The text of the statements of the Leader of the Islamic Revolution in the meeting on Wednesday, 8th November 2023, with the organisers of the Allamah Tabatabai International Congress in Qom was published on the morning of 15th November 2023 at the conference venue.
In this meeting, Ayatollah Khamenei called the late Allamah a rare phenomenon of the seminary in recent centuries and said, “One of Ayatollah Seyyid Mohammad Hossein Tabatabai's important tasks was to wage an intellectual jihad and to form a solid and reliable intellectual base amid an invasion of imported and foreign ideas.”
In referring to the prominent and distinguished characteristics of the late Allamah Tabatabai, the Leader of the Islamic Revolution used words like, "knowledge", "piety and abstemiousness", "moral uprightness", "artistic taste, poetry and literature" and "purity, friendship and loyalty". He said, “On the intellectual level, there are different aspects to his thought, one of which was his unique scholarly diversity.”
Ayatollah Khamenei pointed to Allamah Tabatabai's mastery in such sciences as jurisprudence, the principles of jurisprudence, astronomy and mathematics, exegesis, Quranic sciences, poetry, literature and genealogy. He said, “Besides this amazing intellectual diversity, his scientific and intellectual depth in various disciplines is so remarkable that he was a ground-breaking Usuli, an innovative philosopher, and an amazing exegete.”
He also cited the publication of most of the scholarly works of Allamah Tabatabai during his lifetime and his training of students as other intellectual achievements of the late Allamah. He said, “He trained his students to be Islamic scholars and thinkers to an extent that has been unprecedented in the entire world. He nurtured such influential students as Martyr Motahari, Martyr Beheshti, and the late Misbah Yazdi, and most of the late Allamah's students were among the leaders of the Islamic Revolution.
Ayatollah Khamenei pointed out two outstanding characteristics of Allamah Tabatabai. He said, “One of these features was his unique intellectual jihad and forming a strong, aggressive intellectual base amid the invasion of imported and foreign ideas and spurious arguments. This is seen in his two works, "Principles of Philosophy and the Method of Realism" and "Tafsir al-Mizan".
He described Tafsir al-Mizan as an ocean of contemporary social and political knowledge hand in hand with a scholarly and theosophical base and a unique approach to Qur’anic commentary. He said, “Today, we also need an aggressive intellectual base that responds to contemporary needs and doubts, which we should learn from the late Allamah Tabatabai.”
The Leader of the Islamic Revolution mentioned that the second outstanding feature of Allamah was that the Allamah stressed the implementation of character development (Akhlaq) and spiritual wayfaring and did not see the mere mention of such matters to be sufficient. He said, “The late Allamah Tabatabai, despite all his intellectual achievements, was a very self-effacing man, and in his personal and public interactions, he was a soft-spoken, humble, warm, charming, and eloquent person.”
Ayatollah Khamenei also said, “Allamah Tabatabaei was not as well-known during his lifetime as he is known today, and thanks to his sincerity, his character, and his writings, he will become known more and more in this country and the world at large as the days go by.”