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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.
