THEFUSION OF THE GNOSTIC AND THE POLITICAL IN THE PERSONALITY AND LIFE OF IMAMKHOMEINI [R.A.]
It is related that when teaching a class onethical advancement at Qum in the 1930's, Imam Khomeini [R.A.] would alwaysclose his lectures with the following sentence from the Munajat-i Sha'ban,a litany unique in that all the Twelve [Ma'sumins] Imams recited it:
O God, grant me totalseparation from other than You and attachment to You; brighten the vision of ourhearts with the light of looking upon You, so that they may pierce the veils oflight and attain the source of magnificence, and our spirits be suspended fromthe splendor of Your sanctity.
The Imam always assigned greatimportance to the study and recitation of the supplicatory prayers of the Imams(A.S.) from the Ahlul-Bayt (A.S.), as a means of attaining Munajat-i Sha'banspiritual insight as well as petitioning the Creator, but this appeal from the Munajat-iSha'ban seems to have been particularly close to his heart. It appears intexts and pronouncements belonging to different phases of his life: in thecommentary on a hadith of Imam Ja'far al-Sadiq (A.S.) concerning "themeeting with ALLAH [SWT]" (liqa'ullah), contained in Sharh-iChihil Hadith, a work completed in 1939; in one of his works concerning theinner dimensions of prayer, Mi'raj al-Salikin, also finished the sameyear; in Jihad-i Akbar ya Mubaraza ba Nafs, a lecture on ethicalpurification delivered in Najaf in about 1972; in the lectures on the exegesisof Surat al-Fatiha that were televised in December, 1979 and January, 1980; andin Rah-i 'Ishq, a letter written by the Imam to his daughter-in-law, [Khanum]Fatima Tabataba'i, in 1983. The aspiration "to pierce the veils of lightand attain the source of magnificence" may therefore be regarded as aconstant element in the devotional life of the Imam, and only by bearing it inmind can the totality of his struggles and achievements, including thepolitical, be correctly understood. It was with a gaze fixed on "the sourceof magnificence", a mode of vision utterly different from that of thecommon political leader, that the Imam led a vast revolutionary movement tosuccess.
The integrality andcomprehensiveness of the Imam's personality and vision of Islam are such thatanalytical distinctions among their various dimensions are in a senseartificial, reflecting an effort to understand the Imam rather than hisactuality. It is nonetheless legitimate - or at least inevitable - to speak ofthe Gnostic ( irfani) and political aspects of his life and activityand to accord a certain primacy to the former, in terms of not only chronologybut also significance. The Imam is generally regarded, by both Westerners andMuslims, as nothing more than an unusually gifted revolutionary leader, yet allwho knew him intimately, as well as many who met with him but briefly, cantestify that he possessed a vision transcending the political at the very sametime that it controlled and embraced it. It is precisely this inclusion of thepolitical in the Gnostic that is perhaps the most distinctive feature of theImam's persona.
As for the chronologicalprimacy of gnosis in the life of the Imam, this is amply demonstrated by thehistory of his early years in Qum. His immediate purpose in going there in 1920was no doubt to study with Shaykh 'Abd al-Karim Ha'iri, one of the principalauthorities of the day in jurisprudence, and he distinguished himself in thisessential area of Islamic learning long before his emergence as a marja'-itaqlid in the early 1960's. But in Qum he soon developed an interest in irfanand associated disciplines that set him apart from many of his contemporariesand was, indeed, often viewed with suspicion and even hostility; many yearslater he had occasion to remark: "It is regrettable that some of the ulama should entertain such suspicions and deprivethemselves of the benefits to be gained from studying irfan."
His first guide in the pursuitof irfan was Mirza'Ali Akbar Yazdi (d. 1926), a pupil ofHusayn Sabzavari who had himself studied under Mulla Hadi Sabzavari (d. 1872),the author of Sharh-i Manzuma, one of the basic texts of irfan; the Imam was thus affiliated to one of theprincipal lines of the teaching and transmission of Shi'ite gnosis. Anotherearly guide was Mirza Aqa Javad Maliki Tabrizi (d. 1924), who had been teachingin Qum since 1911. He held two classes on philosophy and ethics, a public one atthe Madrasa-yi Fayziya and a private one in his own home that was attended by anumber of gifted and favored students including the Imam. The Imam also studiedwith Sayyid Abu al-Hasan Rafi'i Qazvini (d. 1975), among whose few publishedwritings is a commentary on the Du'a al-Sahar, the same profoundsupplication to which the Imam devoted his first work, Sharh Du'a al-Sahar;it is therefore possible that the Imam's attention was first drawn to this textby Qazvini.
The Imam's chief teacher ingnosis was, however, Ayatullah Muhammad 'Ali Shahabadi (d.1950), to whom herespectfully referred in his own writings on irfan as "ourmaster in theosophy" (ustad-i ilahi-yi ma). He met Shahabadi soonafter the latter's arrival in Qum (probably in the late 1920's), and the answerhe gave the Imam to a question on irfanconvinced him that he was in the presence of a true master. After initiallyrefusing the Imam's request for permission to study with him, Shahabadiconsented to teach him philosophy, but it was gnosis the Imam wished to pursue,and he persisted until Shahabadi agreed to instruct him in that discipline.Every Thursday and Friday, as well as on holidays, usually alone but sometimesin the company of one or two other students, the Imam listened to Shahabadilecturing on the commentary by Da'ud Qaysari (d. 1350) on the Fusus al-Hikamof Ibn 'Arabi, the Miftah al-Ghayb of Sadr al-Din Qunavi (d. 1274), andthe Manazil al-Sa'irin of Khwaja 'Abdullah Ansari (d. 1089). The Imam'sinterest in these texts, particularly the last, remained demonstrably with himthroughout his life.
In so far as the Imam's fusionof Gnostic and political concerns can be traced to any source other thanillumination and immersion in the Qur'an and the teachings of the Ma'sumin,it is to another aspect of Shahabadi's influence upon him that it may beattributed. Shahabadi was one of the relatively few ulama in the time ofReza Shah to raise his voice against the misdeeds of the Pahlavi dynasty. Hewould regularly preach against the first Pahlavi during the commemoration of 'Ashura,and on one occasion manifested his extreme discontent by entering aneleven-month retreat at the shrine of Shah 'Abd al-'Azim. A similar commitmentto the political sphere manifested itself in one of his books, Shadharat al-Ma'arif,a brief work which has been well described as "social as well as Gnostic incontent." Here Shahabadi analyzes the causes of decline and discontent inMuslim society, proposes the diffusion of authentic Islamic knowledge as a meansof remedying the situation and creating unity, and concludes that although theestablishment of perfect Islamic governance is a task reserved for the Sahib al-Zaman(AJ), the political dimension of Islam, implicit in all its juridicalordinances, cannot in any way be neglected, for "Islam is most certainly apolitical religion" (pp. 6-7).
The Imam began his teachingcareer at the age of twenty-seven by providing instruction in hikmat, adiscipline closely related to irfan,and soon thereafter organized private sessions in irfanitself. It was in these sessions that the Imam trained and inspired some of hisclosest associates, including above all Ayatollah Murtaza Mutahhari, whom theImam described after his assassination in May 1979 as "the veryquintessence of my being." The texts taught to this elite were the sectionon the soul (nafs) in the Asfar al-Arba'a of Mulla Sadra and the Sharh-iManzuma.
Gnostic and devotional mattersalso formed the subject matter of the Imam's earliest writings. In 1928, hewrote a detailed commentary on the Du'a al-Sahar, the prayer recitedbefore dawn during Ramadan by Imam Muhammad al-Baqir (A.S.). This work wasfollowed in 1931 by Misbah al-Hidaya ila al-Khilafa wa al-Wilaya, a briefbut dense exposition of the innermost reality of the Prophet (S.A.W) and theImams (A.S) that draws not only on a meditation on the hadith of the Ma'suminbut also on the akbari concept of the Universal Man (al-insan al-kamil)In 1937, the Imam completed a series of glosses on Qaysari's commentary on the Fususal-Hikam and on the Misbah al-Uns, Hamza b. Fanari's commentary onthe Miftah al-Ghayb of Qunavi. Two years later, the Imam completed hisfirst work in Farsi, Sharh-i Chihil Hadith, a voluminous commentary onforty hadith of predominantly ethical and gnostic content. Also dating from 1939is the Imam's Mir'aj al-Salikin wa Salat al-'Arifin (also known as Sirral-Salat), a treatise in Farsi detailing the inner meaning of every part ofthe prayer, from the ablution that precedes it to the threefold takbirthat concludes it. Somewhat more accessible than this dense and challenging workis another book on the same theme, Adab al-Salat, completed in 1942.Finally, mention may be made of Sharh-i Hadith-i Junud-i 'Aql o Jahl, awork completed in 1944 which, has been described as the fullest and mostsystematic exposition of the Imam's views on ethics and gnosis.
Beyond this enumeration, it isneither possible nor desirable on the present occasion to attempt a fullerpresentation of the Imam's contribution to the discipline of irfan; it will be enough to refer the reader to YahyaChristian Bonaud's L'Imam Khomeyni, un gnostique mconnu du XXe siecle(Beirut, 1997), an excellent work of both synthesis and analysis. However, inconnection with the trajectory of the Imam's life - the transition from earlyemphasis on irfan to later engagement in the political realm - itis imperative to note that the Gnostic writings are not a digest or extension ofreceived opinions and formulations, drawn up in youth only to be laid aside inmaturity; rather they are the manifest fruit of a powerful, original, andlasting vision. As was remarked by Sayyid Ahmad Fihri, who attended some of theImam's lectures in Qum during the 1930's, "it is apparent that he [theImam] has experiential knowledge of all he wrote upon." To put it somewhatdifferently, the Imam's works on irfanwere but the early, literary expression of a process of suluk, ofcontinuous advancement towards the repeatedly invoked "source ofmagnificence." The Imam's leadership of the Islamic Revolution and hisestablishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran may be therefore be said to haveconstituted, from a certain point of view, a further stage in that process ofspiritual wayfaring; the fruits of his inward strivings came ultimately totranscend his own person and to manifest themselves with profound effect in thepolitical realm.
