Sheikh Yasser al-Habib (Arabic: ياسر الحبيب; born 20 January 1979) is a Kuwaiti Shia scholar, and the head of the London-based Mahdi Servants Union, as well as Al-Muhassin mosque in Fulmer, Buckinghamshire, and the writer of The Lady of Heaven.

Al-Habib was reportedly arrested on the afternoon of 30 November 2003, in connection with an audio cassette recording of a lecture he gave to an audience of ten to twenty people in a closed environment on Islamic historical issues.

[citation needed] On 20 January 2004, he was convicted of "questioning the conduct and integrity of some of the 'companions' of the prophet Muhammad" in a lecture he had delivered, and sentenced to ten years in prison in Kuwait.

[citation needed] He also refers to those whom claim to be Shi'a but do not denounce Abu Bakr, Umar, Aisha and other personalities in Islamic history such as Khalid ibn al-Walid, as Batris.

[18][19][20][21][22] In October 2010, the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei, tried to calm tensions between Shias and Sunnis by issuing a fatwa against insulting Muhammad's companions and wives.

[23] After Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei issued the fatwa outlawing the insult of Sunni Dignitaries (Aisha, Abu Bakr and Umar ibn al-Khattāb),[24] al-Habib responded by criticising the Islamic Republic of Iran.

His reasoning for naming the Iranian government as "oppressive" was because the "regime in Iran today unjustly arrests anyone who celebrates the occasion of Farhat-ul-Zahra and prevents people from visiting the tomb of Abu Lulu".

[25] Senior Iranian cleric Naser Makarem Shirazi has referred to al-Habib as a "hired agent or a mad man"[26] and stated: "Recently, an illiterate fool non clergy U.K citizen in the name of Shia has insulted sacred matters of Sunni Muslim brothers".