In the Name of God, the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful,
"To Allah We belong, and to Him is our return" {Quran; 2:156}
I received, with sorrow and grief, the news of the passing away of the great faqih, the chairman of the Expediency Discernment Council, Ayatollah Haj Sayyed Mahmoud Hashemi-Shahroudi (May God grant him paradise). This heartbreaking loss, after about a year of fighting with a hard and painful disease, distressed all those who understand his status in wisdom and knowledge, and his valuable services to the Islamic establishment and to the seminaries’ fiqh, principle, and law bodies.
He was a great scholar in the seminary of Qom and a loyal official with the most important organizations of the Islamic Republic, an influential member of the Guardian Council, and a successful leader in the Expediency Discernment Council, and he left important scholarly works and blessings.
Additionally, he was the brother of three martyrs, as well as a great friend, disciple and companion of the prominent and imminent martyr, Sayyed Mohammad Baqer Al-Sadr.
On the passing of this prominent scholar, I would like to express condolences to his honored family, his respectable wife and children and his relatives, as well as the Qom Seminary and his pupils, colleagues and enthusiasts. I ask Allah the Exalted to bestow divine forgiveness and blessings on him and elevate his ranks [in the Heavens] to the highest.
Sayyid Ali Khamenei
December 25, 2018