This source depicts a speech by Ayatollah Khomeini on the occasion of ‘Ashura on 3rd June 1963. At Faydiyyah Madrasah in Qum, Khomeini addresses an audience consisting of clergymen, tullab, the people of Qum and pilgrims of the holy shrine of Hadrat Masumah (R). This speech is essentially an attack on the Shah and his regime, focusing on its tyrannical nature, its questionable relations with Israel, depicting the Shah as an enemy of Islam and the people and the root of the Iranian nation’s suffering.
Khomeini’s speech of June 1963 came as a consequence of Mohammad Reza Shah’s introduction of the ‘White Revolution’ in January 1963. This was essentially a programme of economic, social and political reforms intended to modernise Iran including land reform and women’s suffrage. It was ‘not until 1963 and the Shah’s White Revolution that Khomeini began to take a stronger line against the monarchy’ , as the White Revolution allowed him to emerge as a leading clerical opponent; ‘attacking the new electoral law enfranchising women as an un-Islamic law and the referendum endorsing the White Revolution as an unconstitutional procedure.’ Furthermore, Khomeini opposed the land reform as the Shi’i clergy would lose a ‘significant amount of religiously endowed land by the reform package’. The White Revolution gathered growing opposition from the clergy as almost all the major clerics called for a boycott of the referendum whilst Khomeini went further in attacking the Shah, claiming that it undermined Islam. The consequent attack on Feyziyah Madrassah ‘deepened the sense of resentment among people of all political persuasions’ including the clergy in Iran, ‘marking the beginning of a new period of determined struggle that was directed not only against the errors and excesses of the regime, but against its very existence.’ Symbolically, the event exemplified the regime’s hostility towards Islam and the clerical establishment’ ‘and the ruthless, barbaric manner in which it expressed that hostility’. This opposition culminated on Ashura in the form of Khomeini’s scathing attack on the Shah, which became ‘the most insulting speech ever made publically against the Shah’.
The fact that Khomeini chose to proclaim his speech on the holy occasion of Ashura is highly significant. The 10th of Muharram signifies the martyrdom of Hussain at the battle of Karbala in an attempt to overthrow Yazid and his corrupt government and is a month of mourning for Iranians nationwide. A time when ‘religious fervor is greatest, from the point of view of mobilization of opposition to the state, this period has always been recognized as potentially inflammatory because popular passions run high’ Crucially, Khomeini compares Reza Shah to Yazid, the enemy of Hussain and ‘the most hated figure in the Shi’ite tradition’ and in doing so, naturally depicted the Shah as a corrupted figure. This was ‘one of the most incendiary statements that had ever been pronounced against the Shah’ as he draws parallels with his regime and the Shah’s ‘tyrannical regime’, likening the massacre of Ashura to the attack at Faydiyyah Madrassah, comparing the ‘defenceless women and innocent children on the day of Ashura’ with ‘our sixteen and seventeen year old youngsters’. As with the Umayyads, Khomeini implies that ‘the Shah was fundamentally opposed to Islam itself and the existence of the religious class’. The impact of Khomeini’s comparison is heightened immensely by the fact that ritual weeping is an inherent part of Ashura festivities, representing ‘the profound remorse of an individual regarding the events that took place on Ashura’. This can be seen in the source as ‘(the audience weeps intensely)’. This ritual weeping thus acquires a special significance and is more than just an expression of remorse and engagement that would be expected form an ordinary audience. Furthermore, during this time, ‘aspirations to emulate his example, by struggling against contemporary manifestations of tyranny, are awakened’ , thus inspiring Khomeini’s audience to oppose the Shah’s regime also. By drawing on such narratives, Khomeini ‘juxtaposes the martyrdom of Hussain with the injustice Iranians faced’ . This source can therefore be used to depict the ways in which Ashura as a religious element can be used as a political tool to galvanise the masses by playing on emotional and religious sentiments.
In Khomeini’s discourse, Israel was portrayed as the ‘most intolerable symbol’ of Western tyranny against Muslims and thus, his accusation of the Shah’s links with Israel are all the more significant. Khomeini exposes the Shah’s relations with Israel as he states ‘we are affronted by our very own government, which assists Israel in achieving its objectives by obeying her command’. Israel is depicted to be the enemy of Islam and therefore Iran in the lines ‘Israel to see Islamic precepts in this country. It was Israel that assaulted the madrasah by means of its sinister agents. It is assaulting us too and you, the nation’. Khomeini then accuses the Shah of colluding with Israel, begging the question ‘what exactly is the relationship between the Shah and Israel anyway, which causes the secret service to tell us neither to speak of Israel nor of the Shah—what is the connection between the two? Can it be that the Shah is an Israeli?’ This was significant at a time when other Middle Eastern countries like Egypt firmly rejected the Jewish state. Khomeini thus viewed Iran’s neutrality and unofficial alliance with Israel on the other hand as a ‘source of national and religious humiliation to many Iranian Muslims’. Khomeini skillfully used the regime’s ideological weakness here to his own advantage. Khomeini linked his attack on Israel to a denunciation of Iran’s religious minorities, implying that that the Shah is carrying out the wishes of the Jewish state, a government that planned to uproot Islam and seize the economy, with the help and influence of Iran’s minorities, namely the Baha’is, who he claimed threatened the legitimacy of Islam and his rule. Khomeini thus ‘linked together opposition to the West, to Israel and to the shah and to Iran’s non-Muslim minorities, especially the Baha’is and Jews, who had gained new rights under the Pahlavi regime’, galvanizing a mass opposition movement. By depicting Iran as a puppet of Israel, Khomeini played on inherent anti-foreign sentiments.
This source was spoken in the context of Khomeini as a ‘Marja-ye Taqlid’. The highest rank in the clerical structure, ‘Khomeini’s viewpoints carried significantly more weight for those who chose to follow him’ and in Shi’ism, ‘the legal renderings of a person’s chsosen grand ayatollah become uncontesbtable’ This perhaps explains its success in stimulating the subsequent pro-Khomeini demonstrations following his arrest.
As such, this source can be used to advance arguments on the importance of Shia methodology and traditions in politics and the growing conflict between the clergy and the regime, marking the beginning of the evolution of the clergy’s role in society. The speech also explains how Iran’s fragmented opposition were united i.e. through links with Israel and the Bah’ais and can be used to explain how Khomeini quickly became somewhat of a national leader in a short period of time.