Pre-modern background There are different theories as to when the ruling concept of Ayatollah Khomeini and the Islamic Republic of Iran—that Islamic jurists ought to govern until the return of the Imam Mahdi—first appeared.
Mohammad-Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi (and Ervand Abrahamian), that it was "occasionally" interpreted during the reign of the
Safavid dynasty (1501–1702 C.E.) (
Hamid Algar), argued by scholar
Molla Ahmad Naraqi (1771–1829 C.E.) (Yasuyuki Matsunaga), or by
Morteza Ansari (~1781–1864 C.E.) (according to John Esposito). Developments that might be called steps easing the path to theocratic rule were the 16th-century rise of the
Safavid dynasty over modern day Iran which made
Twelver Shi'ism the state religion and belief compulsory; and in the late 18th century the triumph of the
Usuli school of doctrine over the
Akhbari. The latter change made the ulama "the primary educators" of society, dispensers mostly of the justice, overseers social welfare, and collectors of its funding (the
zakat and
khums religious taxes, managers of the "huge"
waqf mortmains and other properties), and generally in control of activities that in modern states are left to the government. The Usuli ulama were "frequently courted and even paid by rulers" •
Conditions under the Qajar Shahs. The end of nineteenth century marked the end of the Islamic Middle Ages. Like most of the Muslim world, Iran suffered from foreign (European) intrusion and exploitation, military weakness, lack of cohesion, corruption. Cheap foreign (Western) mass-manufactured products undercut those of the bazaar, bankrupting sellers, The lack of a standing army and inferior military technology, meant loss of land and indemnity to Russia. Lack of good governance meant "'large tracts of fertile land" went to waste. • Perhaps worst of all the indignities Iran suffered from the superior militaries of European powers were "a series of commercial capitulations." Other concessions to the British included giving the new Imperial Bank of Persia exclusive rights to issue banknotes, and opening up the Karun River to navigation. •
The 1891–1892 Tobacco protest. In 1890,
Nasir al-Din Shah granted a British citizen control over growth, sale and export of tobacco, in the so-called tobacco
concession. This led to unprecedented nationwide protest climaxing with a fatwa by Iran's leading cleric declaring the use of tobacco to be tantamount to war against the
Hidden Imam. Bazaars shut down, Iranians stopped smoking tobacco, (d. 1909) • 1905–1911
Persian Constitutional Revolution and
Fazlullah Nouri. Starting as protest against more foreign indignities—a foreign director of customs (a Belgian) enforcing "with bureaucratic rigidity" the tariff collections to pay (in large part) for a loan to another foreign source (Russians) that financed the
shah's extravagant tour of Europe—the revolution set up a parliament to control the power of the shah. The constitutional government was eventually undermined, and the leader of that effort was a conservative cleric,
Fazlullah Nouri. Like Khomeini and later Islamists who praised him he preached the idea of sharia as a complete code of social life; Unlike them he opposed modern learning, the "teaching of chemistry, physics and foreign languages",
female education, and preached that "obedience to the monarchy was a divine obligation", and calling the monarch to account
apostasy from Islam, a capital crime. He was hanged for "the murder of leading constitutionalists". Under his rule Iran was militarily united, a 100,000-man standing army created, uniform Persian culture emphasized, and ambitious development projects undertaken: 1300 km railway linking the Persian Gulf with the Caspian Sea was built, a university, and free, compulsory primary education for both boys and girls was established while private religious schools were shut down. :While his modernization efforts were significant, he was the bete noire of the clergy and pious Iranians, (not least of all
Ruhollah Khomeini). His government required all non-clerical men to wear Western clothes, encouraged women to abandon
hijab. He expropriated land and real estate from shrines at
Mashhad and
Qom, to help finance secular education, "build a modern hospital, improve the water supply of the city, and underwrite industrial enterprises." Khomeini focused his revolutionary campaign on the Pahlavi shah and all of his alleged shortcomings. •
Fada'iyan-e Islam and
Navvab Safavi. 1946-Founded in 1946 by seminary student drop-out Safavi, was who sought to organize impoverished frustrated youth in his Fada'iyan-e Islam to kill and terrorize "the selfish pleasure seekers, who are hiding, each with a different name and in a different colour, behind black curtains of oppression, thievery and crime". He shared a number of traits with Khomeini and the Islamic Revolution and assassinated a number of important people. Despite his hatred of foreign oppressors, his hatred of secularist was worse. His group attempted to kill Iranian nationalist hero, Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh. Leading Islamic Republic figures such as
Ali Khamenei and
Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, have indicated what an "important formative impact of Nawwāb's charismatic appeal in their early careers and anti-government activities". •
Mohammad Mosaddegh and the
1953 Iranian coup d'état, Mosaddegh, prime minister of Iran from 1951 to 1953, led the nationalization of the British owned Anglo-Iranian Oil Company with wide popular support, but was overthrown by a coup in 1953. The 1953 coup was "widely seen as a rupture", and "turning point when imperialist domination, overcoming a defiant challenge, reestablished itself" using "an enfeebled monarch" who would go on to "assume an authoritarian and antidemocratic posture." Despite the fact that "the bulk" of the clerical establishment including Khomeini, had not supported Mosaddegh, his supporters were part of the coalition of the 1979 Revolution. • Demographic and social changes. Petroleum wealth and rapid population growth and urbanization in the mid 20th century, led to the migration of peasants and tribal peoples being torn from their ancestral ways; a growing the gap between the rich and the poor, rampant and well known corruption, undisguised presence and influence of foreigners, arbitrary arrests and use of torture by the secret police, alienating the broad mass of Iranians against the regime. The effort did not have the desired effect but helped to shape the ideology of Shi'i Islamists. Prominent figures such as current
Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and his brother
Muhammad Khamenei, Aḥmad Aram,
Hadi Khosroshahi, etc. translated Qutb's works into Persian. Hadi Khosroshahi was the first person to identify himself as
Akhwani Shia. According to the
National Library and Archives of Iran, 19 works of
Sayyid Qutb and 17 works of his brother
Muhammad Qutb were translated to Persian and widely circulated in the 1960s. Reflecting on this import of ideas,
Ali Khamenei said: Concerned about the
post-World War II geo-political expansion of Iran's powerful northern neighbor the
Soviet Union, the Shah's regime in Iran tolerated this literature for its anti-communist value, but an indication that the Western Cold War strategy for the Muslim world was not working out as planned was indicated by the coining the term "
American Islam", in 1952, by one of the authors—Sayyid Qutb—that were being translated with Saudi and Western funding. The term was later adapted by Ayatullah Khomeini after the Islamist revolution in Iran, who proclaimed: In 1984 the Iranian authorities honoured Sayyid Qutb by issuing a postage stamp showing him behind the bars during trial.
Khomeini's early opposition to the shah in
Qom, 1964 ;White Revolution In January 1963, the Shah of Iran announced the "
White Revolution", a six-point programme of reform calling for
land reform,
nationalization of the forests, the sale of state-owned enterprises to private interests, electoral changes to
enfranchise women and allow non-Muslims to hold office,
profit-sharing in industry, and a literacy campaign in the nation's schools. Some of these initiatives were regarded as Westernizing trends by traditionalists and as a challenge to the Shi'a
ulama (religious scholars). Khomeini denounced them as "an attack on Islam", and persuaded other senior marjas of Qom to decree a boycott of the referendum on the White Revolution. When Khomeini issued a declaration denouncing both
the Shah and his reform plan, the Shah took an armored column to Qom, and delivered a speech harshly attacking the
ulama as a class. on
'Ashura (3 June 1963) After his arrest in Iran following the 1963 riots, leading Ayatullahs had issued a statement declaring
Ayatullah Khomeini a legitimate Marja. This is widely thought to have prevented his execution. ;15 Khordad Uprising In June of that year Khomeini delivered a speech at the Feyziyeh
madrasah drawing parallels between the Sunni Muslim caliph
Yazid—who is perceived as a 'tyrant' by Shias and responsible for the death of Imam Ali—and the Shah, denouncing the Shah as a "wretched, miserable man," and warning him that if he did not change his ways the day would come when the people would no longer tolerate him. Two days later, Khomeini was arrested and transferred to Tehran. Following this action, there were three days of major riots throughout Iran, known as the
Movement of 15 Khordad. Although they were crushed within days by the police and military, the Shah's regime was taken by surprise by the size of the demonstrations, and they established the importance and power of (
Shia) religious opposition to the Shah, and the importance of Khomeini as a political and religious leader. ;Opposition to capitulation Khomeini attacked the Shah not only for the White Revolution but for violating the constitution, the spread of moral corruption, submission to the United States and Israel, and in October 1964 for "capitulations" or diplomatic immunity granted by the Shah to American military personnel in Iran. The "capitulations" aka "
status-of-forces agreement", stipulating that U.S. servicemen facing criminal charges stemming from a deployment in Iran, were to be tried before a U.S. court martial, not an Iranian court. , Turkey without clerical dress In November 1964, after his latest denunciation, Khomeini was arrested and held for half a year. Upon his release, Khomeini was brought before Prime Minister
Hassan Ali Mansur, who tried to convince him to apologize for his harsh rhetoric and going forward, cease his opposition to the Shah and his government. When Khomeini refused, Mansur slapped him in the face in a fit of rage. Two months later, Mansur was assassinated on his way to parliament. Four members of the
Fadayan-e Islam, a Shia militia sympathetic to Khomeini, were later executed for the murder. ;Exile Khomeini spent more than 14 years in exile, mostly in the holy
Iraqi city of
Najaf (from October 1965 to 1978, when he was expelled by then-Vice President
Saddam Hussein). In Najaf, Khomeini took advantage of the
Iraq-Iran conflict and launched a campaign against the
Pahlavi regime in Iran.
Saddam Hussein gave him access to the Persian broadcast of Radio Baghdad to address Iranians and made it easier for him to receive visitors. By the time Khomeini was expelled from Najaf, discontent with the Shah had intensified. Khomeini visited
Neauphle-le-Château, a suburb of
Paris, France, on a
tourist visa on 6 October 1978.
Non-Khomeini sources of Islamism Gharbzadegi In 1962,
Jalal Al-e-Ahmad published a book or pamphlet called of the book Occidentosis (
Gharbzadegi): A Plague from the West. Al-e-Ahmad, who was from a deeply religious family but had had a Western education and been a member of the
Tudeh (Communist) party, argued that Iran was intoxicated or infatuated (
zadegi) with Western (
gharb) technology, culture, products, and so had become a victim of the West's "toxins" or disease. The adoption and imitation of
Western models and Western criteria in education, the arts, and culture led to the loss of
Iranian cultural identity, and a transformation of Iran into a passive market for Western goods and a pawn in Western geopolitics. Al-e-Ahmad "spearheaded" the search by Western educated/secular Iranians for "Islamic roots", and although he advocated a return to Islam his works "contained a strong Marxist flavor and analyzed society through a class perspective." At least one historian (Ervand Abrahamian) speculates Al-e-Ahmad may have been an influence on Khomeini's turning away from traditional Shi'i thought towards populism, class struggle and revolution. Fighting Gharbzadegi became part of the ideology of the 1979
Iranian Revolution—the emphasis on
nationalization of industry, "self-sufficiency" in economics, independence in all areas of life from both the Western (and Soviet) world. He was also one of the main influences of the later Islamic Republic president
Ahmadinejad. The Islamic Republic issued a postage stamp honoring Al-e-Ahmad in 1981.
Socialist Shi'ism (; 1933–1977) One element of Iran's revolution not found in Sunni Islamist movements was what came to be called "Socialist Shi'ism", Iran's education system was "substantially superior" to that of its neighbors, and by 1979 had about 175,000 students, 67, 000 studying abroad away from the supervision of its oppressive security force the SAVAK. The early 1970s saw a "blossoming of Marxist groups" around the world including among Iranian post-secondary students. Ali Shariati was "the most outspoken representative of this group", and a figure without equivalent in "fame or influence" in Sunni Islam. Socialist Shia believed
Imam Hussein was not just a holy figure but the original oppressed one (
muzloun), and his killer, the Sunni Umayyad Caliphate, the "analog" of the modern Iranian people's "oppression by the shah". Shariati was also a harsh critic of traditional Usuli clergy (including
Ayatullah Hadi al-Milani), who he and other leftist Shia believed were standing in the way of the revolutionary potential of the masses, by focusing on mourning and lamentation for the martyrs, awaiting the return of the messiah, when they should have been fighting "against the state injustice begun by Ali and Hussein". Shariati not only influenced young Iranians and young clerics, he influenced Khomeini. Shariati popularized a saying from the 19th century, 'Every place should be turned into Karbala, every month into Moharram, and every day into Ashara'. The "phenomenal popularity" of Shari'ati among the "young intelligentsia" Shariati was also influenced by anti-democratic Islamist ideas of Muslim Brotherhood thinkers in Egypt and he tried to meet
Muhammad Qutb while visiting Saudi Arabia in 1969. A chain smoker, Shariati died of a heart attack while in self-imposed exile in
Southampton, UK on June 18, 1977. Ayatullah Hadi Milani, the influential Usuli Marja in
Mashhad during the 1970s, had issued a fatwa prohibiting his followers from reading Ali Shariati's books and Islamist literature produced by young clerics. This fatwa was followed by similar fatwas from
Ayatullah Mar'ashi Najafi, Ayatullah Muhammad Rouhani,
Ayatullah Hasan Qomi and others. Ayatullah Khomeini refused to comment.
Baqir al-Sadr In Iraq, another cleric from a distinguished clerical family,
Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr (1935–1980), became the ideological founder of the Islamist
Islamic Dawa Party (which had similar goals to that of
Muslim Brotherhood), and author of several influential works including
Iqtisaduna on
Islamic economics, and
Falsafatuna (Our Philosophy). Like the 1970-1980 version of Khomeini, he sought to combine populism with religious revival, claiming that "the call for return to Islam is a call for a return to God's dispensation, and necessitates a 'social revolution' against 'injustice' and 'exploitation.'" After a military coup in 1958, a pro-soviet General
Abd al-Karim Qasim came to power in Iraq, putting centers of religious learning, such as Najaf were al-Sadr worked under pressure from the Qasim regime's attempts to curb religion as an obstacle to modernity and progress. Ayatollah
Muhsin al-Hakim, located in Iraq and one of the leading Shi'i clerics at the time, issued fatwa against communism. Ayatullah Mohsin al-Hakim disapproved of al-Sadr's activities and ideas.
Qasim was overthrown in 1963, by the pan-Arabist
Ba'ath party, but the crackdown on Shi'i religious centers continued, closing periodicals and seminaries, expelling non-Iraqi students from
Najaf. Ayatullah Mohsin al-Hakim called Shias to protest. This helped Baqir al-Sadr's rise to prominence as he visited Lebanon and sent telegrams to different international figures, including Abul A'la Maududi.
Mahmoud Taleghani Mahmoud Taleghani (1911–1979) was another politically active Iranian
Shi'i cleric and contemporary of Khomeini and a leader in his own right of the movement against Shah
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. A founding member of the
Freedom Movement of Iran, he has been described as a representative of the tendency of many "Shia clerics to blend
Shia with
Marxist ideals in order to compete with leftist movements for youthful supporters" during the 1960s and 1970s. a veteran in the struggle against the
Pahlavi regime, he was imprisoned on several occasions over the decades, "as a young preacher, as a mid-ranking cleric, and as a senior religious leader just before the revolution," and served a total of a dozen years in prison. In his time in prison he developed connections with leftist political prisoners and the influence of the left on his thinking was reflected in his famous book
Islam and Ownership (Islam va Malekiyat) which argued in support of collective ownership "as if it were an article of faith in Islam." He clashed with Khomeini in April 1979, warning the leadership against a 'return to despotism.'" After two of his sons were arrested
Usuli-Islamist clash in 1970's .
Ruhollah Khomeini, an ambitious cleric, used to deliver public speeches on gnosis and moral steadfastness. He had studied Ibn Arabi's gnosis and Mulla Sadra's theosophy, and taught and wrote books on it. His keen interest in Plato's ideas, especially those of a
Utopian society, had an impact on his political thought as well. While in exile, Khomeini gave a series of 19 lectures to a group of his students from January 21 to February 8, 1970, on Islamic Government, and elevated Naraqi's idea of Jurist's absolute authority over imitator's personal life to all aspects of social life. Notes of the lectures were soon made into a book that appeared under three different titles:
The Islamic Government, Authority of the Jurist, and
A Letter from Imam Musavi Kashef al-Gita (to deceive Iranian censors). This short treatise was smuggled into Iran and "widely distributed" to Khomeini supporters before the revolution. It was "the first time a leading Shiite cleric had thrown his full weight as a doctor of the law behind the ideas of modern Islamist intellectuals." The response from high-level Shi'a clerics to his idea of
absolute guardianship of jurist was negative.
Grand Ayatollah Abul-Qassim Khoei, the leading Shia ayatollah at the time the book was published rejected Khomeini's argument on the grounds that the authority of jurist in the age of occultation of the Infallible Imam, is limited to the guardianship of orphans and social welfare and most jurists believed there was an "absence of [scriptural] evidence" for extending it to the political sphere. (; 31 January 1919 – 1 May 1979) was a moderate Islamist.
Ayatullah Khoei showed greater flexibility and tolerance than Islamists in accommodating modern values, for example he considered non-Muslims as equal citizens of the nation-state, stopped the harsh punishments like stoning and favored the use of holy books other than Quran for oaths taken from non-Muslims. In
Isfahan, Ayatullah Khoei's representative Syed Abul Hasan Shamsabadi gave sermons criticizing the Islamist interpretation of Shi'i theology, he was abducted and killed by the notorious group called
Target Killers () headed by
Mehdi Hashmi. At Qom, the major Marja
Mohammad Kazem Shariatmadari was at odds with Khomeini's interpretation of the concept of the "Leadership of Jurists" (
Wilayat al-faqih), according to which clerics may assume political leadership if the current government is found to rule against the interests of the public. Contrary to Khomeini, Shariatmadari adhered to the traditional Twelver Shiite view, according to which the clergy ought to serve society and remain aloof from politics. Furthermore, Shariatmadari strongly believed that no system of government can be coerced upon a people, no matter how morally correct it may be. Instead, people need to be able to freely elect a government. He believed a democratic government where the people administer their own affairs is perfectly compatible with the correct interpretation of the Leadership of the Jurists. Before the revolution, Shariatmadari wanted a return to the system of
constitutional monarchy that was enacted in the
Iranian Constitution of 1906. He encouraged peaceful demonstrations to avoid bloodshed. According to such a system, the Shah's power was limited and the ruling of the country was mostly in the hands of the people through a parliamentary system.
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the then Shah of Iran, and his allies, however, took the pacifism of clerics such as Shariatmadari as a sign of weakness. The Shah's government declared a ban on
Muharram commemorations hoping to stop revolutionary protests. After a series of severe crack downs on the people and the clerics and the killing and arrest of many, Shariatmadari criticized the Shah's government and declared it non-Islamic, tacitly giving support to the revolution hoping that a democracy would be established in Iran. Meanwhile, in Iraq, since 1972, The Ba'ath regime in Iraq had started arresting and killing members of the Dawa party. Ayatullah Khoei, Baqir al-Sadr and Khomeini condemned the act. Sadr issued a fatwa forbidding students of religious schools and clerics from joining any political party. In 1977, the Iraqi government banned the annual
Azadari commemorations in Karbala.
The 1979 Islamist Revolution and
Mohammad-Ali Rajai On 6 January 1978, an article appeared in the daily
Ettela'at newspaper, insulting
Ayatullah Khomeini. This has been called the moment that turned agitation into revolution as "the entire opposition" from secular middle class to urban poor "rose in his defense". Khomeini "unleashed" his partisans, and the bazaars were closed down. Frustrated youth in Qom took to the streets, six were killed. On 40th day of deaths in Qom, Tabriz saw uprising and deaths. Mullahs who had hitherto withheld support from Khomeini and his doctrines "now fell in line", providing the resources of "over 20,000 properties and buildings throughout Iran", where Muslims "gathered to talk and receive orders". Seizing the moment, Khomeini gave an interview to the French newspaper
Le Monde and demanded that the regime should be overthrown. He started giving interviews to western media in which he appeared as a changed man, spoke of a ‘progressive islam’ and did not mention the idea of ‘political guardianship of the jurist’. At the end of 1978,
Shapour Bakhtiar, a known
social democrat was chosen to help in the creation of a civilian government to replace the existing military one. He was appointed to the position of Prime Minister by the Shah, as a concession to his opposition. However his political party,
National Front, expelled him. In the words of historian
Abbas Milani: "more than once in the tone of a
jeremiad he reminded the nation of the dangers of clerical despotism, and of how the fascism of the mullahs would be darker than any
military junta". On 10 and 11 December 1978, the days of Tasu'a and Ashura, millions marched on the streets of Tehran, chanting ‘Death to Shah’, a display that political scientist
Gilles Kepel has dubbed the "climax" of "general submission to Islamist cultural hegemony" in Iran. On 16 January 1979, Shah left the country "on vacation", never to return and to die of cancer a year and a half later. By 11 February 1979, the monarchy was officially brought down and Khomeini assumed leadership over Iran while guerrillas and rebel troops overwhelmed Pahlavi loyalists in armed combat. Following the
March 1979 Islamic Republic referendum, in which Iranian voters overwhelmingly approved the country's becoming an
Islamic republic; several months later voters approved the new constitution and Khomeini emerged as the
Supreme Leader of Iran in December 1979. In the early days after the revolution it was praised as "a completion" of the 1905–1911 Constitutional Revolution, "a fulfillment" of
Mosaddeqh's attempt to establish an Iranian "sense of independence and self-direction", "a vindication" of the insurrection against the "
White Revolution". After the success of the
1979 Islamic Revolution, the major Iranian Usuli Marja
Mohammad Kazem Shariatmadari criticized Khomeini's system of government as not being compatible with Islam or representing the will of the Iranian people. He severely criticized the way in which a referendum was conducted to establish Khomeini's rule. In response, Khomeini put him under house arrest and imprisoned his family members. This resulted in mass protests in
Tabriz which were quashed toward the end of January 1980, when under the orders of Khomeini tanks and the army moved into the city.
Murtaza Mutahhari was a moderate Islamist and believed that a jurist only had a supervisory role and was not supposed to govern. In a 1978 treatise on modern Islamic movements, he warned against the ideas of
Qutb brothers and
Iqbal. Soon after the
1979 revolution, he was killed by a rival group,
Furqan, in Tehran. Shortly after assuming power, Khomeini began calling for Islamic revolutions across the
Muslim world, including Iran's Arab neighbor Iraq, the one large state besides Iran with a Shia majority population. At the same time
Saddam Hussein, Iraq's secular Arab nationalist
Ba'athist leader, was eager to take advantage of Iran's weakened military and (what he assumed was) revolutionary chaos, and in particular to occupy Iran's adjacent oil-rich province of
Khuzestan, and to undermine Iranian Islamic revolutionary attempts to incite the Shi'a majority of his country. While Khomeini was in Paris, Baqir al-Sadr in Iraq had issued a long statement to the Iranians praising their uprising. After the 1979 revolution, he sent his students to Iran to show support and called on Arabs to support the newly born Islamist state. He published a collection of six essays titled
al-Islam Yaqud al-Hayat (Islam Governs Life), and declared that joining Ba'ath party was prohibited. Khomeini responding by issuing public statements supporting his cause, that resulted in an uprising in Iraq. Sadr told his followers to call off demonstrations as he sensed the Sunni dominated Ba'ath party's preparations for a crackdown. The crackdown began by his arrest, in response to which the demonstrations spread nation-wide and the government had to release him the next day. The Ba'athists started to arrest and execute the second layer of leadership and killed 258 members of the Dawa party. Dawa party responded by violence and threw a bomb at
Tariq Aziz, killing his bodyguards. Saddam Hussain had become the fifth president of Iraq on 16 July 1979, and after publicly killing 22 members of Ba'ath party during the televised
1979 Ba'ath Party Purge, established firm control over the government. Those spared were given weapons and directed to execute their comrades. On 31 March 1980, the government passed a law sentencing all present and past members of the Dawa party to death. Sadr called on people to uprising. He and his vocal sister were arrested on 5 April 1980 and killed three days later. In September 1980, Iraq launched a full-scale invasion of Iran, beginning the
Iran–Iraq War (September 1980 – August 1988). A combination of fierce resistance by Iranians and military incompetence by Iraqi forces soon stalled the Iraqi advance and, despite Saddam's internationally condemned use of poison gas, Iran had by early 1982 regained almost all of the territory lost to the invasion. The invasion rallied Iranians behind the new regime, enhancing Khomeini's stature and allowing him to consolidate and stabilize his leadership. After this reversal, Khomeini refused an Iraqi offer of a truce, instead demanding reparations and the toppling of
Saddam Hussein from power. Meanwhile, in traditional Usuli seminaries, the Islamists were facing passive resistance. In an attempt to present themselves as sole representatives of Shi'ism, the Islamists launched defamation campaign against the traditional Usuli clergy. In his "Charter of the Clergy" (Persian: منشور روحانیت), Ayatollah Khomeini wrote:"At the religious seminaries, there are individuals who are engaged in activities against the revolution and the pure Islam (Persian: اسلام ناب محمدی). Today they are simply sanctimonious posers, some are undermining religion, revolution and system as if they have no other obligation. The menace of the foolish reactionaries and sanctimonious clerics at religious seminaries is not insignificant. . . . The first and most significant move [by the enemy] is the induction of the slogan of separation of religion from politics."After the arrest of
Ayatollah Shariatmadari and his televised forced confessions, other Usuli sources of emulation like
Ayatollah Hasan Qomi, Ayatollah Muhammad Rohani and
Ayatollah Sadiq Rohani were among the most prominent clerics to face the wrath of the Islamist regime. ==See also==