throw the monarchy, and repeatedly reaffirmed his allegiance to monarchies in general and to "good monarchs" in particular. He argued that the clergy had never opposed the state, even when the state issued anti-Islamic orders, for a "bad order was better than no order at all." He emphasized that no faqih had ever claimed the right to rule; that many, including Majlisi, had supported their rulers, participated in governing the country, and encouraged the faithful to pay taxes and cooperate with government functionaries. If, on rare occasions, they had criticized their rulers it was because they opposed individual monarchs, not because they questioned the "principal foundations of monarchy ( saltanat )." He also reminded his readers that Imam Ali had accepted "even the worst of the early caliphs." 1
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The most Khomeini asked in Kashf Asrar was that the monarch should show more respect for the clergy, recruit more of them into parliament, and heed their advice to make sure state laws conformed with the shari'a. For the shari'a, he argued, had prescriptions for all social ills; and the ulama, particularly the fuqaha, being specialists on the shari'a, were like highly trained doctors who knew how to cure these ills. 2
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In concluding Kashf Asrar, Khomeini reiterated the mainstream Shia tenet against their more "fundamentalist" Akhbari rivals of earlier centuries, who had argued that any descendant of the Prophet could understand the Word of God, especially the shari'a, by going directly to the main sourcesthe Koran and the Hadiths. Khomeini countered that some features of God's Word were beyond most people's comprehension and that even Archangel Gabriel had not been able to understand everything he conveyed in the Koran. 3 One should not even attempt to understand the "inner meanings" of the Koran and the Hadiths unless one was familiar with Arabic, knew the teachings of the Twelve Imams, had studied the works of the preceding generations of Shia scholars, and, most nebulous of all, could grasp the "language of irfan " (gnostics). Khomeini continued through his life to argue that the Koran and the Hadiths had many different layers. Some could be understood by the average man, some by the ulama who had spent a lifetime studying them, and some by the select fewnamely the Imams and those who had in some mysterious way received from them gnostic knowledge. 4 This stress on
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