/remembering-husayn-muruwwah-the-%E2%80%

  • Remembering Husayn Muruwwah, the ‘Red Mujtahid’
    http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/26064/remembering-husayn-muruwwah-the-%E2%80%98red-mujtahid%E2%80%99

    On 17 February 1987, during one of the bloodiest periods of the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990), the prominent journalist, literary critic, intellectual, and activist Husayn Muruwwah (or Hussein Mroué[i]) was assassinated at his home in Ramlet al-Baida, West Beirut. Muruwwah left Lebanon at the age of fourteen to train at the Najaf hawza (seminary) in Iraq. He intended to follow in the footsteps of his father, who was a respected religious scholar and cleric. Yet after a multifaceted intellectual journey that spanned several decades and multiple locations, Muruwwah went on to become a celebrated Marxist philosopher and senior member of the Lebanese Communist Party (LCP); “a Red mujtahid who was at once proud of the cultural heritage of Islam and politically committed to the cause of social justice, political freedom and emancipation from foreign domination along Communist lines.”[ii]