ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Karbala and Beyond Publisher’s Preface In the Name of Allah, the most Gracious, the most Merciful This is the U.S. edition of the third of eight books written so far by Yasin T. al-Jibouri, and hopefully the reader will eventually read the others as well. The first was Fast of the Month of Ramadan: Philosphy and Ahkam , and the second was his best book yet titled Allah: the Concept of God in Islam , and we pray there will be many more!

Since the reader is most likely interested in knowing who the author is, we would like to state the following: Al-Jibouri was born on August 14, 1946 in Baghdad, Iraq, and he lived most of his life in the holy city of al-Kadhimiyya (Kadhimain) where he presently is living.

In 1969, he graduated from the College of Arts, Baghdad University, where he majored in English which he taught at a high school in Babylon (Hilla) then at a vocational institute in al-Ahsa, Saudi Arabia, from which he flew in 1972 to the United States in order to pursue his Graduate degree which he earned in 1978. In the Winter of 1973, he founded the Islamic Society of Georgia, Inc.

and started in January of 1974 editing and publishing its newsletter Islamic Affairs which evolved from a four-page newsletter to a twelve-page bulletin, becoming the most widely circulated Shi'a publication in the United States with readers in all the 50 U.S. States and in 67 countries world-wide.

In 1975, al-Jibouri received instructions to facilitate the entry to the United States of the very first representative of the then Supreme Ayatullah Abul-Qasim al-Khoei, may Allah reward him, in North America, namely Shaikh Muhammad Sarwar of Quetta, Pakistan. Due to the sponsorship of the author, Sarwar did, indeed, arrive at the U.S. on January 25, 1976; a few days later, the Shaikh became al-Jibouri’s roommate.

A few months later, the Shaikh moved from Atlanta to New York where there has been a much larger Shi'a population. Al-Jibouri not only writes his books, but he also typesets them and often designs their covers as well. He developed a passion for computers, hardware and software, and in March of 1988, he obtained a Certificate with honours from N.R.I.

of Washington, D.C., in microcomputers and microprocessors and later added to it three more Certificates in electronics and programming, including advanced programming.