Hundreds of thousands of Yemenis have participated in the public funeral and Farewell for the senior Islamic scholar and cleric Mohammed Ismail al-Amrani, in the capital Sana’a on Monday.
Mohammed Al-Amrani died at the age of 100, after his health deteriorated over the past months.
The scholar, who had been serving for a long time as Mufti of Yemen and was considered a major Islamic cleric both inside and far beyond Yemen, had suffered from a medical condition at the end of last month and was hospitalised.
After a full and fruitful life of around a century, Mohammed al-Amrani passed away on Monday, July 12th 2021.
Al-Amrani was born in the old city of Sana’a and comes from a long line of Islamic intellectuals and judges.
During his academic life, he was highly supportive of the Islamic principle of Ijtihad (independent reasoning based on Islamic principles), and was famous for his tolerance of various Islamic schools in a time when sectarianism became a growing problem.
The Mufti was strongly influenced by famous Yemeni scholar Imam Mohammed Al-Shawkani, from whom he inherited his adherence to rational inquiry and non-sectarianism.
Mufti Mohammed al-Amrani was deeply respected by both major Islamic schools in Yemen, the Zaydi and the Shafi’i madhab, and had followers amongst both schools of thought. Some his most famous fatwas include a ban on calling for sectarian war against the Zaydi Muslim members of Ansarullah, and his fatwa declaring that “Shia Muslims are not to be considered astray from Islam.”
