Nigeria’s Shia leader, Sheikh Ibrahim Zakzaky, was awarded an honorary doctorate degree from the University of Tehran on Saturday.
Iran is the headquarters of the Shia sect. The sect makes less than 10 percent of the global Muslim population
During the event, the Nigerian Shia cleric shared insights into his five-decade-long advocacy, emphasising his desire for a low profile.
He said the late Ayatollah Ali Khomeini influenced his decision to follow the Shia sect after the Imam left Paris and relocated to Iran to spearhead the Islamic Revolution in Iran.
He said the Islamic Revolution had a widespread impact on different ideological backgrounds, including communists whom he said were deeply impressed by the transformative nature of the revolution.
Sheikh Zakzaky heads the Nigeria’s Islamic Movement which he started in the late 1970s, when he was a student at Ahmadu Bello University.
He began propagating Shia Islam around 1979, at the time of the Iranian revolution—which saw Iran’s monarchy overthrown and replaced with an Islamic republic under Ayatollah Khomeini.
In 1979, Zakzaky earned a first-class bachelor’s degree in Economics, but the degree was denied to him by the university authorities due to his Islamic activities
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