By Daphne Anson
According to a 2014 post on his his apparently now discontinued blog here, Shi’ite Imam Ibrahim Kazerooni, born in 1958 in the city of Al-Najaf in southern Iraq, completed his theological studies in Iran and his secular studies in England.
He afterwards went to live in the United States, where he was
“the former Director of the Abrahamic Initiative Program at St. John Cathedral in Denver. Currently he serves as a member of the Board of Religious advisers to the Denver Police.
He has received a number of awards for his bridge building and peace initiative, including, Faith to Faith Award for interfaith works. (2007), Martin Luther King Award for services in peace building (2007), the “Iliff/D.U Joint Ph.D. Award for Community Service(2007), and Honored with Congressional Record for working to end the war in Iraq. (2004) ….”
Fast foreward to 2020, and this paragon of interfaith harmony has been caught on video by Memri.org (whose YouTube site has, I believe, yet again been taken down by YouTube) in a speech on 3 Janiary at the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn, Michigan eulogising Qasem Soleimani and deploring his death, along with that of PMU Deputy Chairman Abu Mahdi] Al-Muhandis:
‘… He led a prayer for the souls of Soleimani and Al-Muhandis and told the congregation that Soleimani had “brought hope to the marginalized [and] hatred and fear to the enemies of Islam.” He explained that Soleimani had been instrumental in keeping the Syrian regime in power despite American and Zionist attempts to destabilize it, in defending Iraq against ISIS alongside the PMU, and in ultimately defeating ISIS in Iraq, which Sheikh Kazerooni described as the “extended arm of American foreign policy.” He cited several examples from Islamic literature that speak of martyrdom as a virtuous act and added: “Let’s wait and see what happens next.”‘
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