Aqeel Turabi

Allama Aqeel Turabi (1934–2009) was a leading Pakistani Twelver Shia scholar and orator, and the second son of the legendary religious leader Allama Rasheed Turabi. Born in Hyderabad, Deccan, British India, he received his earliest religious instruction from his parents before the family relocated to Karachi following Partition. From 1952 to 1962 he studied in the Hawza of Qom, Iran, under the patronage of Grand Ayatollah Borujerdi, later continuing his training in Najaf, Iraq, where he became fluent in Persian and Arabic. Over the course of his studies he received more than a dozen ijazahs from senior Iranian and Iraqi scholars, including Ayatollah Khomeini and Grand Ayatollah al-Khoei. In 1966 he was sent to England as a representative of Grand Ayatollah Muhsin al-Hakim, before returning to Pakistan in 1970 on his father's advice.

Following his father's death in 1973, Turabi took up his father's religious responsibilities in Karachi, delivering the annual Muharram majlis at Nishtar Park and the Sham-e-Ghareeban majlis broadcast on Radio Pakistan from Hussainia Sajjadia for more than three decades, as well as addressing gatherings at Khaliq Dina Hall into the late 1980s. He lectured widely abroad, including in the United Kingdom, the United States, the Middle East, and across Africa, and was known for promoting Sunni-Shia unity through his sermons. In 1982 he was a founding member and convener of the Imamia Council of Pakistan, and during the 1980s he served on the central committee of the Tehreek-e-Istiqlal political party before withdrawing from active politics. A strong advocate for Pakistan-Iran ties, he visited Iran repeatedly after the Islamic Revolution, most recently in 2006 while leading an official Council of Islamic Ideology delegation, on which he served as a member from 2000 to 2006. He died in Karachi in April 2009 and was buried at Wadi-e-Hussain graveyard.