his friends . The German translation has now been reprinted three times. The English and German versions of the book were reprinted by the
Ministry of Islamic Guidance for wide distribution abroad through the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs and the Islamic Students' Associations abroad. At the same time that the first printing of the German translation
was published, an Indian Muslim scholar by the name of Maulana Raushan Ali translated it
into Urdu for distribution in India and Pakistan. This Urdu translation has now been
reprinted five times. Sayyid Mujtaba Musavi Lari has also written a pamphlet on tauhid
(divine unity), which was translated in England and published several times in
America. In 1343/1964, he established a charitable organization in Lar with
the purposes of propagating Islam, teaching Islam to rural youth, and helping the needy.
This organization remained active until 1346/1967. Its main accomplishments were the
dispatch of students of the religious sciences to the countryside to teach Islam to
children and young people; providing thousands of school children with clothing, books and
writing equipment; building a number of mosques, schools, and clinics in towns and
villages; and the provision of miscellaneous services. Sayyid Mujtaba Musavi Lari pursued his interest in Islamic ethics,
writing new articles on the subject. In 1353/1974, a collection of these articles, revised
and supplemented, appearedin book form under the title, The Function of Ethics in Human
Development. This book has now been reprinted six times. In 1357/1978, he travelled to America at the invitation of an
Islamic organization in that country. He then went to England and France and after
returning to Iran began writing a series of articles on Islamic ideology for the magazine
Soroush. These articles were later collected in a four volume book on the fundamental
beliefs of Islam (tauhid, divine justice, prophethood, imamate, and resurrection) under
the title The Foundations of Islamic Doctrine. This four volume work has been translated into Arabic, some parts of
it having already been printed three times. The English translation of the first volume of
this work forms the present book; the remaining volumes will also be translated and
published. Urdu, Hindi and French translations are also underway; two volumes of the
French translation have already appeared. In 1359/1980, Sayyid Mujtaba Musavi Lari established an organization
in Qum called Office for the Diffusion of Islamic Culture Abroad. It dispatches free copes
of his translated works to interested persons throughout the world. It has also undertaken
the printing of a Quran for free distribution among Muslim individuals, institutions and
religious schools in Africa.
