Islamic Government
Islamic Government (Persian: حکومت اسلامی, romanized: Ḥokūmat-i Eslāmī),[2] or Islamic Government: Jurist's Guardianship (Persian: حکومت اسلامی ولایت فقیه, romanized: Ḥokūmat-i Eslāmī Wilāyat-i Faqīh)[3] is a book by the Iranian Shi'i Muslim cleric/jurist, and revolutionary, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. First published in 1970, it is perhaps the most influential document written in modern times in support of theocratic rule.
For other uses, see Islamic state.Author
Ruhollah Khomeini; translated by Hamid Algar
Translated into English
Islam and state
Manor Books, Mizan Press, Alhoda UK
1970, 1979, 1982, 2002[1]
Iran and United Kingdom
139 pages
The book argues that government should/must be run in accordance with traditional Islamic law (sharia), and for this to happen a leading Islamic jurist (faqīh) must provide political "guardianship" (wilayat in Arabic, velāyat in Persian) over the people and nation. Following the Iranian Revolution, a modified form of this doctrine was incorporated into the 1979 Constitution of Islamic Republic of Iran;[4] drafted by an assembly made up primarily by disciples of Khomeini, it stipulated he would be the first faqih "guardian" (Vali-ye faqih) or "Supreme Leader" of Iran.[5]
Contents[edit]
Scope[edit]
Khomeini and his supporters before the revolution were from Iran, his movement was focused on Iran, and most of his criticisms of non-Islamic government refer to the imperial government of Iran. However, Islamic government was (eventually) to be universal, not limited to one country in the Islamic world and not limited to the Islamic world.[17] According to Khomeini, this would not be that difficult because "if the form of government willed by Islam were to come into being, none of the governments now existing in the world would be able to resist it; they would all capitulate".[17]
Influences[edit]
Traditional Islamic[edit]
Khomeini himself claims Mirza Hasan Shirazi, Mirza Muhammad Taqi Shirazi, Kashif al-Ghita,[28] as clerics preceding him who made what were "in effect"[28] government rulings, thus establishing de facto Islamic Government by Islamic jurists. Some credit "earlier notions of political and juridical authority" in Iran's Safavid period. Khomeini is said to have cited nineteenth-century Shi'i jurist Mulla Ahmad Naraqi (d. 1829) and Shaikh Muhammad Hussain Naini (d. 1936) as authorities who held a similar view to himself on the political role of the ulama.[29][67] An older influence is Abu Nasr Al-Farabi, and his book, The Principles of the People of the Virtuous City, (al-madina[t] al-fadila,[note 6] which has been called "a Muslim version of Plato's Republic").[68]
Another influence is said to be Mohammad Baqir al-Sadr, a cleric and author of books on developing Islamic alternatives to capitalism and socialism, whom Khomeini met in Najaf.[69][note 7]
Non-traditional and non-Islamic[edit]
Other observers credit the "Islamic Left," specifically Ali Shariati, as the origin of important concepts of Khomeini's Waliyat al-faqih, particularly abolition of monarchy and the idea that an "economic order" has divided the people "into two groups: oppressors and oppressed."[24][70][71] The Confederation of Iranian Students in Exile and the famous pamphlet Gharbzadegi by the ex-Tudeh writer Jalal Al-e-Ahmad are also thought to have influenced Khomeini.[72] This is in spite of the fact that Khomeini loathed Marxism in general,[73] and is said to have had misgivings about un-Islamic sources of some of Shariati's ideas.
Khomeini reference to governments based on constitutions, divided into three branches, and containing planning agencies, also belie a strict adherence to precedents set by the rule of the Prophet Muhammad and Imam Ali ibn Abi Talib, 1400 years ago.[74][75]
Scholar Vali Nasr believes the ideal of an Islamic government ruled by the ulama "relied heavily" on Greek philosopher Plato's book The Republic, and its vision of "a specially educated `guardian` class led by a `philosopher-king`".[76]
Reception[edit]
Doctrinal[edit]
Velayat-e Faqih has been praised as a "masterful construction of a relentless argument, supported by the most sacred canonical sources of Shi'i Islam ..."[77]
The response from high-level Shi'a clerics to Velayat-e Faqih was far less positive.
Of the dozen Shia Grand Ayatollahs alive at the time of the Iranian Revolution, only one besides Khomeini — Hussein-Ali Montazeri — approved of Khomeini's concept. He would later disavow it entirely in 1988.[78][note 8] When Khomeini died in 1989, the Assembly of Experts of Iran felt compelled to amend the constitution to remove the requirement that his successor as Supreme Leader be one of jurists who surpass "all others in knowledge" of Islamic law and justice[43] (one of the Marja' mentioned above) "knowing well" that all the senior Shi'i jurists "distrusted their version of Islam".[79]
Grand Ayatollah Abul-Qassim Khoei, the leading Shia ayatollah at the time the book was published, rejected Khomeini's argument on the grounds that