Hojjat-al-Islam Abdolvahhab Qassemi was born into a religious family on September 23, 1933 in Lafourak village, close to Savadkooh in the northern Mazandaran province. He started his Islamic education under his uncle at 7 and then travelled to Babol, Tehran and finally Mashhad to continue his Islamic education. Abdolvahhab had a great talent in learning different subjects of Islamic education and managed to master Fiqh, Usul, Hadith, Qur’an commentary, logic and philosophy. He also managed to advance close to Ijtihad (a high degree in Hawza studies in which one can deduce Islamic rulings himself).
Hojjat-al-Islam Qassemi authored several books on Islamic issues, part of which was looted when SAVAK attacked his home to arrest him.
Since the very first days of Imam Khomeini’s anti-Shah movement in 1963, Qassemi joined the uprising by delivering rousing speeches against Shah. He was arrested and imprisoned during national protests to Imam Khomeini’s exile on June 5, 1963. This was followed by several other arrests, imprisonments and tortures.
During his pilgrimages to Mecca, Saudi Arabia as well as Syria, and travels to Egypt and Kuwait, Qassemi met several Muslim scholars to discuss the issues of the Muslim world. Back from a pilgrimage to Mecca, he was sued by SAVAK and sentenced to death before the Islamic Revolution nullifying the sentence.
He made every effort in order to strengthen the new-born Islamic Revolution. He was appointed as the Deputy Chief of the Islamic Revolution’s Committees in Sari, capital of Mazandaran province. He also joined the Islamic Republic party and was in an endless fight against deviated groups such as the terrorist Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO, a.k.a. MEK). Qassemi represented Sari in the first post-Revolution parliament.
Abdolvahhab Qassemi was martyred on June 28, 1981, along with more than 70 other Iranian senior officials, as a result of a deadly blast by the MKO in the headquarters of the Islamic Republic Party in Tehran.
