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Authors: Lawrence Kaplan

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Page 109
6
Khomeini: A Fundamentalist?
Ervand Abrahamian
How did Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini become an Imam? In similar ways as the Holy Prophet Abraham. He carried out God's Will; destroyed idols; was willing to sacrifice his own son; rose up against the tyrants; and led the mostazafin (oppressed) in a crusade against their mostakberin (oppressors).
A Parliamentary Deputy,
Kayhan-e Hava'e, 21 June 1989
Introduction
The slippery label "fundamentalist" has been thrown at Ayatollah Khomeini so often that it has stuck. By the time of his death, he was being described as the epitome of Islamic fundamentalism not only by the mass media and the mainstream newspapers, led by the
New York Times
and the
Washington Post,
but also by the alternative journals, such as
The Nation
and
In These Times,
and even by some Middle East specialist. So much so that Khomeini's own followers, finding no such term in Persian or Arabic, have coined a new word
bonyadgarayan
by translating literally the English term fundamentalist. This is curious for clerics who relish accusing their political rivals of being
elteqati
(eclectic) and
gharbzadeh
(contaminated with Western plagues)especially with such deadly "diseases" as secularism, liberalism, and socialism.
It is not hard to see why the term fundamentalist has received such wide currency in the West. For conservatives, it is associated with xenophobia, militancy, and radicalism. For liberals, it implies extremism, fanaticism, and traditionalism. For radicals, it means theological obscurantism, social conservatism, even political atavism, and the rejection of Science, History, Modernity, and the En-
 
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lightenmentall with capital letters. For the Khomeinists themselves, it is a self-advertising label claiming that they are the only ones true to the "fundamentals" of Islam, in sharp contrast to others who have been led astray by foreign concepts and historical misinterpretations of the Koran, the Prophet's Hadiths (Traditions), the
shari'a
(Islamic Laws), and the teachings of the Twelve Shia Imams.
Even though the label has stuckand no doubt future editions of the
Oxford English Dictionary
will describe Khomeini as the quintessential fundamentalistI would like to argue that transferring this term, with its origins in early twentieth-century American Protestantism, to a contemporary phenomenon in the Muslim Middle East is not so much wrong as misleading, distorting, and confusing. It may describe particular features of Khomeinieven this is debatablebut it certainly does not describe him in totum.
It is not apt on the grounds of both theology and political philosophy. In the realm of theology, the term implies doctrinal inflexibility, rejection of innovation, and going directly to the original texts, bypassing traditional scholarship. Khomeini, however, was a strange combination. On one hand, he insisted that the original texts could not be understood without an intimate knowledge of eleven centuries of Shia scholarship. On the other hand, he was a major theological innovator in that he dared to break with this scholastic tradition to create a brand-new Shia concept of what the state (
dawlat
) should beone supervised and directed by the
ulama
(clergy) in general and by the leading
fugaha
(religious jurists) in particular. He defined this state as the
Velayat-e Fagih
(Jurist's Trusteeship). Others call it the "dictatorship of the mullatariat."
In the realm of philosophy, the term fundamentalism implies otherworldliness rather than this-worldliness, revelation rather than science and rationality, moral-religious rejuvenation rather than socioeconomic transformation. It conjures up doctrinal obsession with "moral" concernssuch as abortion, man's creation, and Judgment Dayrather than with such political issues as revolution, imperialism, and social justice. In fact, Khomeini and his disciples succeeded in gaining power in most part because in their public pronouncements they did not dwell on such "fundamentalist" concerns. Instead they hammered the shah with a host of highly sensitive eco-
 
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nomic, social, and political issues, and, in doing so, developed a new Islam which could be described as the Iranian version of political populism.
Khomeini's populism has more in common with that of Ataturk, Péron, and other Latin American charismatic figuresand even of Hitler, Mussolini, and European fasciststhan with traditional Shiism and conventional Islam. They all contained much radical-sounding rhetoric, but no concrete programs for the redistribution of wealth. They all vociferously attacked the political establishment, the comprador bourgeoisie, and the foreign powers, but remained conspicuously silent on the question of middle-class property. They all claimed to be waging war on "international ideas" and returning to "native roots"; but in actual fact they borrowed heavily from the outside worldespecially from Marxism, which they perceived as a "cosmopolitan Jewish conspiracy." They saw "foreign plots'' everywhere, particularly among ethnic minorities, political dissenters, and university intellectuals. They all used mass institutions and a plebiscite style of politics to mobilize the public, but at the same time distrusted any form of liberalism, political pluralism, and grass-root organizations. What is more, Khomeini's populismlike populism the world overdisparaged democracy, built the state into a behemoth, revelled in the cult of death and martyrdom, and elevated the leader to the status of a demigod towering above the nation. The title
Imam,
which the revolution endowed on Khomeini, reflects this attitude; for, until the 1970s, Iranians considered this title to be sacred and used it only to refer to the Twelve Imams of early Shiism. In fact, the true fundamentalists in Iran consider it blasphemous to use this title for Khomeini.
Khomeini's View of the State
Throughout the Middle Ages the Shia ulama, unlike their Sunni counterparts, failed to develop a consistent theory of the state. The Sunnis, recognizing the Ummayid and the Abbasid caliphs as the Prophet's legitimate successors, accepted the existing power structures as lawful as long as these rulers did not blatantly violate Islamic norms. Had not the Prophet himself said, "My community will never
 
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agree on an error"? Had not the Koran commanded: "Obey God, obey His Prophet, and obey those among you who hold authority"? Had not al-Gazzali, the preeminent medieval philosopher, argued that rulers were appointed by God, that rebellion against kings was tantamount to rejection of God, and that forty years of bad monarchy were better than one single day of anarchy? Thus the Sunni clergy tended to associate political obedience with religious duty, and civil disobedience with religious heresy.
The Shin ulama, however, were more ambivalent. As members of
Shi' al-Ali
(Ali's Party), they believed that the Prophet's true heirs were not the elected and then the hereditary caliphs, but the Twelve Imamsbeginning with Ali, the Prophet's son-in-law, first cousin, adopted son, and, according to them, designated successor as the Imam (leader) of the
Ummat
(Muslim community); going through Hosayn, the Third Imam, who, as Ali's son, had rebelled against the usurper Caliph Yazid and had been martyred at the battle of Karbala forty-eight years after the Prophet's death; and ending with the last of Hosayn's direct male descendants, the Twelfth Imam, also known as the
Mahdi
(Messiah), the
Imam-e Montazer
(Expected One), and the
Saheb-e Zaman
(Lord of the Age), who had supposedly gone into occultation some 200 years after Hosayn's martyrdom and would reappear at some future timewhen the world was overflowing with corruption and oppressionto prepare the way for judgment Day.
Although the Shia ulama agreed that only the Hidden Imam had full legitimacy, they sharply disagreed in their attitudes toward the existing states, even when these states were Shia. Some argued that since all temporal rulers were in essence usurpers, true believers should reject the state and always remain mindful of three sacred quotations. The first, a hadith from the Prophet, warned: "When you see a Koran reader seeking shelter with the ruler, know he is a thief." The second, a homily attributed to Imam Ali and found in his much-used
Nahj al-Balaqhah
(Way of Eloquence), declared: "Rulership is like dirty water, not fit for consumption. It is like a morsel which suffocates the person trying to swallow it." The third came from Jafar Sadeq, the Sixth and the most scholarly of the Twelve Imams, who at a time of intense persecution had advised his followers to hate the state and if necessary to obstruct its activities through dissimulation
 
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(
taqiyya
). Elaborating on these warnings, some clerics advised their congregations to avoid the state like the plague, decline government offices and favors, treat rulers with suspicion, shun Friday prayers where thanks would be given to the monarch, take disputes to their own legal experts rather than to the state judges, practice dissimulation when endangered by the authorities, and pay
khoms,
the main legitimate tax, not to the government but to the ulama, as the
Nayeb-e Imam
(Imam's deputy).
Other Shia clerics, however, argued that one should accept the state, albeit half-heartedly. They reminded their readers that the Imams, particularly the Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth, had categorically opposed armed insurrections; that Imam Ali, in his
Nahj al-Balaqhah,
had warned of the dangers of "social chaos"; that bad government was better than "no government"; that unjust kings were God's punishment for people's sins; and that Imam Jafar himself had preached: "If your ruler is bad, ask God to reform him, but if he is good, ask God to prolong his life."
Yet others whole-heartedly accepted the state, especially the Shia dynasty set up in Iran by the Safavids in 1501. Following the example of Mohammad Baqer Majlisi, the preeminent Safavid theologian, they argued that kings were shadows of God on earth; that obedience was their divine right; that political dissent led directly to eternal damnation; that believers should not only obey but also eagerly serve the state; that without monarchy there would inevitably be complete social anarchy; and that the monarchy and the clerical hierarchy were complementary pillars of the state since both were equal heirs to the Imam's inheritance. In making these arguments, these clerics often quoted not only al-Ghazzali but also the famous Koranic commandment enjoining the faithful to "obey those who hold authority." In this form the Shia concept of the state was almost the mirror image of that of the conservative Sunnis.
It is significant that in these discussions that went on intermittently for some eleven centuries, no Shia writer actually contended either that the monarchies per se were unacceptable, or that the senior clericsthe grand ayatollahshad the authority to control the state. Most agreed that the clergy's main responsibilitiesreferred to by some as the
velayat-e faqih
were predominantly apolit-
 
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ical. They were to study the law (
fiqh
) based on the Koran, the Prophet's hadiths, and the teaching of the Imams; use
ijtehad
(reason and knowledge of the scriptures) to update these traditional laws and to issue pronouncements (
fatvas
) on new concerns; judicate in disputes between Shia litigants, and distribute the khoms contributions to worthy widows, orphans, seminary students, and indigent
sayyids
(presumed male descendants of the Prophet). In fact, many regarded the term velayat-e faqih as no more than the judicial guardianship of the senior clerics over those deemed incapable of looking after themselvesminors, widows, and the insane. A few went further to argue that if the rulers grossly violated the laws, the senior clerics had the added responsibility of temporarily entering the political arena to protect the Muslim community. For example, when Mohammad Hasan Shirazione of the first ayatollahs to be generally recognized as the single most important faqih, the
mar ja'-e taqlid
(Source of Imitation) of his timeled the Tobacco Protest against the Qajar Shah in 1891, he stressed throughout the crisis that he was merely opposed to "bad advisers" and that he would withdraw from politics once the shah cancelled the hated concession. Similarly, the ayatollahs who participated in the constitutional movement of 19059 sought neither to overthrow the monarchy nor to establish a theocracy, but at most to set up a supervisory committee of senior clerics to ensure that laws passed by the elected parliament conformed to the shari'a.
Khomeini began his political career with these typical Shia ambiguities toward the state. He published his very first political tract in 1943 when he was a mere thirty-nine-year-old hojjat al-islam. Entitled
Kashf Asrar
(
Secrets Unveiled
), this tract denounced Reza Shah, forced to abdicate two years earlier, for a host of secular sins: closing down seminaries, expropriating religious endowments, propagating "anticlerical attitudes among the masses," replacing shari'a judges with state courts, permitting the consumption of alcoholic beverages and the playing of "sensuous music," forcing men to wear Western-style hats, establishing coeducational schools, and banning the chador, thus "forcing women to go naked into the streets." But no where in this 334-page tract did he call for a revolution against the monarchy. On the contrary, he explicitly disavowed wanting to over-

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