MADRID – On the thirty sixth anniversary of the passing of Imam Ruhollah Khomeini, the central determine of the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, his thought continues to affect not solely the political trajectory of the Islamic Republic but in addition broader debates in regards to the relationship between Islam and politics within the Muslim world.
Removed from being a mere regime change, the Islamic Revolution represented, for a lot of of its supporters, a profound rupture with the dominant trendy political paradigm. On the coronary heart of this motion was a key concept: Islam shouldn’t be lowered to a purely religious or ritual follow however may provide another mannequin of political, cultural, and social group, articulated from its personal custom.
Islamism, understood because the political formulation developed by Ayatollah Khomeini, in line with which Islam should occupy a central place within the public sphere and within the configuration of energy, shows a number of defining traits. Amongst them is the conviction that the West has misplaced its normative hegemony; the overcoming of the nation-state as the only real official political framework; and the necessity for an Islamic energy able to representing and defending the umma—the worldwide neighborhood of believers—on the worldwide stage.
On this context, the Islamic Republic of Iran presents itself as a political actor with autonomous representational capability, unbiased from the dictates of Western powers and articulated via its personal political grammar.
Imam Khomeini understood that the orientalist gaze remained the dominant prism via which Muslim societies exterior the Eurocentric narrative had been interpreted. This outlook assumes that Western ideology—with its classes, strategies, and values—is common, legitimate for analyzing and explaining any actuality, even these overseas to its historic and cultural origins.
Islamism, nonetheless, challenges this premise. From this angle, the West will not be outlined as a concrete geographic area however as an ideology: a thought system that presents itself as impartial whereas truly imposing its personal epistemic limits when deciphering the non-Western. The Islamist critique is due to this fact not solely political but in addition epistemological: it questions the legitimacy of the conceptual framework used to know the Islamic world.
In line with Islamists, the Western normative view begins from the idea that Islam can’t function a sound political device. From this standpoint, presenting Islam as a political id various to the Pahlavi regime can be dismissed as a distraction from the actual, deeper causes of the revolution. Islam, on this narrative, is lowered to a mere epiphenomenon—a smokescreen with out energy to remodel the political order.
Imam Khomeini’s thought emerged in opposition to Eurocentrism. The revolution was not solely the overthrow of the Pahlavi dynasty (1925–1979) but in addition a break with the orientalist framework that portrayed Muslims as missing political company. This opposition manifested in a cultural transformation aimed on the “de-Westernization” of Iranian society.
The 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran has been topic to many interpretations, starting from sociological and theological to geopolitical and cultural analyses. Nevertheless, it has not often been approached as an epistemic occasion within the fullest sense, not merely as a regime change or a historic anomaly, however as a rupture that destabilizes the very frameworks via which politics has been conceived in modernity.
From this theoretical vantage level, the Islamic Revolution is neither a theocratic regression nor an exception inside the secularization course of however an epistemic break: a radical questioning of the trendy political order based on theological-Christian sovereignty. What’s at stake will not be solely the ideological content material of a brand new state however the very configuration of the political discipline as constituted by Western thought. On this sense, the revolution might be interpreted as an try to reconfigure the political from a special place, exterior the Western paradigm that lowered the Islamic to the premodern or irrational.
Islamist historiography views this revolution as the primary that didn’t observe Western political grammar, making it unpredictable for students and consultants. A recurring instance is the guide Iran: Dictatorship and Growth, written by Fred Halliday simply months earlier than the 1979 revolution. On this work, Halliday makes an attempt to foresee potential eventualities after the autumn of the Pahlavi dynasty, which was already evident. Nevertheless, amongst his many predictions, he by no means thought-about the potential of an Islamic revolution, as a substitute proposing choices corresponding to a nationalist authorities, socialism, or perhaps a new monarchy.
The absence of the Islamic revolution from such predictions allowed Islamists to criticize Western political views, which, they argue, had been incapable of conceiving Islam as a political device. In different phrases, the potential of utilizing Islamic language to realize political emancipation was, and stays, unimaginable inside the Western narrative.
Imam Khomeini constructed an autonomous id with Islam as its nodal level. In line with this interpretation, the founder denied the universality of Western epistemology whereas concurrently difficult the historic sequence generally known as “from Plato to NATO.”
The revolution materialized as an Islamic id embedded in another family tree of anti-colonial resistance, with its personal grammar that can’t be expressed within the Western language of nationwide liberation or Marxism.
Thus, Imam Khomeini, via his political thought, answered one of the urgent questions for Islamism: how can Muslims reside politically, as Muslims, within the modern world?
Imam Khomeini’s significance lies in his political undertaking, which aimed—and succeeded, in displacing the West because the normative discourse. This course of was carried out utilizing completely the language of the Islamic custom, with none reference to political doctrines thought-about Western, not like different Islamic reformists.
Imam Khomeini wrote as if Western grammar didn’t exist. For his followers, this irrelevance was elementary, because it meant the materialization of an autonomous Muslim political id. That Imam Khomeini wrote as if the West didn’t exist additionally implies that Islam can’t be lowered to the class of “faith.”
From this angle, the concept of “faith” is a product of the European Enlightenment, a mannequin that has been globally exported. Accepting the universalization of the class “faith” ignores that it’s a undertaking trying to current European native historical past as a common narrative. Islamism denounces this imposition of Western epistemic norms over Islamic traditions.
Faith as a colonial class
The concept that there exists one thing common beneath the title of “faith” assumes a transhistorical essence that overlooks the variations among the many numerous initiatives invoking the determine of God. From the angle of the Islamic Republic, talking of “faith” implies accepting its character as a personal perception, separate from politics, as understood within the West. Because of this, discourse on faith can solely be totally understood in relation to the narrative of secularism.
Secularism shouldn’t be understood merely because the absence or exclusion of faith from the general public sphere, however as a normative undertaking that establishes its personal boundaries. For the Islamic Republic, secularism is neither pure nor the fruits of a historic course of; moderately, it’s a disciplinary discourse, a political modality that validates sure political sensitivities whereas excluding others by deeming them threats.
Using spiritual language will not be merely a descriptive train however carries a transparent prescriptive intention: the final word aim is to control the area of Islam.
Imam Khomeini captures this concept that Islam can’t be lowered to the colonial class of “faith” when he states:
“If we Muslims did nothing however pray, beg God, and invoke His title, imperialists and oppressive governments would go away us alone. If we had mentioned: allow us to focus all our energies on the decision to prayer for twenty-four hours and easily pray, or: allow them to steal every little thing we have now, for God will deal with it, since there is no such thing as a energy better than God and we might be rewarded within the hereafter—then they might not have bothered us.”
Imam Khomeini’s level is that Islam can’t be lowered to a ritualistic or moralistic matter devoid of political essence. It’s exactly Islam’s political articulation that stops its dissolution.
The Islamism of the Islamic Republic
One of many elementary variations expressed by Iranian Islamism, in distinction to different regional Islamization initiatives, is that Islam can’t be lowered to a set and restricted set of traits. This concept is mirrored in a number of letters that Imam Khomeini addressed to the then-president and present Chief of Iran, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei. In these writings, Imam Khomeini asserts that the Islamic Republic can modify and even repeal any concrete manifestation of Islam if crucial to make sure its survival. Whereas some consultants interpret this stance as an expression of Imam Khomeini’s nationalist pondering, others see it because the affirmation of an Islam that transcends its historic manifestations and is all the time projected past them.
One other attribute of Khomeinism is that, though Imam Khomeini thought-about himself a follower of Shia Islam, his political follow is known as an try to deliver Sunni and Shia nearer collectively beneath what consultants name a “post-mazhabi” imaginative and prescient—mazhab or madhhab that means “authorized faculty” in Arabic. This seek for Islamic unity is vital to understanding the Islamic Republic’s self-definition as a political house for all Muslims, positioning itself as an influence able to defending your complete Islamic neighborhood in opposition to Western aggression.
A closing elementary pillar of Khomeinism is the doctrine of Wilayat al-faqih, translated as “authorities of the jurist,” which represents an important political imaginative and prescient of this present. Imam Khomeini understood that the answer to the issues of Iran and the Islamic neighborhood on the whole will not be merely theological however a political problem requiring concrete responses in that sphere.
The truth is, Imam Khomeini succeeded in creating an Islamic political id able to transcending nationwide and sectarian divisions. His proposal conceives political company because the capability of Muslims to decolonize themselves and reweave their societies inside an Islamic historic custom. This decolonization goals at dismantling the worldwide colonial order.
Subsequently, for his followers, Imam Khomeini’s significance lies in his potential to interrupt the identification between “common” and “the West.” In different phrases, because of Khomeinism, the West is revealed as simply one other particularism inside the international political world.
The experiment of the Islamic Revolution supplied a singular alternative for a mobilized Muslim subjectivity to assemble a political order nearly ex nihilo. This revolution marked a profound rupture with trendy hegemony, the paradigm of Westernesse, and the nation-state and ethnonational identity-based politics. The thought of the Islamic Republic was grounded within the mobilization of political topics not round ethnic, linguistic, or nationwide classes, however round a shared id as Muslims. This politicization of Islam was exactly the discourse that Westernesse—with its robust drive towards secularization and cultural homogenization—sought to suppress and confine to the personal sphere.
Imam Khomeini, nonetheless, was not merely the image of the revolution, but in addition essentially the most highly effective advocate of a political imaginative and prescient of Islam that rejected the function assigned to it by the equipment of modernity. His determine represents a deep and radical critique of that equipment. This critique was not restricted to a literal or occasional refutation of Westernesse’s assumptions, however embodied the projection of a radically totally different future—one which overflowed the classes imposed by the hegemonic middle of contemporary energy.
