Few leaders in history have singlehandedly impacted the course of history with the help of their cult of personality and their political shrewdness. Coupled with a sect of a religion which has historically relied greatly on cults, the impact of it gets amplified in Iran. There is also the role of the state that can not be undermined in building a live or posthumous cult of personality. This happens when the marriage of a state and an ideology takes place– which is almost ubiquitous.
When, on 1st February 1979, Khomeini landed in Tehran after the Shah had left Iran following months of street protests, he had a rather ambiguous conception of the state– at least as is seen in his numerous books, lectures, speeches etc. But within a decade he went on to build a state that was dreaded and adorned by many, and, as I tend to show in this essay, laid the foundation for the contemporary Iranian State that is infamous for its oppression of dissenters and suppression of dissent. Khomeini acted, both before and after his return to Iran, as a political pragmatist instead of a political ideologue– revered and studied by scholars, researching the minutest of the nuances in authored books of his.
The making of the Contemporary Iranian State began not in 1979 as most generalizations try to present it, but rather far before that. The three stages which involved Khomeini or had an impact on him will be discussed here. These are the establishment of Shi’ite Jurisprudence as a source of law, the constitutionalist movement of Iran and the role and views of Shi’ite Jurists regarding it and finally, the making of the post-revolution constitution and by extension of the post-revolution Iranian State.
Shia Islam was born out of Political Differences regarding the succession of Prophet Muhammad as head of the community and the state. But gradually, as time passed, the division took a religious direction and Shi’ite Islam developed its own traditions different from that of the dominant Sunni branch. The inability of Imam Ali to secure the Caliphate from Abu Bakr resulted in the rejection of the first three Caliphs, and its successor Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates.[1] During the latter two Caliphates, Shia Theology developed the doctrine of Imamate, that the right to succeed the Prophet is the prerogative of the House of the Prophet (Ahl-al-Bayt) or the descendants of Prophet Muhammad.[2] According to this doctrine, the Imams possess Isma– i.e. infallibility, impeccability, immunity from committing sin–and Ilm– comprehensive knowledge of the Law[3]. Due to such infallibility of Imams, all rulers are considered oppressors and all other kinds of rule are illegitimate.[4]
The Islamic Revolution was an anomaly in respect to the traditional Shi’ite Theology. The exclusion of Shi’ite law from domains of public law was more pronounced than the Sunni[5], attributed to the inability of Shi’ite leaders to capture state power for the crucial period of post–the Rashidun Caliphate. The Islamization of a modern state vacated by the Shah of Iran into a Shi’ite Theocracy required the transformation of the Shia Jurists Tradition into public law and criminal law.
Khomeini and his students – who occupied almost all top positions in the functioning of the state in post-revolutionary Iran – belong to the Usuli branch of the Faqih (Jurists). In contrast with the Akhbari Tradition, the Usulis believe that the Sharia law must be derived from the juristic tradition of engaging the endemic, trenchant, and didactic questions, raised in the Islamic Philosophy and Kalaam (theology), that revolve around the divine law and the human potential for acquiring its knowledge.[6] Thus, the Usuli tradition of Interpretation of the divine law is dialectical in nature. Its practicality and constant reinvention made it one of the reasons for being the source of defiance of the Qajar Empire during the Constitutional Revolution of Iran.[7]
The Usuli support for The Iranian Constitutional Revolution that lasted from 1905 to 1911 was instrumental in its initial success. It was the revolution that gave power to the Marja’-e-Taqlids to present names of twenty Jurists to the Majlis (Consultative Assembly) to elect five or more Jurists to constitute the Ecclesiastical Committee that would have the power to revoke the bills passed by the Majlis.[8] Additionally, The Constitutionalist Theory established the Jurists as the ‘general deputies’ of the Imam of the Age in order to legitimize the rule of the Constitutionalists; it was also made juristically valid to gain the support of the jurists[9]
Although the Shiite Clergy agreed that only the Imam of the Age ‐ Imam Mahdi- who has been in Occultation has the legitimacy to rule, they have differed amongst themselves regarding the legitimacy of the existing state. Some of them have outright rejected the state and argued to ‘avoid Friday Prayers– where thanks is offered to the monarch, decline government posts, avoid paying khoms (religious taxes) to the government etc. Other jurists have grudgingly accepted the state attributing to the reason that ‘bad government is better than no government’ and that many Imams had categorically opposed armed insurrection and warned of social chaos. They have also pointed out Imam Jafar-al-Sadeq had said, “If your ruler is bad, ask God to reform him; but if he is good, ask God to prolong his life”. Other jurists had accepted the state wholeheartedly and complied with the view that ‘monarchs were shadows of God on earth’.[10]
There were multiple interpretations of Velayat-e-Faqih before Khomeini realised it in political terms. Traditionally, the term Velayat-e-Faqih (lit. The Mandate of the Jurists) was extremely apolitical in nature.[11] The Jurists were entrusted, in traditional Shi’ite Jurisprudence, ‘with a set of legal supervisory duties to serve as a guardian, a custodian, a legatee, or a public advocate’[12] which included responsibilities such as ‘custodianship of minors, orphans, the mentally incapacitated, and such who were deemed incapable of looking after their own affairs and lacked other guardians’[13] For most of the term, Velayat-e Faqih meant no more than legal guardianship of those incapable of looking after their own interests.
A few Jurists had interpreted the term in a political sense and also had a stint in politics. For Example, Mohammed Hasan Shirazi who had protested against the government for selling a major tobacco concession to a British entrepreneur.[14] There was also Sheikh Fazlollah Nuri, who was initially associated with the Constitutionalist Movement in Iran but later turned against Constitutionalism and advocated for a Theocracy based on Sharia. Nuri was greatly revered by Khomeini and had influenced him in important ways.[15]
Regardless of the variation in the interpretation, no Jurist had declared the Monarchies to be outright illegitimate according to Islam, and that it is a ‘pagan institution’ that the despotic Umayyad adopted from the Romans; that they were tantamount to idolatry and false gods. These arguments were put forward by Khomeini in his lectures that were later penned down in the book Velayat-e Faqih: Hokumat -e Islami. The lectures were delivered in 1970 during his exile in Iraq. Earlier, in the 1940s, the Ayatollah had explicitly disavowed any wish to overthrow the monarch and affirmed his allegiance to the throne. In his first political work, Kashf al-Asrar, Khomeini argued that never had the Shi’i Clergy opposed the state and that no cleric had ever claimed the right to rule. “Bad order was better than no order at all”, he emphasized. Even during the days when he was one of the most eminent critics of the regime, in the 1960s, he never categorically demeaned the institution of monarchy.
In his series of lectures, he was clear that it was the religious judges who were meant to rule. “The twelfth Imam, by going into hiding had passed on this all-encompassing authority to the religious judges”, he argued. He referred to Imam Ali, the Sixth Imam, and even the Prophet to prove his point. The religious judges have the same authority as the Prophet and the Imams. The term Velayat-e Faqih meant Jurisdiction over the believers, Khomeini concluded.[16]
The entity of the state had hardly appeared in the writing of Khomeini before people started to mobilize in the streets of Iran. He had compared and equated the contemporary State to the Caliphate of Imam Ali who ruled the empire from a corner of the mosque. The major functions of the State were to implement the Sharia law, provide law and order, allow local judges to rule swiftly, keep a healthy balance between social strata, spend no more than a collection of khoms and restrain people’s evil instincts.[17]
There were some major differences between the conception of the state before and after the revolution. Before the revolution, for Khomeini, the state was just an Islamic entity. No role in bureaucracy, the army, and the various institutions was emphasized by him. But after the revolution, Khomeini behaved as a pragmatist and expanded the ministries, and bureaucracy, created the IRGC and so on.
One of the most crucial decisions that Khomeini and his followers took in the aftermath of the revolution was that Shi’ite Theocracy was to coexist with a constitutional democracy. The tradition of the jurists was to suffer a drastic change. In these Juristic traditions, informality and personalism in the execution of Islamic Justice were the norm; so were the oral traditions in the courts where any formal evidence was, at best, corroborative.[18] After the Jurists came to power in Iran, they embarked upon the process to formalize the traditions.
The first draft of the Constitution was drafted during the early months of the revolution and envisioned no Supreme Leadership. Though it accorded Khomeini with the title of leader of the revolution, no office of the Guardian of the revolution was established. The ultimate power is vested with the President and his ministers, including the Prime Minister.
The Constitutional uncertainties that came up during this time indicate that the religious leadership was unprepared for such a crisis accompanied by nuances of drafting it. After the constitution draft was presented to Khomeini, he was content with it to such an extent that he proposed to bypass any Constituent Assembly and to directly send it for a national referendum.[19] At the insistence of Bani Sadr and others, he agreed to create a Constituent Assembly. The Assembly of Experts for the Constitution was elected in August of that year. Out of seventy-three members, most of the members belonged to the newly created Islamic Republican Party (IRP); fifty-five members of the Assembly were clerics.[20]
The Constituent Assembly drafted a new constitution that was radically different from the first one in many ways. It increased the role of the Jurists, who were given the nominal role of supervising the three branches of the government. It also created the Guardian Council to institutionalize the guardianship of the jurists, with powers of overseeing whether the laws passed by the Islamic Consultative Assembly or the Parliament were in accordance with the sacred law, and to the head of the Judiciary.
The most important change that the Assembly made was to create an office of the Supreme Guardian Jurist (Rahbar-e Inghalab-e Islami) and was granted sweeping powers. The succession of the Rahbar was the most interesting. It decided that he was to be succeeded by an appropriate knowledgeable Jurist who is a Marja-e Taqlid with a stature that of Khomeini.
If no such Jurist is found, he would be succeeded by a council of three or five jurists with the status of Marja-e Taqlid who were to be elected by the Assembly of Experts. It also accorded the Rahbar with powers of dismissing the President, to declare war and peace, appoint the chief of the armed forces, the Revolutionary Guards. The Supreme Leader was to be elected by the Assembly of Experts and was accountable to only that elective body. The Constitution reiterated the principle of Velayat-e Faqih: that the ultimate authority lies with the senior religious jurists.
Over here it is important to emphasize the role of Ayatollah Montazeri and Ayatollah Beheshti. The former was the President of the Assembly of Experts for Constitution and a disciple of Khomeini. He argued that it was the prerogative of the ‘Just Jurists’ to implement Allah’s Law on behalf of the Imam of the Age. The executive, he said, was to be under the command of the Jurists. Similarly, the Judiciary was also the right of the Faqih. Therefore, all three branches of the government namely the Executive, the Legislature and the Judiciary must be led by the Jurists and should not be separated from each other. This idea was incorporated in the Constitution of 1979 by giving enormous power to the Supreme Leader along with the Guardian Council in Articles 107 and 110. [21]
The latter, Ayatollah Beheshti, was the brain of the political clergy in post-revolutionary Iran. He attacked the modernists in their attempt to incorporate modern principles of Liberalism, socialism and nationalism into Islam. He was of the view that a militant hierocracy under the principle of Velayat-e Faqih was the only alternative. He said that it was in the period of 1962 to 1963 when the turning point of the history of Iran took place and was in contradiction with the nationalistic and socialistic principles of democracy. His ideas were also incorporated in the Constitution of 1979.[22]
The most defining incident of the Khomeini era save for the revolution itself was the Constitutional Amendments of 1989, the first and hitherto only time when the Constitution was amended. By March of 1989, Khomeini had started to modify his Velayat-e Faqih, mainly due to succession problems.
The need for such massive changes in the Constitution began with the disputes between Supreme Leader Khomeini and his Deputy Ayatollah Montazeri, who was the designated successor to Khomeini. But Montazeri’s statements and letters criticized the regime, saying that “On many occasions, we showed obstinacy, shouted slogans and frightened the world. The people of the world thought our only task here in Iran was to kill”[23]. His statements were a direct challenge to the manner in which Khomeini ran his government.
Montazeri also sent a letter addressing the same concerns to Khomeini. Moreover, Mehdi Hashemi, one of the confidants of Montazeri is said to have leaked the secrets of Iranian collusion with the United States in the Iran Contra Scandal.[24] He provoked more controversy when he called for the legalization of the political parties that were banned by Khomeini. He also called for an open assessment of the failures of the regime.
There was also a conflict between the Guardian Council and The Majlis. The disputes were so disruptive that Khomeini directly intervened to settle them. To resolve those disputes the Majma-e Tashkhis-e Maslahat-e Nezam or the Expediency Council was created. The amendment of 1989 made the council redundant, nonetheless, it was a display of the regime’s new doctrine of Velayat-e Motlaq or absolute guardianship. This doctrine envisioned the strengthening of the state in order to maintain stability. This doctrine laid the groundwork for the Constitutional Amendments.
In March of 1989, just three months prior to his death, Khomeini, in a major pronouncement, differentiated the ruling clergy into two groups: those who were aware of the Contemporary world, and the Politics associated with it and those who were more pragmatic in economic terms and who are aware of the ‘problems of the day’ on one hand, and those who were more knowledgeable regarding the religious matters including the Sharia and the juristic tradition on the other. The former, Khomeini emphasized, were more fit to rule Iran because of their intimacy with contemporary issues. Khomeini now implicitly said that the governance of the state was separate from the religion, decades after arguing that both were one and the same.[25] A general drift in Khomeini’s Conception of the State can be seen during this period from Velayat-e Faih to favour fiqh-e puya (interpretation of religious law to favour flexibility)[26].
In April of that year, Khomeini appointed a twenty-member Assembly for Revision of the Constitution to propose Amendments. The work of the Assembly was completed on 8 July, a month after the death of Imam. The main provisions were: the abolition of the office of prime minister, the judicial authority was conferred upon, instead of a council of five judges as under the 1979 constitution, a single judge; the head of the Judiciary was also given the authority to appoint all senior judges, the national radio and television were brought directly under the control of a single person who was to be directly appointed by the Supreme Leader in contrast with the earlier three members council. Also, a Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) was established which was to be headed by the President and included representatives of the military, security services and the foreign ministry[27]. Some powers were moved from the president to the leader, and the power of the Majlis was also reduced to some extent. In addition, the Council of Guardians was given greater powers to vet the religious qualifications of candidates for the Assembly of Experts.[28] But, by far, the most important decision of the Assembly was to decrease the qualifications of the Supreme Leader. Earlier, the leader was to be a Marja-e Taqlid, which signified that the Supreme Leadership was to be in the hands of the most knowledgeable of the Jurists. This requirement was removed, much due to the reason that Khomeini had privately revealed that he wanted Hojjat ul Islam Ali Khamenei to succeed him. Since he was junior to the rest of Ayatollah, the requirement was abrogated. Khamenei, nonetheless, was promoted to the title of Marja-e Taqlid and Ayatollah’s title was conferred upon him. Also equally important was the removal of the requirement of the original Constitution of a three-member Council of Supreme Leadership if a suitable candidate for the post of Supreme Leader is not found. The removal paved the way for further centralization of power.
The conspicuous repressive nature of the Contemporary Iranian State could not have been possible without the doctrine of Velayat-e Motlaq in general and the Constitutional Amendments of 1989 in particular. The distinct feature of the Iranian revolution was that it was led by fundamentalists and not Islamists. However, the present nature of the Iranian State is Islamist in nature. Suppression of dissent is a common feature of it along with Suppression of any kind of criticism. The centralization of power that was initiated by Khomeini has reached extreme levels.
Ervand Abrahamian, Khomeinism
Said Amir Arjomand, Constitution-making in Islamic Iran
Abbas Amanat, Iran A Modern History
Michael Axworthy, Revolutionary Iran
Amir Hassan Boozari, Shi’i Jurisprudence and Constitution
Haleh Esfandari, Rise of Post Khomeini era
[1] Abrahamian, Khomeinism
[2] Boozari, Shi’i Jurisprudence and Constitution
[3] Ibid
[4] Abrahamian, Khomeinism
[5] Arjomand, Constitution making in Islamic Iran
[6] Boozari, Shi’i Jurisprudence and Constitution
[7] ibid
[8] Ibid
[9] Boozari, Shi’i Jurisprudence and Constitution
[10] Abrahamian, Khomeinism
[11] Ibid
[12] Amanat, Iran
[13] Ibid
[14] Abrahamian, Khomeinism
[15] Moin, Khomeini
[16] Abrahamian, Khomeinism
[17] Ibid
[18] Arjomand, Constitution making in Islamic Iran
[19] Amanat, Iran
[20] Abrahamian
[21] Arjomand, Constitution Making in Islamic Iran
[22] Ibid
[23] Axworthy, Revolutionary Iran
[24] Ibid
[25] Abrahamian, Khomeinism
[26] Axworthy
[27] Esfandari, Rise of the post Khomeini era
[28] Axworthy
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