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Ayatollah Khomeini: From Islamic Government to Sovereign State

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Rasoul Namazi
Rasoul Namazi*
Affiliation:
Leo Strauss Center, at the University of Chicago
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Abstract

This paper argues that the mature form of the political doctrine of the Ayatollah Khomeini (1902–89), Iranian Shiite religious authority and architect of the Islamic Republic of Iran, grew out of an encounter with the modern understanding of the state and the concept of sovereignty. Khomeini’s political doctrine, called the Absolute Guardianship of the Islamic Jurist, although based on a religious foundation, should be studied as a break with the traditional understanding of political power in Shiism. It will be argued that such a political doctrine can play the same role as the Christian rhetoric of the early modern political thinkers played, pave the way for modernization of Shiite political thought, and prepare the ground for a modern temporal conception of politics.

Keywords

Ruhollah KhomeiniVelāyat-e faqihSovereigntyModern StateComparative Political Theory
Type
Articles
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 52 , Issue 1-2 , March 2019 , pp. 111 - 131
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 2019

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Footnotes

The author would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful and constructive comments that greatly contributed to improving the final version of the paper. He would also like to thank the Editors of Iranian Studies for their generous comments and support during the review process.

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