Ayatollah Sayyid Murtadha al-Musawi al-Qazwini (Arabic: مرتضى الموسوي القزويني; born 1 August 1930) is an Iraqi senior Shia jurist, poet and orator of Iranian descent.
[7] Al-Qazwini is the founder of the Development and Relief Foundation, a charitable institution that has established schools, a seminary, a state of the art hospital, and clinic in Karbala.
His mother was the daughter of his third cousin, once remove, Sayyid Muhammad-Mehdi al-Qazwini, a alim and poet, most known for authoring Huda al-Musanafin (Guidance of the Ranks), a critique on Shaykhism.
He carried out theological studies and academic education concurrently, and at the age of seventeen, was awarded by Salih Jabr, for being the highest achieving student in the country.
[4] As for the advanced stages, he studied them under Mirza Mahdi al-Shirazi, Sheikh Yusuf al-Khurasani and Sayyid Muhammad-Hadi al-Milani.
His uncle authored al-Mawidha al-Hasina (The Good Instruction), a critique of Ali al-Wardi's Wuadh al-Salatin (The Sultans Preachers').
[14][15] In 1953, he was granted ijaza's from Sayyid Abd al-Husayn Sharaf al-Din, Sheikh Agha Bozorg al-Tehrani and al-Milani.
[16] During the days of the communist red tide, under the rule of Abd al-Karim Qasim, al-Qazwini supported Ayatollah Sayyid Muhsin al-Hakim's fatwa deeming communism an infidelity and atheist.
[17] He took a strong stance against Qasim, by rejecting to join the iftar he had prepared for the religious convoy in Ramadan, 1960, which lead to his imprisonment, making him the first cleric to become a political prisoner in Baghdad.
In Tehran, he served as a professor in Shahid Motahari University as well as a judge in the Islamic republic's judiciary system, appointed by Ruhollah Khomeini.