In sharp contrast to Turkey, an Islamic revolution in Iran brought to power in 1979 a government committed to the thorough Islamization of public life (see pp. 1115–17).That revolution had been inspired and led by the Ayatollah Khomeini (1902–1989), an Iranian religious scholar, who became the rallying point for those opposed to the regime of the Shah of Iran, which was strongly backed by the United States. Document 22.2 provides a sample of Khomeini’s thinking about imperialism and Islamic government, written well before the revolution actually occurred. As the Supreme Leader of Iran during the 1980s, he was in a position to put many of those ideas into practice.

AYATOLLAH KHOMEINI

Writings and Declarations

1941, 1970

From the very beginning, the historical movement of Islam has had to contend with the Jews, for it was they who first established anti-Islamic propaganda…Later they were joined by other groups…These new groups [Europeans] began their imperialist penetration of the Muslim countries about three hundred years ago, and they regarded it as necessary to work for the extirpation of Islam…

Islam is the religion of militant individuals who are committed to truth and justice. It is the religion of those who desire freedom and independence. It is the school of those who struggle against imperialism….

Islam does not recognize monarchy and hereditary succession…Islam has laid down no laws for the practice of usury [lending money at high interest rates], for banking with usury, for the consumption of alcohol, or for the cultivation of sexual vices, having radically prohibited all of these…

The agents of imperialism sometimes write…that the legal provisions of Islam are too harsh…They [imperialists] kill people for possessing ten gram of heroin…When Islam, however, stipulates that the drinker of alcohol should receive eighty lashes, they consider it “too harsh.”…They are not aware that these penal provisions of Islam are intended to keep great nations from being destroyed by corruption. Sexual vice has now reached such proportions that it is destroying entire generations, corrupting our youth and causing them to neglect all forms of work…

Their plan is to keep us backward, to keep us in our present miserable state, so that they can exploit our riches, our underground wealth, our lands, and our human resources…Instead of surrendering to the injunctions of Islam, which provide a solution to the problem of poverty, they and their agents wish to go on living in huge palaces and enjoying lives of abominable luxury.

In the time of the Prophet, laws were not merely expounded…; they were also implemented. The Messenger of God…implemented the penal provisions of Islam: he cut off the hand of the thief and administered lashings and stonings. The successor to the Prophet must do the same…Know that it is your duty to establish an Islamic government.

This slogan of the separation of religion and politics and the demand that Islamic scholars not intervene in social and political affairs have been formulated and propagated by the imperialists; it is only the irreligious who repeat them.

According to one of the noble verses of the Quran, the ordinances of Islam are…permanent and must be enacted until the end of time.

The laws of the sharia embrace a diverse body of laws and regulations, which amounts to a complete social system. In this system of laws, all the needs of man have been met: his dealings with neighbors, fellow citizens, and clans as well as children and relatives; the concerns of private and marital life; regulations concerning war and peace and intercourse with other nations; penal and commercial law; regulations pertaining to trade and agriculture. Islamic law contains provisions relating to the preliminaries of marriage and the form in which it should be contracted, and others relating to the development of the embryo in the womb and what food parents should eat at the time of conception. It further stipulates the duties that are incumbent upon them while the infant is being suckled and specifies how the child should be reared and how the husband and wife should relate to each other and to their children. Islam provides laws and instruction for all of these matters, aiming…to produce integrated and virtuous human beings who are walking embodiments of the law…

We see, too, that together, the imperialists and the tyrannical self-seeking rulers have divided the Islamic homeland. They have separated the various segments of the Islamic umma from each other and artificially created separate nations. There once existed the great Ottoman state, and that, too, the imperialists divided…

[T]he imperialists have also imposed on us an unjust economic order, and thereby divided our people into two groups: oppressors and oppressed. Hundreds of millions of Muslims are hungry and deprived of all form of health care and education, while minorities comprised of the wealth and powerful live a life of indulgence, licentiousness, and corruption….It is the duty of Islamic scholars and all Muslims to put an end to this system of oppression and for the sake of the well-being of hundreds of millions of human beings to overthrow these oppressive governments and form an Islamic government.

The influence and sovereignty of Islam in society have declined; the nation of Islam has fallen victim to division and weakness; the laws of Islam have remained in abeyance and have been subjected to change and modification; and the imperialist have propagated foreign laws and alien culture…, causing people to be infatuated with the West…We need proper and righteous organs of government; that much is self-evident.

We know that all of this [Islamic government] is unpalatable to those who have grown up with lechery, treachery, music, and dancing, and a thousand other varieties of corruption. Of course they regard the civilization and advancement of the country as dependent upon women’s going naked in the streets or…turning half the population into workers by unveiling them…They will not agree to the country’s being administered rationally and in accordance with God’s law. We have nothing to say to those whose powers of perception are so limited that they regard the wearing of European hats…as a sign of national progress. …With a European hat on your head, you would parade around the streets enjoying the naked girls, taking pride in this “achievement” totally heedless of the fact that meanwhile, the historic patrimony of the country was being plundered from one end to the other, all its sources of wealth were being carried off…

[T]hese idiotic and treacherous rulers, these officials—high and low—these reprobates and smugglers must change in order for the country to change. Otherwise you will experience worse times than these, times so bad that the present will seem like paradise by comparison.