Signs from Allah: History, Science and Faith in Islam
169. Ayatollah Khomeini and the Iranian Revolution of 1979 - 4
By Professor Nazeer Ahmed
Concord, CA
The Shah made no attempt to build political institutions commensurate with his proclaimed reforms. By 1975, he abolished the multi-party system of government in favor of a one-party state under a single party. Reformers and would-be reformers often overlook the organic relationship between reform, structure and people. Liberal reforms require a liberal political structure and vice versa. Political structures must be consistent with the historical and cultural experience of a people which are colored by their deeply held religious beliefs.
The land reforms deprived the traditional rural proletariat their protective cover from the landed aristocrats and the clerics whose income depended on the waqfs. There was not enough land to go around and in spite of the millions of acres that were distributed among peasants, millions more remained landless. Mechanization created a flight of surplus labor to the slums of Tehran and Tabriz where they were an easy target for the sermons of the mullahs. So, the land reforms were a triple whammy for the Shah: he lost the traditional support he had enjoyed from the landowners; he failed to cultivate the allegiance of the emerging affluent classes in the cities; and he had no contact with the growing slums and the bazaars in the cities.
Add to these woes the Shah’s cozy relations with Israel and his all too obvious dependence on the United States and you can understand the multiple flanks from which the Shah was vulnerable.
Opposition to the Shah’s policies was widespread and it came from the left as well as the right. Faced with the repressive dragnet of SAVAK, much of this opposition disappeared or went underground. The clerics retreated to the mosques where the reach of SAVAK was limited because of the religious sensibilities of the population. The mosque, beyond the reach of SAVAK, became the refuge and the center for resistance and the left as well as the right joined this new alignment. There were progressives such as Ayatullah Taleghani as well as conservatives such as Ayatullah Khomeini among the clerics. The mosque as the venue for protest suited the conservatives more than the progressives who were less successful in formulating and presenting their ideas to a religious audience in a mosque. Thus it was that the center of gravity of opposition to the Shah’s rule gradually shifted to the most conservative elements among the clerics.
Khomeini emerged as the spokesman of these disgruntled masses in the early 1960s. In 1963 he expressed his opposition to the new freedoms granted to women. Said Khomeini: “Can any Muslim agree with this scandalous uncovering of women? ……. They regard the civilization and advancement of the country as dependent upon women’s going naked in the streets, or to quote their own idiotic words, turning half the population into workers by unveiling them ……The repressive regime of the Shah wanted to transform our warrior women into pleasure seekers, but God determined otherwise……”
About the Baha’is he said: “In our own city of Tehran now there are centers of evil propaganda run by ……the Baha’is in order to lead our people astray and make them abandon the ordinances and teachings of Islam”.
In June 1963, Khomeini made a frontal attack against the Shah calling him “a wretched, miserable man” and comparing him to Yazid, the tyrant whose name is associated with the tragedy of Karbala. Such powerful imagery excited the population into a higher pitch of resistance. Khomeini called for a boycott of the referendum on the White Revolution and asked the clergy in Qom to oppose the Shah. He was arrested but was released after countrywide protests and riots. In 1964 when the Shah signed the “capitulation” agreements with the United Stated granting American soldiers’ immunity from prosecution under Iranian law, Khomeini denounced both the Shah and the United States in the harshest terms. A frustrated Shah exiled him.
In Najaf, Iraq, where Khomeini spent many of his years in exile, he gave a series of lectures which were compiled in 1970 under the title, Hukumat-e-Islami, Vilayet-e-Faqih. This formed the basis of his later teachings and his prescriptions for an Islamic government in Iran guided by a supreme teacher who combined in himself the internal and external knowledge of the Shariah as well as wisdom and justice.
The Shah was a driven man, in a hurry, as he saw it, to modernize his country so that it could take its place alongside industrialized nations such as Germany and Japan. He was impatient with opposition to his diktat and used all the oppressive measures of the state machinery to silence any opposition. As the repression grew, so did the opposition. Khomeini became a magnet and a catalyst for the opposition. His writings were secretly carried by tape, by courier and by paper to the mosques in the far corners of the country. Khomeini’s message, cast in religious terms and invoking the sacrifices of Karbala and of the Imams, resonated with the populace. His anti-Western slant was music to the ears of the Iranians who had a bitter taste of foreign meddling in their national affairs. The people, men and women, were willing to put their life and limb on the line. Thousands perished in the struggle.
In 1978, following a diplomatic understanding between the Shah and the Iraqi regime, Khomeini was made to move again, this time to Paris. But this did not diminish Khomeini’s reach to the protesting masses of Iran. Indeed, his chateau in Paris became a magnet for news reporters and Khomeini now enjoyed a global audience.
Protests, strikes, work shut downs continued in Iran through much of 1978. By January 1979, the Iranian army was tired of shooting at its own people and gave up. The Shah left Iran and Khomeini returned triumphantly as the spiritual head of the Iranian Revolution. Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi died in exile the following year and was buried in Cairo.
Once in power, Khomeini proved to be less of a loving, protecting religious figure than a shrewd and obstinate politician. In November 1979, elements of the Iranian students calling themselves “Followers of the Imam’s Line”, invaded and occupied the American embassy and took 52 staff hostages. Instead of freeing these hostages, Khomeini supported the takeover and used the occupation to galvanize support for his regime and for the passage of his version of a new constitution for Iran. The hostages were finally released, after a captivity of 444 days, in January 1981 when Reagan became the President following the defeat of Jimmy Carter. The popularity of President Carter had fallen in large part because of the embassy takeover and the failure of subsequent American efforts to rescue the hostages. The hostage crisis alienated American public opinion against Iran, damaged long-term US-Iranian relations and tarnished the image of Khomeini and his legacy in the eyes of the world.
(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)
