30th passing away anniversary of Imam Khomeini (RA)

Condolences to you on a doleful day in Iran’s contemporary history. Today, as the blessed fasting month of Ramadhan comes to its end, the nation commemorates the 14th of the Iranian month of Khordad, the day the Father of the Islamic Revolution left the mortal world for his heavenly abode 30 years ago, plunging scores of millions of people in Iran and the world in grief.

The Islamic Republic of Iran, having celebrated in February the 40^th anniversary of the triumph of the Islamic Revolution, is marking the 30^th anniversary of the departure from its midst of the Sage of the Age, who during the ten years that he was at the helm of affairs, laid the firm foundations of the nation’s durability and progress on the basis of the popular system of people’s votes, which no power can harm.

As testified by the present Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, “Out revolution is known throughout the world with the name of Imam Khomeini, who was indeed second to none.”

These words of his qualified successor reverberate throughout Iran and around the world as on Tuesday, June 4 this year, hundreds of thousands of Iranians, many of them in the state of fasting, have assembled in the mausoleum of Imam Khomeini on the southern outskirts of Tehran, before Iftar or the breaking of the fast, to pay homage to the person who changed the destiny of Iran and to hear the speech of Ayatollah Khamenei.

Indeed Imam Khomeini has made Iran the cynosure of all eyes by establishing the dynamic Islamic Republic system of government whose influence in the region and beyond grows by the day, much to the frustration of the Great Satan and the lesser devils around us who slavishly follow the dictates of Washington.

He bequeathed to Iran and world Muslims a lasting legacy which continues to interact with human conscience in the quest for peace and the sublime values of spiritual bliss.

Imam Khomeini was not a cult leader, nor did he aspire to become one, and neither do those who keep alive his memory are trying to make a demigod out of him. In fact, this humble scholar of the School of the Ahl al-Bayt of Prophet Mohammad (blessings of God upon him and his progeny), put into practice the heritage of Islamic learning and strove to enlighten mankind with higher humanitarian ideals which are conspicuously absent in bodies and souls burdened with animal instincts and traits.

This was where the iconoclast came into open conflict with the materialistic West, especially with the United States of America and its blinkered vision of life and culture; and this was where godless capitalism miserably floundered against Islamic resurgence. The 19th century had seen the indefatigable Seyyed Jamal od-Din Asadabadi hounded across countries and continents by the British and their surrogates for his efforts to resuscitate Muslim societies with the spirit of pan-Islamism. But here was Imam Khomeini and his followers of iron-resolve frustrating every sinister plot to tarnish the image of Islam that devilish minds could conceive.

The man who foresaw the doom of communism and whose dynamic decree hangs like the Sword of Damocles on the head of apostasy, has also spoken of his views on economy, politics, arts, industry, culture, science and religion; all of which function as an integrated whole in human life. Perhaps, Iran may not yet have reached the ideal stage of a truly Islamic state as desired by him, but the change he wrought has been positively profound, with the society cleansed of most of the vestiges of acts and practices that are considered as open violation of the principles of Shari'ah.

Born in 1902, in a scholarly family descended from Imam Musa al-Kazem (AS), the Prophet's 7th Infallible Heir, since childhood he diligently studied the various branches of Islamic sciences, acquiring status among the contemporary religious authorities of a man destined for lasting fame.

The first signs of his political acumen emerged in 1943, when he wrote the book "Kashf al-Asrar", shortly after the removal from power of the British agent, Reza Khan by his own masters. He clearly saw that the Pahlavi potentate's mortgaging of national prestige and natural resources to foreigners, his repression of the Iranian people and their traditional values, his forced unveiling of women in the name of progress and civilization, were part of an elaborate plot conceived by world imperialism to eliminate Islam as a social and political force.

Throughout the 1950s, he led a quiet life of study, contemplation and teaching that would reflect on his future greatness. Things, however, took a sudden change in 1963, when the Pahlavi regime emboldened by the death of the leading Marja' (Source of Emulation), Ayatullah Seyyed Hussain Borourjerdi, launched the so-called white revolution, which was no more than a whitewash to conceal the destruction of the country’s socio-religious infrastructure in order to make Iran totally dependent on the US.

Imam Khomeini sensed the danger. He warned the nation against the sinister plot. Matters were now moving towards a showdown, and when the ulema forbade the festivities of Nowruz (New Year) that year because the martyrdom anniversary of the Prophet's 6th Infallible Heir, Imam Ja'far as-Sadeq (AS), happened to fall on March 22, the enraged Shah ordered his infamous attack on Madrasah Fayziyyah in Qom, resulting in the martyrdom and wounding of several ulema and religious students. Things moved at a rapid pace and on June 3, 1963, which happened to be the Day of Ashura [Muharram 10, the martyrdom anniversary of Imam Husain (AS)], Imam Khomeini delivered his famous speech in Qom that sent shockwaves to the Sa'dabad Palace Tehran. He compared the Shah's oppression of the people to the persecution of the Prophet's Clan, the Bani Hashem by the Omayyad regime, and bluntly said the nation would throw out the Shah if he continued his anti-Islamic measures in the service of the US and the illegal Zionist entity, Israel.

The Shah ordered his security police to arrest Imam Khomeini, an incident which sparked the 15th of Khordad (June 5) Uprising. He was detained for two months and upon his release he called on the people to boycott the mock elections to be organised by the monarchy in October 1963. He was imprisoned again and held until May 1964. In October 1964, when the Shah signed the Bill of Capitulation that exempted American citizens from facing any legal measures even if they were to violate Iranian laws, Imam Khomeini expressed his strong opposition to this humility of the nation, saying: “If the dog of an American was to bite the Shah, the latter will have no recourse except in an American court of justice perhaps.”

He was immediately arrested by the regime and exiled to Bursa in Turkey, from where he soon moved to Iraq to take up abode in the blessed sanctuary of Najaf, near the shrine of the Commander of the Faithful, Imam Ali ibn Abi Ìaleb (AS). Here, the innate qualities of faith and resistance in this Aref (Gnostic) definitely got a new veneer and made him so absorbed in the path of the Ahl al-Bayt that he considered the martyrdom of his elder son Ayatollah Seyyed Mostafa Khomeini in 1977 in Iraq at the hands of the Shah’s secret service SAVAK, as a matter decreed by Allah. The Imam had offered his own personal sacrifice to the cause of the Islamic Revolution.

The rest of the events including his triumphant return to Iran on 1st February 1979 to usher in the rule of genuine Mohammadan Shari'ah and the ten years that he was at the helm of affairs of the Islamic Republic defeating every conceivable plot of the superpowers, especially that of Washington, are well documented and too vivid in our memory to be repeated in this brief column. In between, were the dynamic steps he took, such as the uplifting of the status of women, focus on Islamic unity, the declaration of the last Friday of fasting Ramadhan as World Quds Day in order to garner support for Islam’s first Qiblah, and his historic verdict against apostasy.

He firmly laid the foundations of the unique system of Wilayat-e Faqih (Governance of the Supreme Jurist), which has made Iran strong and mighty.

The western media in its usual mischievous tone refers to the Islamic system of Iran as ‘theocracy’ and tries to distort its image for the world public opinion, but as intellectuals in Europe, America and other countries are beginning to admit, the model of government bequeathed by Imam Khomeini has proved to be more durable and dynamic than the democracies and the disorder and moral decadence they create in secular societies.

Today, Seyyed Ruhollah Khomeini is no more with us but his thoughts and ideas are alive, especially the blueprint of Islamic government which he left behind and which has all the characteristics of a catalyst for aspiring Muslim countries. It is this magnetism, which if it inspires and gains new adherents every day around the globe, it still has the power to send shivers down the spine of those masquerading as defenders of democracy and human rights.

AS/ME