4.1

Ayatollah Ruhullah al-Musavi Khomeini's Ultimate Reality and Meaning

M. Haroon Siddiqui, The Toronto Star, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

1. LIFE AND ACHIEVEMENTS

1. 1 Man of Achievement To probe the ultimate reality and meaning of Khomeini we must understand Islam, Shi'ite Islam, the Quran, Islamic law and his interpretation of all four, plus the modem Muslim psyche and Iranian history. Otherwise, we cannot grasp how a man without any material resources, without creating a political party, without waging guerilla warfare, without the support of a single foreign power engineered one of the greatest mass mobilizations of a people in modem times, brought about a revolution that inflicted a great economic, political and strategic loss on the West and toppled one of the most powerful rulers in West Asia who had the backing of the United States.

Proving all his obituaries, political and physical, premature and outliving many of his adversaries, including the Shah, Khomeini then went on to humble - and, in effect, help defeat - a president of the U.S. ; reclaimed Iranian national independence and, to much applause in the Third World, carved out a truly non-aligned status for Iran outside the U.S.-Soviet bi-polar balance of power; led his nation through a Western economic embargo; fought, without a single military ally and without borrowing a penny on the international money market, a war started by a neighbor that had the support of fellow-Arabs to the tune of about $75 billion by the end of 1985.

Despite incredible odds, Khomeini has held his nation of 35 million together and put in place a state structure that is designed to and almost certainly will outlast him. The 10 elections he has held so far, imperfect as they have been, have proved to be popular exercises not risked even once by any of the pro-W estem Middle Eastern Arab states.

Khomeini has also become a catalyst for a popular worldwide Islamic sentiment that is reaching out beyond his 200 million Shi'ite Muslims. He is the main inspiration to a dedicated band of followers committed enough to suffer retaliation and, in an increasing number of cases, die, sometimes in 'terrorist' 'suicide missions' in cars and trucks full of dynamite, a tactic now being adopted by other groups.

Most Khomeini followers are forming a loose pan-Islamic network demanding a radical, assertive and political Islam opposed to Israel and the United States of America, while seeking no solace from the Soviet Union or its communist camp. Khomeini has

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laid down their political creed well: 'America is worse than Britain. Britain is worse than

America. The Soviet Union is worse than both of them.' (Algar, 1981, p. 185);

'Imperialism of the left and imperialism of the right have joined hands to annihilate

Muslim peoples and their countries' (Algar, 1981, p. 210).

Khomeinism does not have majority support among the world's one billion Muslims.

There is no doubt his Islamic revolution has lost its halo because of the American hostage

crisis, the absolutism of his theocratic autocracy, the silencing of dissenting voices in the

Iranian theological circles, the executions of internal enemies - 5,000 according to

Amnesty International's 1985 report, and the use of child soldiers in the war with Iraq, in

which perhaps a whole generation of youths has been fed to the cannons (Siddiqui,

1979a,b; 1984a,b). He is reviled not only in the West but also by many Muslim nations as

a mad megalomaniac breeding a 'fanaticism' of frightening ferocity. Ayatollahphobia

grips many 'moderate' Muslims states whose anti-Khomeini propaganda is more biting,

acerbic and racist than any seen in the United States. The list of his enemies is long.

Yet he will not go away, as many wish. And even when he does, he will live on, so

overwhelming will be his legacy.

1. 2 Khomeini's Early Years He was born Ruhullah al-Musavi in the village ofKhomein, 100 kilometres southwest of

Tehran, on Sept. 24, 1902; by the Islamic calendar, it was the 20th of Jumad, a most

auspicious date - the birthday of Fatima, the daughter of the Prophet Muhammad, wife

of Ali, Shi'ite Islam's first Imam or Caliph. Khomeini's maternal grandfather, Syed

Ahmad Ali Musavi al-Hindi, an Islamic scholar, was a descendant of Imam Musa al

Kazem, the seventh Imam; he was called al-Hindi, the Indian, because he was born in the

northern Indian princely state of Oudh where his forefathers had moved from Iran at the

invitation of the Shi'ite king (Hiro, 1985, p. 376). Khomeini's father, Mustafa

al-Musavi, was chief clergyman of the town, shot dead in a road ambush for

championing the cause of tenant farmers. The upbringing of the 5-month-old Ruhullah

fell to his mother and an aunt, both of whom died by the time he was 16. He then came

under the care of his elder brother, Syed Murtuza, also a mullah (clergyman), now 96,

known as Ayatullah Pasandideh - literally, the much-liked - who recalls: 'I was older

than Ruhullah but he was always wiser.' (Interview with the author, in Qum, Dec.

1979). At 19 Ruhullah was sent to Arak, 30 miles south, to the seminary of Shaikh Abd

al-Hakim Hairi, a scholar from a noted house of ayatullahs with a tradition of political

activism. Hairi had been a pupil of AyatullahMirzaHasan Shirazi, who led the 1891-92

protest against the monopoly on the production and marketing of tobacco in Iran to a

Briton, Baron Paul Julius de Reuter, 'Use of tobacco is tantamount to war against the

Imam of the Age,' Shirazi had declared, calling for nation-wide boycott of tobacco -

which proved so total the king was forced to cancel the concession.

In 1921, a year after Khomeini joined him, Hairi moved his howza (seminary) to

Qum, the traditional seat of Shi'ite learning, where Ruhullah was to marry the daughter

of a mullah. He was 25, she 14 and her name was Khadijah, the same as that of the first

wife of the Prophet.

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1.3 Khomeini the Author Khomeini excelled in irf_an (Islamic philosophy) and akhlaaq (ethics), subjects he was soon teaching and publishing an Arabic treatise on, Misbah al Hidayah (The Lamp of Guidance) before he was 27 (Hiro, 1985, p. 50).

His years in Qum coincided with the rise and fall of Reza Kahn, the Iranian Cossack Brigade colonel who rose to be the Shah and transformed the Iranian monarchy 'into a dictatorship of the modem, totalitarian kind whose chief domestic aim became the elimination of Islam as a political, social and cultural force' (Algar, 1981, p. 4). In his desire to Europeanize Iran, Reza emulated Kamal Ataturk in neighboring Turkey who, through his 1925 Hat Law, had imposed the death penalty on men wearing the traditional fez cap. In 1928 Reza proclaimed the Uniform Dress Law, banning the hijab or chador (the Islamic scarf); later, he banned Shi'ite passion plays and even the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca; and in 1934 he changed the name of Persia to Iran because the latter originated with the same word as Aryan. Khomeini was to condemn these un-lslamic acts repeatedly in later years.

When Ayatullah Hairi died in 1937 he was succeeded by Ayatullah Muhammad Husain Burujardi, a man of great piety and scholarship, who urged Khomeini to write a refutation of the anti-Islamic literature that had gained currency under Reza, especially one particularly anti-Islamic treatise advocating secularism.

Thus came Khomeini's Kashf al-Asrar (Secrets Exposed), a landmark work in which he denounced: 1. Christian and Jewish attempts at defaming Islam; 2. Western imperialism which economically exploits the colonized and 'keeps us backward;' 3. Monarchy as un-lslarnic - 'The only government reason accepts as legitimate ... is the Government of God'; 'Sovereignty belongs to Allah alone;' 4. The emergence of an aloof, inefficient Westernized bureaucracy - 'The officials are content to sit behind their desks in utter idleness'; and 5. 'Those who have grown up with lechery, treachery, music and dancing, and a thousand other varieties of corruption . . . who regard the advancement of our country as dependent upon the women going naked ... and who regard the wearing of European hats as a sign of national progress ... These people have forfeited their faculties completely to foreigners' (Algar, 1981, p. 169-173).

By the time the book appeared Reza Shah had been forced by the British to abdicate because of his pro-Nazi tendencies and was replaced by his son, Mohammed Reza, at 21 a virtual puppet of the allies. Though he did not name either Reza, Khomeini's battle with the king had clearly begun - and was to last the next 38 years. Kashf al-Asrar clearly set the tone and tenor of his lifelong battle against the 'forces of evil' undermining Islam in Iran - the Shah, his Western masters, creeping alien Western values, and the erosion of Iranian political and cultural sovereignty.

1.4 Teacher, Critic, National Leader Khomeini's fame drew students and supporters from all over Iran, people who were to play an active role in his later crusades and become key participants in the Islamic Republic - Ayatullah Syed Muntazeri, named on Nov. 23, 1985, as successor to Khomeini, Hojatul-lslam Hashemi Rafsanjani, the first speaker of the Majlis (parliament), Hojatul-Islam Syed Ali Khamenei, the third president oflslamic Iran, and many others.

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When Ayatollah Burujardi died in March 1961, Khomeini was reluctant to succeed him but yielded to the urgings of his associates and pupils who, to enhance his claim, published a collection of his various interpretations of Islamic jurisprudence. It was entitled Tauzih al Masai/ (Clarification of the Points of Shariah), described later by Marvin Zonis, an American expert on Iran, as 'a rigorous, minute, specific codification of the way to behave in every conceivable circumstance, from defecation to urination to sexual intercourse to eating to cleaning the teeth' (Hiro, 1985, p. 51; Algar, 1981, p. 155, 437-442). Tauzih al Masai/ further confirmed Khomeini's scholarship and piety; but to his admirers, 'of greater importance was his willingness to confront the Shah's regime at a time when few dared to do so.' (Algar, 1981, p. 15). As the doyen and uncrowned leader of the radical faction of the clergy, Khomeini's popularity was growing because of 'his refusal to see Islam not in a narrow religious context but as an all-embracing moral and political force' (Graham, 1980, p. 220).

Khomeini soon lent his name to students protesting the opening of liquor stores in Qum and led the campaign, successfully, against a law abolishing the requirement that candidates for local assemblies be Muslim and male. It is largely from this that Khomeini derives, not altogether fairly, his reputation as an anti-feminist.

The next battle was against the Shah's White Revolution, so-called, Iranians said mockingly, because it was written in John Kennedy's White House; or because it was meant as a whitewash of the Shah's repressive regime. A series of cosmetic measures, including a promise of land reforms, the proposals were approved in a snap January 3, 1963 referendum dismissed by Khomeini as 'fraudulent' and 'stage-managed at bayonet points.' (Razvi, 1981, p. 22). Despite much good press abroad, the 'reforms' ended up, precisely as Khomeini had predicted, as a cover for wholesale corruption for members of the royal family and cronies who 'indulged in embezzlement on a mass scale' (Mortimer, 1982, p. 319); they confiscated agricultural land and re-sold it to the government or developers for huge profits. Within 15 years of the alleged reforms, Iran, which was self-sufficient in food became a net importer, as Khomeini had forecast. He had not attacked the idea of land distribution as part of an agrarian reform (Hiro, 1985, p. 44); the reasons for his and clerical opposition 'were not, as has often been claimed by the foreign press, related directly to land reform and the vote for Iranian women. They were rather the old and familiar dual complaints of domestic tyranny supported by foreign influence and exploitation' (Millward, 1980, p. 58).

As Khomeini's criticism of the program continued, paratroopers moved in to his howza on March 22, 1963 ransacking it and killing a number of students. Estimates of the dead vary but Khomeini, with characteristic exaggeration, said it 'reminded me of the Mongol attacks on Persia 500 years ago' (Heikal, 1981, p. 89). On April 3, at the majlis-e-arabain (the 40th day of mourning for the dead), Khomeini attacked the Shah's growing relations with Israel: 'The ulema (learned scholars) of Iran and the pious people of Iran abhor and are disgusted with the treaty with Israel, the enemy oflslam and Iran' (Algar, 1981, p. 176) and he called for freeing the nation from 'the chains of serfdom' with the U.S. (Heikal, 1981, p. 87).

On June 3 - Ashura, the 10th day of the Islamic lunar month of Muharram in which Shi' ites mourn their martyrs - Khomeini made a historic speech, particularly notable for

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its fearless words of reproach addressed directly to the Shah: 'You miserable wretch ... desist in your anti-Islamic and pro-Israeli policies. Stop worshipping the U.S .... Both Israel and the U.S. are fundamentally opposed to Islam ... Learn a lesson from your father. Everyone was happy when he left Iran. Do you want people to offer thanks if your foreign masters should decide one day that you too must leave, like your father?' (Algar, 1981, p. 177-180).

The next day, June 4, Khomeini was arrested, dragged from his house in the early hours of the morning when he was offering his prayers, and driven to Tehran. Protests acquiring the proportion of an insurrection swept the land, only to be brutally put down by tanks and troops who killed 'many thousands' (Zonis, 1971, p. 63), 'not less than 15,000 within a space of a few days' (Algar, 1981, p. 17).

It proved a turning point, establishing Khomeini as the regime's most outspoken critic and a national leader. Released April 6, 1964, his next attack came Oct. 27, a day after the government approved a law giving American citizens in Iran immunity from Iranian laws. Speaking to a gathering outside his house, he said: 'If some American's servant, some American's cook assassinates your marja (religious leader) in the middle of the bazar or runs over him, the Iranian people do not have the right to apprehend him! Iranian courts do not have the right to judge him ... They (the government) have reduced the people to a level lower than that of an American dog. If someone runs over a dog belonging to an American, he will be prosecuted. Even if the Shah himself were to run over a dog belonging to an American, he too could be prosecuted. But if an American cook runs over the Shah, the head of the state, no one will have the right to interfere with him . . . If an American runs over me with his car, no one will have the right to say anything to him ... Our dignity has been trampled ... By God, whoever does not cry out in protest is a sinner' (Algar, 1981, p. 181-188).

The speech caused his arrest Nov. 4 on charges of 'instigating against the country's interests, security, independence and territorial integrity' (Hiro, 1985, p. 49) and he was sent into exile to Turkey, first to Izmir and then to Busra, near Istanbul. A year later, in Oct. 1965, he was given permission to move to Najaf, a Shi'ite shrine city in Iraq, where his wife and family were later allowed to join him. Khomeini felt at home there. It was there that his grandfather, Syed Ahmad Musavi al-Hindi, had taught and married the daughter of a notable from Khomein.

Khomeini taught in a Najaf seminary and kept up his battle against the Shah for the next 13 years through a series of ilamiyeh (communiques) on paper and on casette tapes, brought to Iran by followers shuttling between Najaf and Qum and copied, often by hand, for wide circulation. It was to prove an amazingly successful communication network: 'This was a revolution against autocracy led by theocracy made possible by xerocracy' - and the casette tape (Heikal, 1981, p. 139).

1.5 Philosopher/ Political Crusader in Exile in Iraq Khomeini's communiques, letters and literary /political dicta from Najaf - largely ignored by the world - tell us how amazingly consistent he was and how he prepared his people for an Islamic revolution and laid down the blueprint for a contemporary Islamic state.

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On April 16, 1967, he said in an open letter to Prime Minister Amir Abbas Hoveyda: 'The poverty and wretchedness of our people increases every day while you and your friends are sitting in your opulent palaces. You witness complacently the hunger and poverty of our people, the bankruptcy of the bazar, the unemployment of our educated youth, the sorry state of our agriculture, the domination of our country by foreigners, especially the U.S. and Israel. '

Referring to the planned Oct. 26, .1967 coronation of the Shah who, like Napoleon, was to place a crown on his own head, one with 3,380 jewels, on his 40th birthday, and entitle himself Shah-en-Shah (King of Kings) and Arayamehr (Light of the Aryans), Khomeini told the prime minister: 'You can see that the villages near the capital, let alone in the remote regions, lack the basic necessities - clean drinking water, bathhouses, and medical care. Half of the millions of rials needed for a festival for a certain person were taken from the national treasury, the other half extorted from the bazar merchants ·by intimidation ... Give speakers and writers their freedom for 10 days and they'll reveal all your crimes ... You run a police regime, a medieval regime, a regime of the bayonet, of torture and imprisonment, a regime of repression, terror and thievery' (Algar, 1981, p. 189).

1.5.1 Political Quietism is Un-Islamic It was in Najaf that Khomeini produced his most well-known treatise, Hukumat-e-/slami (Islamic Government), a series of lectures given between Jan. 21 and Feb. 8, 1970, recorded, transcribed and published in book form by a student (Khomeini, 1970). Its major points: 1. The West, especially Jews are anti-Islamic and will go to any lengths to mock it - a precursor of the theme enunciated in recent years by Edward Said in Orienta/ism and Covering Islam, the thrust of both of which is that the study oflslam in the West remains racist. 2. Imperialism sees Islam as a hurdle to creating materialistic societies in the colonies to sell their goods. 3. Islam 'does not recognize monarchy and hereditary succession .... The only true monarch is Allah.' 4. The separation of state and religion, the Spiritual vs. Temporal battle is un-Islamic; and political quietism is alien to Islam: 'The ratio of Quranic verses concerned with the affairs of society to those concerned with ritual worship is greater than a 100 to one. Of the approximately 50 sections of the corpus of hadith (the sayings and deeds of the Prophet Muhammad) containing all the ordinances of Islam, not more than three or four sections relate to matters of ritual worship; a few more are concerned with ethics, and all the rest are concerned with social, economic, legal and political questions ... Islam is not something to be written down in books to be periodically kissed and laid aside.' Those mullahs who say otherwise, as many did in Iran and elsewhere, are 'akhund (a derogatory term for religious men) orfuqaha-e-sultan (the king's clergymen)' toeing the offical line. 5. It is the duty of fuqaha (plural of faqih or faghih, learned Islamic jurist) to bring about an Islamic state. 'They are the fortress of Islam . . . the trustees of the prophets . . . the guardians of the beliefs, ordinances and institutions of Islam.' They must assume legislative, executive and judicial positions within it, using the mosque 'as their seat of command' - in short, the doctrine of the governance of the faghih.

Afaghih is 'learned not only in the laws and judicial procedures oflslam but also in the

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doctrines, institutions, and ethics of the faith - a religious expert in the full sense of the word.' He 'must also possess excellence in morals and beliefs; he must be just and untainted by major sin.' His third qualification should be that he 'be an imam, in the common lexical meaning of the word, a leader or guide, not in its specific technical sense . . . He is the legatee of the Most Noble Messenger (Prophet Muhammad) and, in addition, during the occultation of the (12th) imam, afaghih is the leaderof the Muslims and the chief of the community' (Algar, 1981, p. 60-84).

1.5.2 Islamic Duty to Listen to the Voices of the Oppressed On Oct. 31, 1971, on the Shah's celebration of his 30 years on the throne Khomeini said: 'Islam is fundamentally opposed to the whole notion of monarchy ... It is one of the most shameful and disgraceful reactionary manifestations of government. In Islamic government, there's not the slightest trace of vast palaces, opulent buildings, servants and retainers, private equerries, adjutant to the heir-apparent and all other appurtenances of monarchy' (Algar, 1981, p. 57).

A year later, on Oct. 15, 1972, the Shah commemorated two and a half millenia of monarchy - a fraudulent boast since neither he nor his father had any blood links with the previous monarchs of Persia - at a 'tasteless, jet-set celebration' in Persepolis, the capital of the pre-Islamic Achaemenian dynasty, where 68 kings and heads of states stayed in silk-lined tents in a grotesque and obscene show of wealth 'from which ordinary Iranians were excluded and at which the Shah identified himself as ostenta­tiously as possible with a hollow Iranian chauvinism - anti-Arab, anti-Islamic - based on a megalomaniac vision of Iran's pre-Islamic imperial past ... Hundreds of thousands of dissident students and bazar merchants in Tehran and elsewhere undertook a token fast in protest' against the celebrations which cost $40 million by the regime's own admission, $120 million by most other estimates (Mortimer, 1982, p. 321). Khomeini commented: 'Instead of putting an end to the hunger of our people, millions of toumans (Iranian currency) are to be spent on this shameful celebration. Money is being extracted by pressure and force from merchants, craftsmen and workers. Experts have been invited from Israel to take care of the arrangements - Israel ... which is at war with Muslims and plans to occupy the lands of the Muslims' (Algar, 1981. p. 201).

Then addressing himself to those mullahs who believed in not 'mingling politics with religion' he said: 'Does not the situation in our ruined homeland need to be exposed? Must not the atrocities be exposed? ... Come to your senses; awaken, Najaf. Let the voices of the oppressed of Iran be heard throughout the world ... I consider it my duty to cry out with all the strength at my command and to write and publish with whatever power my pen may have' (Algar, 1981, p. 202). 'Did Muhammad say what business I have with politics? Did the commander of the faithful (Ali) say, 'Let me sit at home and devote myself to prayer and devotional reading - what business do I have with politics?' 'A certain akhund wrote once, "Why should we oppose the government? God gives rule to whomsoever he wishes." God gave kingship to Pharoah but did not Moses oppose him? Nimrod's kingship was also a divine gift, in the sense that everything is from God but did not Abraham move against him? Did not the Commander of the Faithful (Ali) and later Imam Husain (Ali's son) oppose Mu'awiya (governor of Syria) and (his son) Yazid?' (Algar, 1981, p. 220-225).

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1.5.3 Broadening Islamic Political Message On Nov. 23, 1977, Hojatul-Islam Syed Mustafa, Khomeini's older son, principal aide

and chief courier between him and his Iranian followers, was ambushed and killed, reportedly by the agents of Savak, the draconian and much dreaded secret police of the Shah whose torture and killings are well-documented. The death prompted a series of demonstrations across Iran. Bearing his loss stoically, Khomeini told his followers on the 40th day of mourning: 'We have shed enough tears. We have remembered his death many times ... What we need now is action' (Heikal, 1981, p. 141).

By now Khomeini was issuing statements far more frequently and addressing a wider range of public issues.

On Feb 19, 1978, 40 days after the Jan. 8 massacre of an anti-Shah demonstration in Qum, Khomeini attacked the king's decision to replace the Islamic lunar calendar with the Imperial calendar linked to the Achaemenian monarchy. 'To be against the Islamic calendar is to be· against Islam itself; in fact, it is even worse than the massacres; it is an affront to the Prophet' because the calendar dates from the Prophet's journey from Mecca to Medina, June 20, 622 A.D. Then attacking the very basis of the Shah's economic and political system, Khomeini said: 'Our country has an ocean of oil. It has iron; it has precious metals; Iran is a rich country. But those so-called friends of humanity (U.S.A.) have appointed their agents to rule in this country in order to prevent the poor from benefitting from its riches. Everything must· go into his masters' pockets and be spent on their enjoyment. The money goes to the Shah and his gang. They buy themselves villas abroad and stuff their bank accounts with the people's money, while the nation subsists in poverty.' (Algar, 1981, p. 212-227).

And eight days later, on Feb. 27: 'This wretch has surrendered the great resources of this country to foreigners with both hands who give back the paltry sum he receives in payment for our resources in order to buy pieces of scrap metal (Western armaments) that are of no use whatsoever to the nation' (Heikal, 1981, p. 228).

As the potency of his attacks grew, the Shah leaned on Iraqi president Saddam Husain to silence Khomeini. When subtle pressures failed, the Ba'athist regime cut off heat and electricity to the Khomeini household. He left by car for Kuwait but was turned back from the border and - taking up an earlier invitation of Abol-Hasan Bani-Sadr of the Paris Committee of Iranian Students - flew to France Oct. 6, 1978 and took up residence at Neauphle-le-Chateau.

Before leaving Iraq, he issued a letter to the Muslim world: 'The Shah has given oil to America and Israel, gas to the Soviet Union; pastureland, forests and part of the oil to Britain. The people have been deprived ... and I have not been permitted to continue my activity in any Muslim country, my activity that consists of conveying to the world the cry ofmy oppressed people' (Algar, 1981, p. 238).

1.6 Political Tactician in France If we saw Khomeini the ayatullah and philosopher/ crusader in N ajaf, we saw Khomeini the political tactician in France where the world media, especially television, discovered him and gave his movement the momentum it perhaps would never have achieved had he been left in Iraq.

At this critical juncture of his battle, Khomeini calculated - and told a confidante -

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that the revolution would not succeed unless the powerful Iranian army was neutralized. He did it by a taking a leaf out of the book of Mahatma Gandhi, perhaps the only foreign leader he admired, and urged Iranians to take the path of non-violence in dealing with the armed forces. 'You cannot confront the army. Talk to the soldiers. Have a dialogue with them,' he said in an ilamiyeh; 'the only way to fight the army is to disarm it.' In another call to his followers: 'Do not throw as much as a brick at a soldier.' Yet another: 'Do not attack the army in its breast but in its heart. Letthemkill 5,000, 10,000, 20,000 butthey are our brothers. We will prove that blood is more powerful than the sword.' (Heikal, 1981, p. 143-51, and 178-179).

It was eventually the desertion of the soldiers from the barracks that caused the stampede away from the Shah.

Khomeini also displayed great acumen in reading the events in Iran; and, against the advice of practically all those surrounding him, he refused to compromise, on letting the Shah stay and reign rather than rule; on letting the Shah go abroad purportedly to seek rest and medical care while a regency council ruled in Iran; on letting the Shah's stooge, Shahpour Bakhtiar, stay on as prime minister while Khomeini became a spiritual leader. Khomeini refused all such half-way measures and would not settle for anything less than a total changeover. Events proved him right. The Shah, totally discredited and besieged, abandoned the country and a triumphant Khomeini returned home Feb. 1, 1979 to a welcome without parallel in modem history. Millions packed every available space in Tehran, shouting such cries of Shi'ite ecstacy as, 'The soul of Imam Husain is coming back,' 'The doors of paradise have been opened again,' 'Now is the hour of martyrdom.'

When Bakhtiar refused to hand over power, Khomeini mocked him by getting the people to simply ignore him and urging the civil servants to boycott work which they did. Bakhtiar's teetering administration collapsed in its own absurdity, making Khomeini - by now sitting in a small house next to a mosque in a downtrodden area of Tehran - the unquestioned leader of Iran without anyone ever formally transferring power to him. It was a fitting finale to a unique revolution that there was not even a final symbolic march of angry masses on any seat of power to topple or kill anybody. There was nobody left to topple.

1. 7 Khomeini: Islamic Republic's 'Guardian of the Jurists' and Deputy Caliph Within months of his return, the title of vilayat-ejaghih (guardian of the jurists) was conferred on Khomeini under articles 107 to 112 of Islamic Iran's 1979 constitution which drew most of its inspiration from his 1970 book, Hukumat-e-Islami. He was also elevated, not by any official decree but by the people, to naeb-e-imam (deputy to the imam), ruling in the name of the absent 12th Imam who Shi'ites believe went into occultation in 873 A.D. and will reemerge at the appropriate hour. This is an honor never before bestowed on any Shi'ite saint. In popular usage, even the naeb got dropped and people started referring to him simply as Imam Khomeini or just The Imam.

He has to be the only leader of a nation who never looks at files, never reads any papers and rarely sets foot outside his home; when he was at Neauphle-le-Chateau in 1978-1979, for example, he did not bother to visit Paris. He is not head of the state nor does he run the administration but is the overall Islamic overseer and guide. He is not the

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dictator he is often portrayed to be, even though his dictum constitutes the final word. He sees himself as a mediator, settling disputes among the various levels of the government - the executive, the parliament, the Assembly of Experts (which ensures that laws are Islamic) and the Islamic Republic's various constituencies. He is often the referee among differing Islamic points of view between the conservative and radical factions on such practical issues as placing limits on property and incomes, nationalization of trade and the state controlling essential commodities. He has had to cope with strong lobbies mounted on behalf of the conservatives by two well-organized groups that have emerged since 1979: the Hezbullah (Party of Allah) and Hujatiyeh (Those who can elucidate about Islam). The Hezbullah is a generic, loosely structured organization of social conservatives who insist on strict adherence of Islamic morals, including observance of the women's dress code and who reject any political leanings to the Western and Eastern blocs. A H ezbullah was defined in a 1981 pamphlet by the Ministry oflslamic Guidance as one who is 'simple, sincere and angry. He does not use eau de cologne, wear a tie or smoke American cigarettes ... Stay away from his anger which destroys all in its path ... Khomeini is his heart and soul.' The Hujatiyeh movement, which started in the 1930s with the chief aim of eliminating Bahai heretics, now consists mostly ofbazaris, urban property owners, the rich clergy and other affluent strata of society concerned largely with the retention of private enterprise, a free market economy and the Islamic right to property. Khomeini has not proved very effective in juggling these competing internal Islamic ideological forces. While he has shown himself to be confident and steadfast when he takes on what he perceives to be the enemies oflslam, he shows great reluctance in choosing sides between the various conservative strands of Islam among his own followers and friends. He vacillates. He waits for public opinion to manifest itself on an issue before taking a clear stance. He intervenes only when an issue almost gets out of hand. He waited until 1981, for example, before speaking against the lack of proper procedures in meting out Hudud, the Islamic penalties that often included executions of internal enemies; and until 1982 to warn against government wire tapping and the opening of mail - 'To spy and search is contrary to Islam ... We should not engage in oppression. We should not investigate what's going on in people's homes' (Hiro, 1985, p. 386).

Khomeini - whose political role has overshadowed the scholar, prolific writer, philosopher and mystic in him - exudes confidence and calmness. His is the dominating presence in any gathering, even though he rarely moves about, preferring to sit mostly on the floor.

Unlike his image in the West, he is a very soft-spoken man who rarely raises his voice beyond a whisper and makes few physical gestures; those around him take their cues and clues from a minor nod of his head, a gentle wave of his hand or a twitch of his heavyset eyebrows. A man of stem demeanor, he is said to melt in the company of his immediate family - his wife, surviving son Ahmad, and his grandchildren.

He does not so much indulge in a dialogue or debate with people as he lectures them, the way he would in his old seminary in Qum. Staring into a void that seems to block out everything directly in front of him, he appears lost in his thoughts that flow not in a focused Westernized point form leading to a conclusion but rather in a

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broad rhetorical circumlocution that relies heavily on a Quranic vocabulary that the masses can relate to.

1. 8 Khomeini the Ascetic He lives a simple, ascetic life, as the Quran dictates. He drinks goat's milk, eats yoghurt, rice, some boiled meat and is fond of rice pudding. He does not smoke, let alone drink -both prohibited by Islam. He sleeps on the floor on his doshak (mat) and keeps all his worldly belongings in a tin trunk in a tiny bedroom. He had not used the phone until he was 76 when told in France that his brother Pasandideh in Qum, whom he had not seen for years, was ill and wanted to hear his voice.

Khomeini's daily routine has hardly changed over the decades. It evolves around the five obligatory prayers, plus the optional one past midnight for which he interrupts his sleep. He is up at five a.m. for his prayers, takes a nap, has a breakfast of bread and a saucer of honey, and starts meetings. After lunch and prayer, he has his siesta, following which he goes into meetings until midnight, interrupted by the three evening prayers and a light dinner. His food is still prepared by his wife Khadijah, 'a woman of great character, energy and charm' (Heikal, 1981, pp. 135).

The biggest change in his life has been his audience. Instead of expounding the virtues of Islam to his students, he now expounds the virtues of Islamic Iran to politicians, dignitaries and ordinary folk visiting his home in northern Tehran where he was moved in 1983 from Qum after suffering his second heart attack. In Qum,_ he lived for four years in a simple house fronting a narrow lane with an open sewer, and was generally accessible to anyone talking past a guard or two. But following the 1981-83 wave of bombings and killings by the Marxist Mujahideen-e-Khalq in which one president, one prime minister, about 70 elected members of parliament, and some ayatullahs were murdered, the government has turned Khomeini's present residence into a virtually impenetrable fortress, the access to which is controlled by a series of checkpoints featuring anti-aircraft guns. But inside, his lifestyle remains unchanged.

Nobody remembers him ever losing his temper. He is always calm, seemingly never excited. On his historic Feb. 1, 1979 flight home from Paris on an Air France jet which Prime Minister Bakhtiar had said would not be allowed to land at Tehran and may even be shot at, Khomeini - heading home after almost 15 years of exile and at the successful conclusion of his 38-year battle against the shahs - showed no nervousness or excitement and did not change his routine: going to the upper deck of the jumbo jet, he performed the wudu (ritual ablutions), said the special prayer of those facing death, ate a little yoghurt, spread out his doshak on the floor and went to sleep.

2. KHOMEINI'S PRESUPPOSITIONS

2.1 Khomeini's Shi'ism: 1,600-year-old Canvas, Karbala Complex Khomeini operates against a backdrop of 1,600 years oflslamic history. 'Without in any way diminishing or under-estimating the importance of his personal contribution, one should bear in mind that he has behind him a long tradition upon which he draws, a tradition of the assertion of the ulema as the directive force in society, a tradition of

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opposition to those not reflecting Shi'i Islam, a tradition of ever-growing militancy and

constant readiness to self-sacrifice' (Algar, 1980, p. 9). It is by mirroring this ethos - not

out of originality or evil genius - that Khomeini gets his titantic confidence and inspires

mass Muslim adulation. This is where his greatness, or danger, lies - not, as some think, in being a Hitler or, as a Canadian author Robin Woodsworth Carlsen suggested, in

being another Christ (Siddiqui, 1982b). When the Prophet Muhammad, the founder of Islam, died in 632 A.D., he left no son

and no will, nor did he designate a successor - creating dissension among his followers

over succession. His son-in-law, Ali ibn Ali Talib - one of the first converts to Islam and Muhammad's lieutenant and standard-bearer in the early Islamic campaigns - was

passed over thrice and became the fourth, not the first, Caliph of Islam, in 656 A.D.,

much to the disappointment of his followers who felt him to be a more authentic

representative of the Prophet. Ali was assassinated in 661 A.D. by his critics for

allowing himself to be tricked into arbitration at Siffin, on the banks of the Euphrates, against his opponent Mu'awiya, the governor of Syria. Ali's oldest son, Hasan, died of

poisoning in 669 A.D.; and his younger son, Husain, was slaughtered - 'martyred,' in

Shi'ite lexicon - at Karbala in 680 A.D. by the forces of Mu'awiya's son, Yazid. More than loyalty to a man or family was involved. Ali identified with the

mustazefeen (the dipossessed) in Mecca and Medina; his was seen as a battle for revolutionary Islam, for the social content of the Prophet's message and against a growing Muslim establishment. Husain's struggle was 'for justice and legitimacy

againsttheoverwhelmingpowersoftyranny' (Algar, 1981, p. 3). To their followers, Ali

and his two sons represented the real ahl el-bait (the family of the house of the Prophet),

not the first three Caliphs, Abu Bakr, Umar and Uthman. ShiatAli - the part of Ali, later contracted to Shias, Shi'is, Shi'ites - went onto fight

a relentless, and largely unsuccessful, struggle against the majority Sunnis who came to

rule Turkey, northern Africa, Spain, the Indian subcontinent and beyond. The Shi'ites remained restricted to the old Zoroastrian empire of Persia, now Iran, the only state at

present with a majority Shi'ite population. 'The melancholy and the solitude of Iran

could not have found a better religion' (Ajami, 1985, p. 5). Out of Ali's and Husain's assassinations came the so-called persecution or Karbala

complex, the charismatic concept of martyrdom, self-sacrifice and death on the

battlefield, fighting forces of oppression and tyranny. The chequered history of Shi' ism

also bred a permanent sense of mourning among the followers. It is reflected on a daily basis in the black turbans of the mullahs and the black chadors of the Shi'ite women; its

ritualistic display takes place on an organized basis every year on a designated day, the

Ashura, the 10th day of Muharram when the faithful flagellate themselves with chains

and even walk on burning coals in an intense and sad public display of grief and

mourning for the martyrdom of their original imams of whom there were 12 - starting with Ali, followed by Hasan, and Husain, Zain al Abidin (the grandson of Husain), and

so on. The 12th imam, known as Imam al zaman (Imam of the Present Age) or

Hazrat vali al-asr (The Revered Imam of the Age), however, will re-emerge at the

appropriate hour as the mahdi (the redeemer), an infallible guide who will institute a

reign of justice and liberate the poor and the oppressed. But until that day, Shi'ite

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fuqaha (plural offaqih orfaghih, learned Islamic jurist), must rule in his name, as does Khomeini.

Out of their historic trials and tribulations, the Shi'ites also developed a closely-knit religious hierarchy, not unlike that of Roman Catholicism. Out of Iran's hundreds of small madarsahs (religious seminaries) emerge mullahs, men well-versed in the Quran, the hadith (the sayings and deeds of the Prophet) andfiqh (Islamic law). Others learn the entire Quran by heart - hafiz (the memorizer). Above them are hojatul-Islams (those who can hojat, elucidate, about Islam). A hoja, or hujja, can have his own howza (seminary) of disciples who accept his Islamic interpretations. Above them are the mujtahids (those who can do ijtihad, interpretation). At the apex of this pyramid are five or six ayatullahs (the sign of Allah), one or two of whom become, by the sheer weight of public opinion, ayatullah-ul-uzama (grand ayatullahs), each of whom runs a quasi-papacy, with millions of followers. Khomeini became an ayutullah-ul-uzama in 1963. Iran now has five such grand ayatullahs and Iraq one. Once in a hundred years or so, a grand ayatullah is elevated, because of his piety and scholarship, to the status of marja-e-taqlid (the source of imitation). For a Shi'ite, there can be no higher calling. Khomeini became one in the 1970s.

2.2 Quranic Division of the World In taking his people back to their Islamic roots, Khomeini has also freed them from their inferiority complex vis-a-vis the West, giving them a confidence in themselves and a pride in their Islam and their history. He believes, as did Edmund Burke, that a society wrenched away from its past and its mots is a society without a future. Khomeini has, in effect, freed his people of the inferiority complexes of the immediate colonial past.

They - indeed ordinary Muslims everywhere - like his Shi'ite populist Quranic division of the world into the munafeqeen (not non-believers, as often translated, but 'hypocrites,' those who 'sit still' on their faith) the mustakbereen (the vain, the arrogant or the oppressors), the mahrumeen and the mustazefeen (the deprived and the oppressed). He identifies with the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, whom he dubs taghuti (from tahgut, an illegitimate power usurper, or the corrupted) (Watt, 1962, p. 13). To serve the poor, his regime has allocated millions of dollars to many foundations serving as 'a refuge of the dispossessed.'

Khomeini has made the popular and unsophisticated ethos of the ordinary Muslims -faith in Islam, raw anti-Israel, anti-American, anti-Western and anti-Soviet sentimental­ism - the dominant theme of his and indeed most of the Muslim world. In the process, he has created problems for Westernized Muslims who, after looking down on the masses and their Muslim ethos for more than a century, now have to live with this new Islamic version of majority rule. They have had to learn not to scoff at someone breaking off his office routine to spread his prayer rug and bow towards Mecca. They are thus fast becoming an embittered species, foreigners in their own lands, complaining bitterly to anyone who would listen about their inability to drink and disco or frolic half-naked on the beaches - bemoaning, not unlike Victorians in another time, the loss of a lifestyle, the end of an era.

The genesis of this modem Muslim consciousness spawned out of the ruins of the

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1967 and the 1973 Arab-Israeli wars and the subsequent retaliatory quadrupling of oil

prices, which gave the post-colonial Muslims the money and the confidence to start thinking for themselves for the first time in four centuries. To them, and to Khomeini,

the biggest enemy of Islam is Israel which they think treats Palestinians the way South

Africa treats blacks. They, and Khomeini, think of the Palestinian cause as an Islamic cause even if Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat considers it a secular one, given the active

Christian Palestinian component of his movement and the Soviet support he enjoys.

'Give me a million men ready to become martyrs in the cause of Palestine and Islam against Israel and we will win,' Khomeini has said. His politics of wrath and impatience

have thus hit a responsive chord among Muslim masses who have felt humiliated by

Israel which Khomeini believes breaks international and United Nations laws with

impunity.

2.3 Intellectual Monarchism Intellectual monarchism is an attitude which 'assumes that ultimate reality and meaning by its nature must be one and the one I have projected is the only true one. The rest, being

false, should not be analyzed but rather ignored' (Horvath, 1983, p. 339) or not even

tolerated. It is a fundamentalism in popular form. Not unlike the Christians and the Jews Khomeini believes God's laws are for all time

to come and cannot be changed. Armed with that belief, Khomeini is after an ideal, and

that ideal is not just an Islamic government but an Islamic order - which is precisely what most Muslim leaders have talked about but none has pursued it as literally and with so

much vigor as he. He has been forthright about what he wants to do: 'We did not bring about the revolution to bring down the price of lemons' (Siddiqui, 1984).

Khomeini sees Islam as a whole, a unity. Man exists to serve Allah. Khomeini's

conclusions are thus derivative from the Quran. His is a special relationship with Allah

but no more so than any good Muslim ought to have. The essence of his belief is this:

'The great aim of Islam is to prevent oppression, arbitrary rule and the violation of (Islamic) law ... and to establish social justice' (Algar, 1981, p. 176). His is a literalist

and 'a merciless interpretation of Islam.' (Ajami, 1985, p. 5). He thinks and talks in

absolutes. What we see as his inability to compromise and as his obscurantism - he

obviously has a strong streak of stubbornness in him to have stuck to his battle so long -is his inability to be easily persuaded on what he regards as matters of Islamic principle.

It is this, not necessarily vengeance, that does not enable him to make peace with Iraq's Saddam Husain who, he believes, has been un-lslamic in inflicting an unjust war and

tyranny on innocent Iranians and must, therefore, be punished. Khomeini, a keen

student of Shi'ite and modem Iranian history, also has 'a profound suspicion of anything to do with arbitration and compromise.' (Heikal, 1981, p. 187). The events of Siffin, the

trickery Shi 'ites believe was played on Ali there, as well as the role played by the Central

Intelligence Agency in bringing the Shah back to his throne after he was forced into exile

in Rome in 1952 have left a lasting impression on Khomeini. All peace missions from

abroad are thus suspect in his eyes. They start with the Western notion ofneutrality and impartiality; if they are just, he believes, they must surely say in public what they tell him

in private - that Iraq was indeed the aggressor (Siddiqui, 1984a; 1984b). It was also his

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seemingly intransigent position during the 444-day American hostage crisis - that the U.S. apologize or at least be openly condemned by the world for its past 'crimes' in Iran - that held up key negotiations for many months during the 1979-81 episode.

A man of strong convictions, Khomeini does not believe in pragmatism either; he has, in fact, termed it a Western notion, 'rationalized lying.' Either something is right or it is wrong. A good Muslim does not compromise with evil, whatever the cost. If he suffers or dies, Allah will reward him. 'To die for Islam is the ultimate form of worship and is in conformity with the customs of the prophets, particularly Muhammad, and his great successor, the Commander of the Faithful' (Algar, 1981, p. 327).

It is precisely this twin Shi'ite notion of struggle against tyranny and readiness for martyrdom that an Iranian soldier carries with him in the war against Iraq. 'An Iranian soldier's martyrdom is not passive martyrdom like Thomas Becket's. Martyrdom in the line of Islam is martyrdom of striving against injustice and evil. One is consecrated by the ritual of death in some immortal kingdom of bliss ... The Muslims would celebrate their invincible deliverance even if all that was left in Iran was dust and ashes' (Siddiqui, 1982b). To them, as to Khomeini, Islam is the ultimate and supreme value for which they would sacrifice everything including lives; it is that which they would not lose for anything. As an adversary, he has thus no equal in modern times because he robs his enemies of their ultimate weapon: neither he nor his people can be threatened with annihilation; they do not fear death; indeed they welcome it as a sacrifice iri the name of their Islam. Not understanding this, all of Khomeini's enemies, at home and abroad, have shared one trait: each under-estimated him.

Khomeini does not feel the least bit disqualified in leading a 20th century nation on eighth century principles. Using an argument not too dissimilar to the democratic notion of civilian control of technocrats and experts, he asks: 'What does King Khaled know about space? What do these military men who have seized power in the Arab world know about economics? Afaghih at least understands the laws of God; but these people do not understand the laws of man or the laws of God.' (Heikal, 1981, p. 137). To Khomeini, the fuqaha 'are the representatives of the imams, and since they know more of the law than anybody else, they alone are capable of acting for the (12th) imam in his absence. They can act both as the interpreter and executor of the law. "The ink of the pens of the fuqaha is as sacred as the blood of the martyrs'" (Heikal, 1981, p. 137).

Khomeini's absolutism also fits in with the Sunni concept of a leader. All prototypes of a modem Islamic state drawn up by such Muslim thinkers as Abdullah al-Afghani, Rashid Rida and Moulana Abul Ala Maudoodi envisaged a Caliph-like figure, a pious, scrupulous jurist who would have enormous powers he would retain only as long as he retained the confidence of the people. (Jansen, 1979, p. 181-83; Moazzam, 1984, p. 101-110; Mortimer, 1982, p. 246; Maudoodi, 1967, p. 111-121).

Muslims and non-Muslims alike can scrutinize and understand, if not agree with, Khomeini - and Muslim aspirations - in the context of URAM only if they approach him - and Islam - without fear or contempt.

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