Mohammad Taqi al-Modarresi

In 2016 he went to Australia, where he met community leaders as well as the Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop. The two discussed Iraq, the war on terrorism, as well as how Muslims can be better integrated into the Australian community.

al-Modarresi was the first Shia religious leader (with Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani following shortly after) to issue a call to popular resistance against ISIS, after its swift capture of large swathes of land in Iraq in June 2014. In his statement, al-Modarresi warned against the destruction of churches and temples belonging to all religions.

In December 2014, al-Modarresi was invited by the Pope to attend a summit of world religious leaders at the Vatican. This made him the first Grand Ayatollah to have met the Pope. In his speech, al-Modarresi asked world religious leaders to "engage in a symbiosis of civilizations and religions". He condemned terrorism, nuclear proliferation, modern day slavery and said:

The Islamic Action Organization became an Iraqi Shia Islamist political party with al-Modaressi as its leader. The party contested the Iraq 2005 general election as was part of the National Iraqi Alliance of Shia Islamist parties including SCIRI, the Islamic Dawa Party and the Iraqi National Congress. In 2006, the Islamic Action Organization had one minister in government, State Minister for Civil Society Affairs, Adil al-Asadi.

In an interview with PBS in 2004 al-Modarresi affirmed his commitment to a democratically elected government for the new Iraq, stating that he had derived this from "the true interpretation of Islam.. which says, "Religion shall not be imposed ... Reason emerges from the unknown." He also stated that he had traveled to Europe and America, and that he believed "democracy would solve many of the problems" in the Middle East.

With the overthrow of Saddam Hussein by American-led forces in 2003, al-Modarresi along with other Iran-based clerics returned to Iraq. On his return to Iraq on 22 April 2003, al-Modarresi was arrested along with his entourage by US military personnel. He was released after being brought to an undisclosed location.

al-Modaressi traveled to Bahrain in 2002 on an official visit, at the invitation of the Minister of Justice and Islamic Affairs, Abdullah bin Khalid Al Khalifa.

Before the Iranian revolution, the group remained a secret organisation, working on raising religious awareness, however, after the revolution, in 1979, it went public, calling for Islamism in the region, with different aliases across various countries. In Iraq, it was known as the Islamic Action Organisation. In Saudi Arabia, it was known as the Islamic Revolution of the Arabian Peninsula. In Bahrain, it was known as the Islamic Front for the Liberation of Bahrain and headed by his brother Hadi. But all these groups were identified as the risalis in the Islamic world.

al-Modarresi began his religious education in the religious seminaries of Karbala, at the young age of 8. He studied under some of Karbala's most senior scholars such as Shaykh Muhammad al-Karbassi, Shaykh Jafar al-Rushti, Shaykh Yusuf al-Khurasani and his uncle, Sayyid Muhammad al-Shirazi. Due to the rising pressures of the Bathists anti-Shia sentiment, al-Modarresi emigrated to Kuwait in 1971. He settled there until 1979, after which he moved to Iran after the Islamic Revolution.

In 1967, under the jurisprudential guidance of Muhammad al-Shirazi, al-Modarresi established a religious activist group, known as the Risali Movement (Arabic: الحركة الرسالية). The word risali (follower of the message) was inspired by the Quranic verse: "[Allah praises] those who convey the messages of Allah and fear Him and do not fear anyone but Allah. And sufficient is Allah as Accountant." [33:39].

Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Muhammad-Taqi al-Husayni al-Modarresi (Arabic: محمد تقي الحسيني المدرسي; Persian: محمد تقى حسينى مدرسى; b. 1945) is an Iraqi-Iranian Shia marja' and political theorist.