Hassan Bin Muhamad Bin Shehata Bin Mousa al-Anani, known as Sheikh Hassan Shehata () (November 10, 1946 - June 23, 2013), was a scholar who was killed in the small village of Zawyat Abu Musalam in

Giza Giza (; sometimes spelled ''Gizah, Gizeh, Geeza, Jiza''; , , ' ) is the third-largest city in Egypt by area after Cairo and Alexandria; and fourth-largest city in Africa by population after Kinshasa, Lagos, and Cairo. It is the capital of ...

He studied at Egypt's

al-Azhar University The Al-Azhar University ( ; , , ) is a public university in Cairo, Egypt. Associated with Al-Azhar Al-Sharif in Islamic Cairo, it is Egypt's oldest degree-granting university and is known as one of the most prestigious universities for Islamic ...

and in the 1970s, served as a prominent Sunni Imam to the Egyptian Army. According to his own account, after having a dream of Imam

Ali Ali ibn Abi Talib (; ) was the fourth Rashidun caliph who ruled from until his assassination in 661, as well as the first Shia Imam. He was the cousin and son-in-law of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. Born to Abu Talib ibn Abd al-Muttalib an ...

and other sahaba, he converted to Shia Islam in the 1990s. In 2009, he spent some time in jail under the government of ousted Egyptian president

Hosni Mubarak Muhammad Hosni El Sayed Mubarak (; 4 May 1928 – 25 February 2020) was an Egyptian politician and military officer who served as the fourth president of Egypt from 1981 to 2011 and the 41st Prime Minister of Egypt, prime minister from 1981 to ...

due to his speeches against radical, fundamentalist Sunni movements that he deemed harmed Islam. 306 of his followers were also detained along with him. In the lynching on June 23, 2013, an angry mob led by the country's Salafist sheikhs torched Shia residences in the small village of Zawyat Abu Musalam in Giza governorate, killing four citizens, including Shehata, a prominent cleric who was visiting one of the families in the village when the attack took place. He served as a prominent Shia cleric who had thousands of followers due to his views and his denouncement of extremist movements in Egypt. On June 13, 2015, an Egyptian court sentenced 23 people to 14 years in prison for the fatal lynching of four Shia men in the village of Abu Musallim. The court acquitted eight other defendants.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Shahhata, Hasan Egyptian Shia clerics Egyptian Shia Muslims 1946 births 2013 deaths Converts to Shia Islam from Sunni Islam Critics of Sunni Islam Critics of Islamism Egyptian murder victims People from Sharqia Governorate Al-Azhar University alumni

See also

References