Ahl Al-Bayt World Assembly

The Ahl al-Bayt World Assembly (Persian: مجمع جهانی اهل البیت‎‎) is an international non-governmental organization (INGO) that was established by a group of Shiite elites under the supervision of the great Islamic authority of the Shiites in 1990 to identify, organize, educate and support the followers of Ahl al-Bayt.

One of the most important goals of the Iranian government after the success of the Islamic Revolution was to foster unity among Muslims across the globe. In order to reach that goal, the Ahl al-Bayt World Assembly was established in 1990. Its first conference was held on May 21, 1990. More than three hundred scholars and Muslim elite, mostly Shiite, attended. At the end of this conference, through a letter, the participants asked Ayatollah Khamenei to establish the Ahl al-Bayt Assembly and he accepted. Its statute ordained Tehran as the main center of this INGO.

According to Abdul Karim Soroush, the establishment of the Assembly was a counter-offensive of traditionalist Shiite Clerics inside the powerful elite against Tehran`s Ecumenical Society (Persian: مجمع تقریب مذاهب‎‎) because they suspected it was developing tendencies to encroach upon the Sunnis.

The following topics were discussed at the first conference:

The General Assembly has a group of Islamic scholars and religious and cultural figures of the Islamic world as its members. According to the statute, the General Assembly is held every four years. The first was held in February 1994 and was attended by more than 330 members of this Assembly from 61 countries as well as scholars and researchers from different fields and Muslim countries.

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