by Ray Takeyh
Thus, Khomeini is no passing figure and his revolutionary template is not about to be displaced by contrasting ideologies. Khomeini’s revolution lives on, through institutions that he created and politicians such as Ahmadinejad, whom he has molded. The current Iranian president was in his early twenties when Khomeini returned from his exile, yet in his rhetoric and outlook he carefully emulates the founder of the republic. Nor is Ahmadinejad alone as Iran’s leaders across the political spectrum feel the compulsion to sanction their priorities by appropriating Khomeini’s words and insisting on the compatibility of their policies with his vision. Given his centrality to Iran, it is appropriate to begin with a discussion of Khomeini’s philosophy and of how an aging cleric managed to weave his ideology into Iran’s social fabric.
THE IMAM’S PATH
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was born in 1902, and during his lifetime he witnessed the totality of Iran’s modern struggles, from the tumultuous world wars that led to the occupation of the Middle East by the great powers to the changing fortunes of the Pahlavi dynasty and its struggle to modernize Iran. Toward the end of his life, Khomeini reemerged as the leader of a populist revolution and an Islamic Republic that pledged to remake the entire region into its image. Beyond doubt, the forbidding Iranian cleric remains one of the most significant figures in the contemporary Middle East.
Khomeini’s success stemmed not just from his steely determination in the face of remarkable odds but from his intuitive understanding of a country he would lead through revolution and war. More than any other Iranian leader, Khomeini would continuously tailor his message to conform to Iran’s core values and grandiose self-perceptions. Successive Persian monarchs and empires perceived Iran as the epicenter of the region, a country that by the dint of its history and civilization was ordained to lead the Arab states. Khomeini’s message of spreading the revolution and establishing the Islamic Republic’s preeminence fits this pattern of Persian expansionism and proved appealing to a significant segment of the public. This is not to suggest that Iranians were eager to suffer the consequences of Khomeini’s dogmatic pursuit of the revolution, but at a certain level his message resonated with his constituents’ historic aspirations.
In a similar vein, Khomeini’s call for a state that reflects Islamic values attracted Iranians from across the political spectrum. Khomeini sensed that in the midst of tumultuous changes, Iranians were still searching for authenticity and meaning despite the monarchical conceit that a modernizing Iranian society was rapidly discarding its traditions. Again, the attachment to religious identity is different from a desire for a theocratic state, but Khomeini was imaginative and effective in manipulating such sentiments behind his revolutionary message. Not only was he innovative in his ideas but he was also successful at building coalitions across a contested political terrain, and ambiguous when such subtlety was politically expedient. Khomeini had a plan, a vision he had spent decades contemplating and developing—a plan that would serve as the blueprint of Iran’s populist revolt.
As early as the 1940s, Khomeini came to articulate a distinct ideology with its own symbols and values. A careful reading of his speeches and writings reveals that the central tenet of his ideology was the notion of justice—a powerful concept in both Persian nationalism and Islamic jurisprudence. Khomeini’s dissent was not just against monarchical absolutism in Iran but also in opposition to tyranny across the Islamic realm, appealing to his countrymen and to all Muslims oppressed by forces of despotism and imperialism. Under the banner of Islamic liberation, Khomeini saw his revolution as an inclusive statement of dissent against a multiplicity of forces, actors, and conspiracies, both real and imagined. In many ways, the clerical champion of tradition came to embrace an entire range of Third World grievances and then proceeded to sanctify them through the power of religious approbation.1
The prevailing traditions among the clerics in the first half of the twentieth century was to disdain politics for the more exalted mission of spiritual training. Nonetheless, Khomeini always exhibited an activist strain, arguing that the clerical class was obligated—indeed, commanded by God—to protect the masses from oppressive rulers and the inequities of the temporal order. The Grand Ayatollahs may have been satisfied with retreating into their seminaries and preoccupying themselves with esoteric theological disputations, but for Khomeini the world outside the mosque always seemed more relevant, even attractive.2
In many ways Khomeini had the misfortune of existing in a clerical establishment that was dominated by the quietist Shiite political tradition. Under the leadership of Ayatollah Muhammad Hussein Borujerdi, who had emerged by the mid-1940s as the sole marjá-e taqlid, the highest religious post in Shiite Islam, the clerical elite devoted itself to strengthening the seminaries and developing the religious sciences.3 An aspiring ayatollah was to preoccupy himself with his studies and forgo the temptations of politics. Indeed, the revolution’s historical revisionism notwithstanding, the clerical estate traditionally maintained amicable relations with Persian monarchs and was often employed by them against their secular leftist nemeses.4
The young Khomeini, however, chafed under such restrictions and perceived these traditions as alienating the clergy from the masses.5 His 1942 book, Kashf-e Asrar, was at once a call for limitations of the monarchy’s powers and an implicit criticism of its clerical allies. In a speech in 1944, Khomeini bitterly complained, “It is our selfishness and abandonment of an uprising for God that have led to our present dark days and subjected us to world domination.”6 Khomeini pointedly deprecated the notion that religion and politics should remain separate, noting, “Islam has provided government for about 1,500 years. Islam has a political agenda and provides for the administration of a country.”7
During this time Khomeini’s evolving thought process was characterized by a penchant to defy the norms of the clerical community and embrace alternative ideas. At a time when the path to promotion within the Shiite clerical hierarchy mandated concentration on jurisprudence, Khomeini studied philosophy and toyed with mysticism and poetry.8 The clerical power barons demonstrated an instinctive hostility toward the secular leftists, yet Khomeini was attracted to their ideas on the inequities of the international system and the rapacious nature of capitalist states. Throughout his career, Khomeini would draw on leftist, even Marxist, discourse, as he often spoke about the oppressive essence of the West.9
Far more than his clerical brethren, Khomeini proved to be a man of his time, and he sensed that the changing politics of Iran offered a unique opportunity to propagate his Islamic ideology. The 1950s and 1960s were heady times in the Middle East, with anticolonial movements and a new generation of leaders stepping forward to reclaim their societies and their traditions.10 The clerical establishment’s reluctance to join this struggle had led to its isolation from the emerging nationalist constituencies, particularly among the youth and the middle class. Khomeini anguished about the irrelevance of religion to this emerging struggle and called for reclaiming the young in the name of a progressive faith. “The irrational person has taken it for granted that religious people have trampled upon the rule of reason and have no regard for it. Is it not the religious people who have written all the books on philosophy and the principles of jurisprudence?” he pointedly asked.11 For Islam to remain vital, he argued, it had to embrace a distinct political content and be part of the larger struggle sweeping the developing world.
In his social criticisms, Khomeini avoided the traditional clerics’ acceptance of the existing economic arrangements and their instinctive embrace of private enterprise. He laced his pronouncements with the word mostaz’afin, the downtrodden, and insisted that the exploited classes were the victims of greedy capitalist forces. Khomeini denounced the Shah for wasting Iran’s oil revenues, exacerbating the gap between the rich and the poor, failing to establish a viable industrial infrastructure, and massive corruption. (Ironically, decades later, these would be the same themes that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would em
ploy in his successful presidential campaign. The one difference was that the target of his accusations was not the Shah, but the clerical leaders who had seemingly abandoned Khomeini’s values for the privileges of power.)
In this sense, Khomeini’s rhetoric mirrored that of Ali Shariati, the famed intellectual who spent much of the 1960s seeking to infuse Islam with the Third-Worldist revolutionary spirit of thinkers such as Frantz Fanon and Jean-Paul Sartre. Shariati, a French-trained sociologist, was part of a new generation of Iranian intellectuals who were seeking a more authentic ideology consistent with their identity as both Muslims and modernists. Shariati saw the men of religion as a stagnant cohort preaching a fossilized retrogressive faith of submission to authority. This was hardly the Islam of the Prophet who had waged war, reconstructed his society, and revolutionized his epoch.12 Khomeini noted the popularity and the acclaim that Shariati enjoyed among Iran’s youth, as he emulated his rhetoric.
However, such flirtations with progressive concepts ought not to be confused with any inclination by Khomeini to accept a system of governance based on anything other then an unyielding interpretation of Islam. In his most influential book, Hukumat-e Islami (Islamic Government), Khomeini radically departed from prevailing Shiite traditions; his concept of velayat-e faqih (guardianship of the jurist) called for direct assumption of political power by the clergy. After all, he observed, the Prophet of Islam was not just a spiritual guide but an administrator, an executor of justice, and a political leader. “He cut off hands, chopped off limbs, stoned adulterers to death,” Khomeini wrote approvingly.13 Given the need to conform the social order to religious injunctions, the clergy must rule as they are most knowledgeable of divine law. Khomeini admonished those who stressed that the clergy should retreat to the mosque and leave politics to the professionals:
Do not listen to those who are against the line of Islam and consider themselves enlightened persons and who oppose the government of the jurists. If there is no government of the jurists there will be taghut [illegitimate government].14
Khomeini’s concept of Islamic government may have been for the people, but it certainly was not democratic. He exhibited a disdain for the collective will, stressing, “People are deficient and they need to be perfected.” The manner of such perfection would be a clerical regime whereby the populace would submit to the superior authority of the clergy. In essence, Khomeini’s concept of proper governance was one of religious autocracy that could not be reconciled with pluralistic imperatives. The Islamic Republic’s persistent inability to liberalize itself can be partly attributed to this onerous legacy and its contempt for democratic accountability.
It would be a mistake to believe that Khomeini focused his ire purely against the Shah. A cursory examination of his writings reveals a sustained attack on the West, which in his view had always displayed a hostile attitude toward Islamic civilization.15 Khomeini’s work is marked by disdain toward external powers and the perception that Iran’s problems, ranging from the unaccountable monarchy to economic mismanagement, were in some form due to the influence of imperial powers. In a sense, Khomeini’s suspicions were reinforced by a populace that was deeply averse to great power manipulation and a political culture that often perceived conspiracies as the root of its misfortunes. Khomeini was shaped by and, in turn, captured a national narrative that always mistrusted foreign elements.
It was this suspicion and contempt for foreign intervention that became the basis of Khomeini’s foreign policy postulations. The Shah was not a mere tyrant but an agent of Western imperialism and Israeli Zionism. Iran and Islam were endangered by the same external forces and their monarchical accomplice. Such a message attracted both leftist intellectuals with their Third-Worldist hostility to America as well as traditional classes concerned about foreign encroachment of Islam’s domain. The protection of Islam and the liberation of Iran were effortlessly conflated in Khomeini’s conception. Decades later, the Islamic Republic’s self-defeating hostility to America and Israel reflects an inability to transcend Khomeini’s enduring antagonisms.
The first manifestation of Khomeini’s enmity toward the West came during the crisis of 1963, when an uprising in the holy city of Qom developed in response to parliamentary legislation exempting U.S. military personnel from prosecution in Iran. The so-called capitulation laws invoked nationalistic hostility and anticolonial sentiment among the Iranian populace. The duality of Khomeini’s evolving ideology was in full view, as he saw the accord as both a transgression against Islam and an assault on Iran’s national integrity. Khomeini castigated the agreement, proclaiming, “They have sold our independence, reduced us to the level of a colony, and made the Muslim nation of Iran appear more backward than savages in the eyes of the world.”16 Yet at the same time he transcended traditionalist language and condemned the accord as an “enslavement of Iran.” From the outset, he sought to unite the totality of Iranian opposition into a cohesive anti-Western bloc. America was not just a cultural affront, but a colonial power seeking to subjugate Third World countries.17
The 1963 crisis is often recalled as the occasion that finally caused Khomeini’s expulsion from Iran. However, the significance of the event lies in the fact that it was the first attempt by Khomeini to reach out to Iran’s growing intelligentsia and student activists. The only manner in which the traditional institutions could attract such forces was to represent their struggle in the language of modern dissent. The politically astute Khomeini clearly noted this view:
They can no longer call us reactionary. The point is that we are fighting against America. All the world’s freedom fighters will support us on this issue. We must use it as a weapon to attack the regime so that the whole nation will realize that the Shah is an American agent and this is an American plot.18
In the ensuing struggles, Khomeini perceived that the instrument of Iranian resistance to foreign influence (and its cat’s-paw, the Shah) had to be Islam, not the passive, indifferent establishment Islam, but a revolutionary, politicized, uncompromising devotion of the sort that had launched the initial Islamic empire under the leadership of the Prophet. The united Muslim masses would once more redeem their faith from the transgressions of the West and the stagnation of the corrupt ruling class. By appropriating Islam’s sacred symbols and by invoking the history of struggle against foreign infidels, Khomeini transformed Islam into an anti-Western ideology. Such a faith would galvanize the believers to once more defend their rights and reclaim their lost dignity.
Given such perceptions, for Khomeini the conflict with the United States was inevitable, as Iran could not abide the presence of a Western superpower seeking to dominate politics in the Islamic world. “We must settle our accounts with the great powers and show them that we can take on the whole world ideologically, despite all the potential problems that face us,” he declared.19 In the postrevolutionary period, sacrifice, conflict, resistance, and defiance would be the currency of Iran’s international relations. Iran would not seek to balance the superpowers or transact alliances, but instead would reject the entire doctrine of international relations. When President Ahmadinejad in 2005 declared that Iran has no use for America, he was drawing on a rich revolutionary legacy and establishing his connection with the founder of the theocratic regime.
From the outset, Khomeini’s vision transcended Iran. Iran’s revolution would be the initial indispensable step toward establishing a virtuous regional order. “Islam is a sacred trust from God to ourselves and the Iranian nation must grow in power and resolution until it has vouchsafed Islam to the entire world,” he said.20 The viability of the revolution and the exalted divine mission mandated the export of Iran’s Islamic template. At the core, Khomeini’s ideological conception rejected the concept of the nation-state and an international system with its arbitrary territorial demarcations. As early as 1942, in Kashf-e Asrar, Khomeini decried the notion of the nation-state as the creation of “weak minds” who failed to appreciate the mandate from heaven.21
Beyond his objections to the Middle Eastern borders drawn by the Western powers, Khomeini also perceived unique opportunities for the export of his revolution. Though national revolutions have often sought to inspire similar movements in other countries, Khomeini was always careful to differentiate Iran’s revolution from its French or Russian predecessors, stressing that Iran’s revolt was predicated on a divine message while previous revolutions had been based on material considerations. For Khomeini, “only the law of God will always stay valid and immutable in the face of changing times.”22 Thus, the Islamic Republic he envisioned would be uniquely capable of ushering in a new age while previous revolutions ultimately stagnated and faded from the scene. Beyond such self-appreciation, Khomeini perceived that the bankruptcy of Soviet Marxism and Western capitalism had created an ideological vacuum that Iran should fill. Thus, once in power he confidently asserted, “We should set aside the thought that we do not export the revolution, because Islam does not regard various countries as different.”23 Such grandiose pronouncements may seem excessively ambitious for a leader of a developing country, but historically Iran’s monarchs and mullahs have proved men of expansive vision and seldom adhered to the limits of their state.
These ambitions should not conceal the more parochial calculations behind the export of the revolution. Like most revolutionaries, Khomeini perceived that the best way to consolidate his regime at home was to pursue a confrontational policy abroad. Should the Islamic Republic remain inward-looking and focused on its internal developments, then it was bound to languish and eventually collapse. Once more, Khomeini was defiant, noting, “All the superpowers have risen to destroy us. If we remain an enclosed environment, we shall definitely be destroyed.”24 The contradiction between the export of the revolution and the preservation of Iran’s practical interests was not evident to Khomeini.