Sheikh Yasser al-Habib ( born 20 January 1979) is a Kuwaiti Twelver Shia scholar, and the head of the London-based Khoddam Al-Mahdi Organization, as well as Al-Muhassin mosque in Fulmer, Buckinghamshire, and the writer of The Lady of Heaven. Al-Habib's work focuses on Islamic history, drawing on Shia and Sunni sources. Al-Habib started his religious activities in Kuwait, starting off as a member of the Dawah Party, later he founded a non-profit religious organization named Khoddam Al-Mahdi Organization, and he also expressed his religious views regarding Abu Bakr and Umar, and criticized them sharply, which led to anger the mainstream Sunnis in Kuwait and other Arabic-speaking Sunni communities, and finally led to the arrest of Al-Habib. Later, in February 2004 he was released under an annual pardon announced by the Emir of Kuwait on the occasion of the country's National Day, but his rearrest was ordered a few days later. Al-Habib fled Kuwait before he was sentenced in absentia to 10 years imprisonment, and spent months in Iraq and Iran before gaining an asylum in United Kingdom. Early life Al-Habib was interviewed by Elaph, a well-known Arabic online newspaper, where he stated that he was born in a religious Kuwaiti family, and started his education in the Kuwaiti governmental schools, before joining Kuwait University and graduating from its Political sciences faculty. Besides his secular studies, Al-Habib stated that he studied the traditional Islamic sciences under the guidance of his teacher Ayatollah Mohammed Reza Shirazi. In 2001, he founded Khoddam Al-Mahdi Organization in Kuwait. Imprisonment Al-Habib was reportedly arrested on the afternoon of 30 November 2003 in connection with an audio cassette recording of a lecture he gave to an audience of 10 to 20 people in a closed environment on Islamic historical issues. On 20 January 2004, he was reportedly convicted of “questioning the conduct and integrity of some of the ‘companions’ of the prophet Muhammad” in a lecture he had delivered, and sentenced to 10 years in prison in Kuwait. However, his imprisonment was cut short in 2004 by a royal pardon on the occasion of the country's National Day, but his rearrest was ordered a few days later as his name was included in the royal pardon through a clerical error. He fled the country first to Iraq, then to Iran. Then he went to London where Seyed Mojtaba Hosseini Shirazi, younger brother of Ayatollah Sadiq Shirazi, has