Ayatollah Khomeini and the Velayat-e-faqih

For the past two centuries, Iran has oscillated between extremes as the country searched for a viable response to the multiple challenges of Western-style modernity.1 Until the late eighteenth century, Iran was generally insulated from the outside world. Since then, however, Iran has gradually undergone a transformation that became ever more apparent in the period immediately preceding the collapse of the Pahlavi monarchy (1925-79). With the onset of the Islamic Revolution, Iran again reversed this trend with its disdain for, and complete rejection of, Muhammad Reza Shah’s “Weststruckness,” even if it could not detach itself fully from the impact of two centuries of ever growing contacts with the West. The dichotomy that has characterized Iran’s contemporary history is best exemplified in the contrasting visions of the country’s two leading figures of recent times-Shah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. On every single count, Khomeini’s ideology prescribed the opposite of the Shah’s creed: It jettisoned the forced separation of religion and state that was the hallmark of Pahlavi rule and called for the unity of spiritual and temporal power in the velayat-e-faqih, the “rule of the jurisconsult.” Westernization and close ties with the United States were to be replaced by Islamization and rejection of the West. While the Shah sought to generate affection and loyalty to Iran’s pre-Islamic heritage, monarchy, and territorial nationalism, the Islamic Republic has based its policies on strict adherence to Islamic culture and values. Concurrently, under Khomeini the attachment to the legacy of Cyrus the Great that marked the monarchy’s policy made way for a return to the traditions of the Imam Ali. The Shah and Khomeini wished to push Iran in entirely different directions, each in his own way upsetting the traditional equilibrium between religion and state. The Islamic Revolution, therefore, was not merely a change of government, but a genuine revolution in all spheres of life and Islamic in both orientation and character. This chapter will limit itself only to discussion of the development of Ayatollah Khomeini’s approach toward the concept of velayat-e-faqih and examination of its implementation in the first decade of Islamic rule. It will also seek to explore the different attitudes toward this concept among leading theologians both before and during the first decade of the revolution.