Democratic and constitutionalist elements in Khomeini’s Unveiling of Secrets and Islamic Government

Abstract

This is a study of Khomeini’s two main pre-revolutionary political works: one, Islamic Government, in which he urges his audience to accept that Islam is a political religion and jurisprudents of Islamic law have a crucial role in government; and a second, The Unveiling of Secrets, of which only short excerpts have been translated into English and which has received scant attention by scholars outside of Iran. This latter work is crucial to study because in this work, he elaborates his view on democratic and constitutionalist principles, subjects he had treated only vaguely and briefly in Islamic Government. Contrary to much of the secondary literature produced on Khomeini, which claims that Khomeini’s theory is simply a theory of guardianship, antithetical to participatory government, the article claims that in The Unveiling of Secrets, and (though more ambiguously) in Islamic Government, Khomeini appeals to democratic and constitutionalist principles to argue that the views of common citizens, and not just experts in Islamic law, must be heeded by an Islamic government. Recognizing the complexities and ambiguities of Khomeini’s thought both in his earlier and later works allows us to understand and engage in dialogue with the scholars who inherit and critique his ideas today.