Born in
Jaghori Soba village in
Ghazni province,
Afghanistan to
Hazara ethnic group, he holds
Afghan citizenship. His family were farmers and he started learning the
Qur'an from the village cleric when he was five. When he was 10 his family moved to
Najaf, where he studied various
Islamic studies including
Arabic language,
rhetoric,
logic,
Islamic philosophy, the
Hadith and
Islamic jurisprudence, eventually studying under
Grand Ayatollah Abu al-Qasim al-Khoei. When al-Khoei died in 1992 he supported
Ali al-Sistani as the chair of the marjaiya in Najaf. Under
Saddam Hussein he adopted a quietist approach, avoiding politics and confrontation with the government. Following the
invasion of Iraq by the United States and allies in 2003, al-Fayyad engaged more than any other marja with the occupying American and British military and diplomats, informing them of the views of the senior clerics. He adopted similar positions to al-Sistani and the other marjaiya: supporting a united Shiite slate for the
first Iraqi elections; calling for Islam to be the sole source of Iraqi law; supporting a yes vote in the
referendum on the
constitution; rejecting a
secular Iraq; and opposing the adoption of doctrine of the
Guardianship of the Islamic Jurists as adopted by the
Islamic Republic of Iran. However, this report is contradicted by the official website of the Shi'a Marja, wherein he remarks, "The correct opinion regarding the issue of "Vilayat-e-Faqih" (Guardianship of the Islamic Jurist) is that this issue requires no external proof, because the continuation of
Islamic law, and its application, is dependent upon the continuation of the system of Vilayat". He continues, "The vilayat of the Prophet and the immaculate Imams, and in the time of the major occultation of the 12th Imam, the Islamic Jurist is bestowed with this vilayat ... It is unimaginable that Islamic Law could continue to exist without the continuation of this vilayat". Furthermore, he is one of the
Ulama signatories of the
Amman Message, which gives a broad foundation for defining Muslim orthodoxy. He has written some books on Islamic jurisprudence, Islamic politics, and Islamic banking. A very innovative position of him is written in his book on women's role in society with the title 'Jāyegāh Zan dar Nizām Siyāsīyeh Islām' (English title: 'The position of women in the Islamic political system'). In 2007, press reports indicated that he was supervising the religious studies of the radical cleric
Muqtada al-Sadr. ==Positions==