Ayatollah Khomeini: Islamic Government: Governance of the Jurist

Impact

Islamic Government: Governance of the Jurist was Khomeini's most influential text. It established the principles of guardianship by jurists, meaning that governance in Islamic countries (and ideally all countries) is to be placed under the authority of Islamic clerics and Islamic sharia law. To the extent that Iran became an Islamic republic, Khomeini succeeded in his principal objectives. Iran, which was an ally of the United States and the West during the cold war (the state of tension and hostility between the West and the Communist Soviet bloc), became in the late twentieth century a firm adversary.

The question of whether “governance of the jurist” has been successful in Iran remains an open one. Many conservative Muslims in that nation would argue that it has, for, they would say, Iran was purged of Western influences and came under the control of Islamist leaders committed to enforcing Islamic law. Nominally democratic, Iran has an elected president, a 290-member elected Majlis (the parliament), and an elected eighty-six-member Assembly of Experts, who appoint the supreme leader. Real power in Iran, however, is held by unelected officials, in particular, the supreme leader—Khomeini's successor since 1989 has been Ayatollah Ali Khamenei—and the twelve-member Guardian Council. Although members of the latter group have to be approved by the parliament, they are appointed or screened by the supreme leader, they have veto power over any measures passed by parliament that they deem to be inconsistent with Islamic law, and they control the military and the media. The council can also bar candidates from standing for election to parliament or the presidency. Effectively, then, the government in Iran is answerable to clerics.

Thus, in the short term, Khomeini achieved the objectives he articulated in Islamic Government: Governance of the Jurist—though many observers would argue that he did so at a terrible price, for he silenced criticism, and thousands were put to death for opposition to his theocratic rule. In the longer term, though, there has been growing resistance to Iran's theocratic government. As of 2010, Iran is a young country, with large numbers of voters under the age of thirty. Many are coming to resent the influence of the Basij, or morality police, and would like to live in an Iran that is more liberal and less repressive. Reformers in Iran want the nation to continue to be an Islamic republic but would also like the government to respect the democratic institutions enshrined in the nation's constitution. They believe that the legacy left by Ayatollah Khomeini is inconsistent with the democratic freedoms written into the constitution that he and his backers produced.