Signs from Allah: History, Science and Faith in Islam
167. Ayatollah Khomeini and the Iranian Revolution of 1979 - Part 2
By Professor Nazeer Ahmed
Concord, CA
The unity that the Muslims seek cannot be political unity; it is unity of purpose, a unity of vision, and a unity of a shared struggle with mutual support. One shoe does not fit all.
Vilayet e faqih was one such idea. It was an idea that Khomeini deftly used to topple one of the most entrenched monarchies which was backed by the awesome might of a superpower. In the process he changed the political map of the Middle East and launched Iran into the turbulent waters of clerical rule.
What is Vilayat? And who is a faqih? There is no consensus among scholars as to the meaning of these terms. The term Vali appears in multiple contexts in the Qur’an. In its functional meaning, it means protector, safe keeper, guardian, overseer. When I was a child, India was still a British colony and some Indians referred to England as Vilayat. The Sufis interpret it to mean one who is close to God (one whom Allah has favored with His closeness and His Grace, hence the term Awliya Allah). There is also a difference of opinion as to whether the term Vilayat means the safekeeping and protection of religious affairs or that it includes temporal and political affairs as well.
And where does the Vali derive his legitimacy from? The Qur’an states: “O you who have certainty of faith! Obey Allah and obey the Messenger, and (follow) those among you who are endowed with Amr” (4:59). This Ayat forms the foundation and provides the point of departure for the formulation of Islamic rule. Allama Iqbal and Ayatullah Khomeini both start from this foundation. However, the analogy ends here. It was the genius of Iqbal that he interpreted the term Amr to mean directed energy, thereby giving it a transcendental meaning as an action that derives its legitimacy from Divine law “There is no power (energy in motion) nor is there any force (applied energy) except from Allah”. (The Qur’an) Khomeini, by contrast, interprets the term to mean authority. For Iqbal the “directed energy” came from a legislature elected by universal suffrage. Here Iqbal stood at the confluence of Western liberal thought and Islamic traditionalism. By contrast, Khomeini’s ideas were an exposition of the traditional Shii schools which maintain that authority flows from the Qur’an, the Prophet, and after him through the Imams and those who have inherited the mantle of the Imams.
In applying their ideas to their own societies, both Iqbal and Khomeini faced specific problems. Iqbal lived in British India wherein Muslims formed a minority. As evidenced from his classic work, The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, Iqbal’s solution was to seek a separate homeland wherein a legislature elected by popular vote would be Muslim-dominated. This was the conceptual origin of Pakistan. Khomeini, by contrast, was faced with a monarch, who albeit a Shia Muslim, was a despot and a dictator. Khomeini had to delegitimize the rule of a king before he could offer his own Vilayet e Faqih as a substitute for kingship. Khomeini did this by extrapolating the meaning of Vilayet e Faqih and excluding the rule of kings and sultans from its scope.
“Islamic government is not a form of monarchy, especially not an imperial system”, Khomeini said, “In Islamic governments, unlike monarchical and imperial regimes, there is not the slightest trace of vast palaces, opulent buildings, servants and retainers, private equerries, adjutants to the heir apparent, and all other appurtenances of monarchy that consume as much as half of the national budget”. He wrapped up this argument in theological terms: “Islamic government can therefore be defined as the rule of divine law over men… In this form of government, sovereignty belongs to God alone and law is His decree and command”. Quoting Imam Sadiq, he states, “The Imam forbids all recourse to illegitimate governments, including both their executive and their judicial branches. He forbids the Muslims to have recourse in any of their affairs to kings and tyrannical rulers”. Thus, Khomeini framed his contest with the Shah as one between “rule by divine law” and “an imperial system”. It is not hard to see how the message was received in the bazaars of Tehran and Tabriz.
There are similar differences of opinion about the term faqih. The tenth century scholar Imam Tarmidhi used the term to mean one who has acquired knowledge of both the internal aspects as well as the external aspects of religion. Khomeini accepts this definition but expands it to include not only knowledge but the ability to rule. “The qualifications essential for the ruler” says Khomeini, “derive directly from the nature and form of Islamic government. In additional to general qualifications like intelligence and administrative ability, there are two other essential qualifications: knowledge of the law and justice”. Khomeini quotes a Hadith of the Prophet narrated by Abu Abdullah: “The fuqaha are the trustees of the prophet, as long as they do not concern themselves with the illicit desires, pleasures, and wealth of this world”. He affirms the continuity of this position through Imam Musa (one of the twelve Imams): “Believers who are fuqaha are the fortresses of Islam”, asserting that the fuqaha have the duty of being guardians of the beliefs, ordinances, and institutions of Islam. And finally, “There cannot be the least doubt that the tradition we have been discussing refers to the governance of the faqih, for to be a successor means to succeed to all the functions of prophethood.” Thus, Khomeini asserts the authority of a faqih from the Qur’an, through the Sunnah of the Prophet and the sayings of the Twelve Imams. “Since Islamic government is a government of law”, said Khomeini, “those acquainted with the law, or more precisely with religion, i.e., the fuqaha, must supervise its functioning. It is they who must supervise all executive and administrative affairs of the country, together with all planning.”
This was the doctrinal framework, that of Vilayet e Faqih, within which Ayatullah Khomeini waged his dual battle against the rule of the Shah and the pervasive Western influence in Iran.
What is astonishing about humankind is not that it makes errors – after all to err is human - but that it repeats its errors with a consistency that baffles rational analysis. In this respect, man is like a moth that charges time and again oblivious of consequences and sacrifices itself at the altar of a burning candle. If there is any lesson that can be drawn from the history of the prophets, from Adam and Noah, Abraham and Moses, Jesus and Muhammad (peace be upon them), it is that humankind repeats its errors. The appearance of a prophet marks a critical moment in the struggle of man on earth. Divine Grace intervenes through the revelation granted to a prophet to show humankind the straight path. Alas! Humankind does not learn! It forgets and it errs inviting Divine intervention, again and again.
What is true of humankind is also true of civilizations, dynasties, empires, kings, despots, political leaders and individuals. Whether it is imperial overreach or a battered wife, the story is similar. You can see this pattern even in a business. If you have tried to implement Six Sigma quality control in your operations, you must have seen individuals repeating their errors in statistically predictable patterns. And the errors made by one person are not necessarily the same as the ones made by the next person.
Such predictable human behavior has a positive side for a student of history. It makes it possible to formulate empirical theories for the rise and fall of civilizations, dynasties, empires, even businesses and individuals so that if man chooses to do so, he can learn from them. One such universal observation is that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
The history of Iran falls into this paradigm. The Shah of Iran, hoisted onto the Peacock throne by American power after the coup of 1954 that toppled Mosaddeq, grew increasingly ruthless in his suppression of dissent. The nationalists were silenced. The communist Tudeh party was crushed and went underground where it continued to receive clandestine support from the Soviet Union. The clerics were sidelined; some were persecuted. The Iranian Secret Service, SAVAK, widely thought to be trained by the Israelis, grew into a vicious instrument of political suppression and torture. The Majlis became a rubber-stamp parliament. The anti-communist slant of the regime fit in well with the foreign policy of the United States, dominated as it was in the 1950s by a fear of Soviet world domination, and the pact mania of the Dulles era. (John Foster Dulles was the Secretary of State during the Eisenhower Administration from 1953 until 1958. He was known for his hard stand against communism, and against the Soviet Union and China, in international affairs). Iran was drawn first into the Baghdad Pact and then into CENTO which bound Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, Iraq and the United Kingdom into a mutual defense treaty, supposedly as a shield against an invasion by Soviet armies from the north. In return, Iran received plentiful supplies of military equipment from the United States. The army and the police forces grew even as the budget for development and education nosedived. The pressures in the Iranian body politic grew in proportion to the heavy handedness of the Shah, even as popular discontent was held in check by the dreaded SAVAK and the power of the armed forces.
During this period, Khomeini was not in the political spectrum. He pursued his scholarly work in the cities of Qum and Najaf.
(The author is Director, World Organization for Resource Development and Education, Washington, DC; Director, American Institute of Islamic History and Culture, CA; Member, State Knowledge Commission, Bangalore; and Chairman, Delixus Group)
