Khomeini's Theory of Islamic State and the Making of the Iranian Revolution

Abstract

The Iranian Revolution is one of the most influential events of the late twentieth century, with far-reaching consequences that still echo through the rise of Islamic state. Drawing from both primary (interviews, autobiographies, documents, and data) and secondary sources, the paper shows that Khomeini's doctrine of the Guardianship of the Jurist played a decisive role in the making of the Iranian Revolution by changing the goals and strategies of the religious opposition from reforming government policies to establishing an Islamic state. Khomeini's doctrine was first published in 1970 in his treatise, Islamic State. The paper argues that Khomeini's ideological innovation can account for the sharp contrast between the outcomes of widespread protests in the early 1960s and the late 1970s: they both shook the Pahlavi regime, but the former protests dissipated, while the latter culminated in the Iranian Revolution. Expanding the scope beyond Iran and Islam, the paper explores the role of ideological innovations in the Russian and American Revolutions, and discusses the potentially critical role of ideological innovations in democracy movements in Islamic countries.