Passing away anniversary of Imam Khomeini (RA)

“Inna Lillahe va inna Ilayhe raje’oun”. (Indeed we are from God and surely towards Him is our return).

This sorrowful announcement on Iran Radio and TV on June 4, 1989, by announcers in choking voices, plunged the whole nation in profound grief. It meant that the beloved Father of the Islamic Revolution, who was undergoing treatment in the hospital, was no more. The Sage of the Age who had delivered Iran from ages of domestic despotism and foreign hegemony had departed from the mortal world. Imam Khomeini (RA), who for ten years had ably guided to the shores of salvation the ship of the Islamic Republic through the stormy waters of the intricate plots of Global Arrogance, especially the Great Satan, the US, including the 8-year war imposed through Saddam of the repressive Ba’th minority regime of Baghdad, has now left for his heavenly abode.    

The moment the news was announced that the Founder of the Islamic Republic had embarked on his journey to the other world, millions donned black clothes and with tears rolling down their eyes peacefully poured into the streets, making their way towards the Husseiniyeh Jamaran in northern Tehran from where the beloved leader used to address the nation and the world.

Now we have a special feature in this regard.

Seyyed Ruhollah Khomeini needs no introduction. He was great jurisprudent, a gnostic, a philosopher, a source of emulation, and a statesman – all rolled into one. Born in the small town of Khomein in 1902 in a scholarly family, he acquired knowledge and flowered into a promising scholar. At the age of 27 the bright young scholar, now known as Hojjat al-Islam Khomeini, wrote the book “Misbah al-Hidayah” on the topic of ethics. At 29 he wrote a commentary on the famous pre-dawn supplication “Dua-e Sahar” of the fasting month of Ramadhan and soon established himself as a budding scholar with a series of books and treatises to his name. He consequently reached the level of Ijtehad and started holding his own classes, which were attended by hundreds of students, at a time when the British agent, Reza Khan Pahlaví, was consolidating his power in Tehran as the new monarch after ending the Qajarid dynasty.

By 1937, the 35-year old Seyyed Ruhollah Khomeini was considered among the leading scholars of the Qom seminary. From his speeches and writings, we find that besides being a jurisprudent of repute, he was a fearless protagonist of social rights. His piety and disciplined way of life made him shun the company of the shallow-minded and he devoted his time and energies in deep reflection of the socio-political realities. In fact, so disciplined was his life and so punctual was he, that according to his friends and family, time could be told without the need of a clock by his movements and actions.

In 1943, he wrote his famous work “Kashf al-Asrar”, after the removal from power of Reza Khan, thereby revealing the first signs of his political acumen. He clearly saw that the Pahlavi dictator’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.

He wrote: “All the orders issued by the bandit Reza Khan have no value. The laws passed by his parliament must be scrapped. All the idiotic words that have proceeded from the brain of that illiterate soldier are rotten and it is only the law of God that will remain and resist the ravages of time.”

This book could be called the start of a mission which would begin to bear fruits twenty years later, when Ayatollah Khomeini, as he became known, shaped the historical 15th of Khordad uprising on June 5, 1963 against Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s un-Islamic rule. Incidentally, it was the birth anniversary of the Prophet’s Daughter in 1964 when Imam Khomeini had delivered his famous denunciation of the Shah’s ‘Bill of Capitulation’, that granted amnesty to all Americans who might commit crime in Iran, a measure which endeared him to the nation. He said, it seems that if the dog of an American was to bite the Shah, the Shah would have no recourse but to approach the courts in America.

As a result of his speeches and declarations, exhorting the people to defend Islam and denouncing the Pahlavi regime for its anti-Islamic policies, he was arrested and exiled abroad. After a brief stay in Turkey he moved to Iraq to the holy city of Najaf, near the blessed shrine of the Commander of the Faithful, Imam Ali ibn Abi Taleb (AS), where during his 14-year residence Imam Khomeini astutely led the Iranian people in their struggle against the detested Shah. When the Ba’th regime, under pressure from the Shah, forced him to leave Iraq, Imam Khomeini, after obtaining a visa made his way to the borders of Kuwait, but the Kuwaiti government, under pressure from the Pahlavi regime, refused him entry. The Imam’s companions immediately obtained a 3-month visit visa for France, and he flew to Paris, from where he eventually returned to Iran on February 1 to a record welcome by millions of people, after 15 years of exile.

The rest is fully recorded history as Imam Khomeini led the Islamic Revolution to victory on February 11, 1979, and on April 1, following a nationwide referendum, he established the popular Islamic Republic system of government. The victory of the Islamic Revolution in Iran that threw into the dustbin of history over two thousand five hundred years of monarchial rule, was in fact the victory of the oppressed people over Global Arrogance. It was the victory of faith over unbelief, and the victory of right over wrong.

The rest of the events including the 8-year war imposed by the US through Saddam and how Imam Khomeini guided the nation for ten years, defeating every conceivable plot of the superpowers, especially that of US, are well documented and too vivid in our memory to be repeated. 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 the fasting month of Ramadhan as World Qods Day in order to garner support for Islam’s first Qiblah, and his historic verdict against apostasy.

Imam Khomeini and his followers of iron-resolve frustrated 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, also spoke of his views on economy, politics, arts, industry, culture, science and religion, all of which function as an integrated whole in human life. 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, and in accordance with the principles of Shari’ah.

Among the dynamic steps he took was uplifting of the status of women, restoring to them their dignity which the Pahlavi regime had brutally trampled upon by exposing their delicate feminine features to the plots and brazen attacks of depraved western culture. He focused on Islamic Solidarity by building the bridge of Islamic Unity Week to span the 12^th and 17^th of the month of Rabi al-Awwal – the two days regarded by the Sunni and Shi’ites respectively as the birth anniversary of Prophet Mohammad (blessings of God upon him and his progeny). He declared the last Friday of the fasting month of Ramadhan as World Qods Day in order to garner support for Islam’s first Qiblah, that is, Bayt ol-Moqaddas which is under Zionist occupation.

Perhaps, one of the most brilliant measures of Imam Khomeini was the concept of Wilayat-e Faqíh or the Governance of the Supreme Jurisprudent in the physical absence of the Imam of the Age (may God hasten his reappearance). As the person who lived and breathed Islam, he went on to state that the qualified ruler must also possess excellence in morals and belief, he must be just and untainted by major sins. Anyone who wishes to enact the penalties provided by Islam, to supervise the public treasury and the income and expenditures of the state must not be a sinner. Furthermore, he should not be ignorant and unaware of the law, lest in his ignorance he misleads the people. Nor must he fear world states so that he seeks the friendship of some and treats others with enmity. Imam Khomeini proceeded to give perfection to these rudiments of the rule of the righteous, as the concept of Wilayat-e Faqih, on the basis of his conviction that authority in state matters was not the prerogative of the infirm in faith, the unprincipled, the immoral and the unjust. He firmly believed in hadith that “the fuqahà’ are the heirs of Prophets”, and thus in the absence of the 12^th Infallible Imam (may God hasten his reappearance), it was the duty of the just “fuqaha” or the most able of them all, to administer state and social affairs according to the Book of God and the Sunnah of the Prophet.