In Remembrance of the Sage of the Age

Condolences to our dear listeners on the anniversary of a day on which the grief of the Iranian nation become fresh. Today, the 14th of Khordad, corresponding with the 4th of June is the day on which the Islamic Republic was plunged into profound grief in the year 1989 with the departure from the mortal world of its Founder, the Father of the Islamic Revolution, Imam Khomeini (God bless his soul).

This year, on the 28^th anniversary of his physical passing away from our midst, we renew our allegiance to the ideals of that Great Man of History who delivered Iran and the Iranians from foreign hegemony and the tyrannical rule of the British-installed and American backed Pahlavi regime. Following is a feature on that Sage of the Age.

This year the doleful of the departure of Imam Khomeini has fallen in the blessed month of Ramadhan, but the grateful nation, despite keeping fasts, has converged on his mausoleum in millions to pay him annual homage. He was the person who 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.

Imam Khomeini 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. He 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 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 19^th 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 the Prophet’s 7^th Infallible Heir, Imam Musa al-Kazem (AS) and named Rouhollah in honour of the famous epithet of Prophet Jesus which means ‘Spirit of God’, since childhood he diligently studied the various branches of Islamic sciences, acquiring status among the contemporary religious authorities in Arak and in Qom, of a man destined for lasting fame, who would eventually infuse divine spirit in the body of the Iranian nation.

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, Ayatollah Seyyed Rouhollah Musavi Khomeini, 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), Grand Ayatollah 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.      

Ayatollah Khomeini sensed the danger. He warned the nation against the sinister plot. Matters were now moving towards a showdown. When the ulema forbade the festivities of Nowruz (the Iranian New Year) that year because the martyrdom anniversary of the Prophet's 6^th 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 [Moharram 10, the martyrdom anniversary of Imam Husain (AS)], Ayatollah 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 him, 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, Ayatollah 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 (or 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 Mustafa Khomeini in 1977 in Iraq at the hands of the Shah’s secret service SAVAK, as a matter decreed by Allah. The Leader of the Islamic Movement had offered his own personal sacrifice to the cause of the Islamic Revolution.

In return the grateful nation of Iran bestowed upon him the title of “Imam” or Great Leader, which on no account should be confused with the Infallible Imams of the Ahl al-Bayt who are divinely-designated.

The rest of the events including his triumphant return to Iran on 1^st 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 Qods Day in order to garner support for Islam’s first Qiblah, and his historic verdict against apostasy. Imam Khomeini 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 proven 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