The Rightly Guided Ones 139over a social revolution that was already under way against Iran’s
despotic American-backed monarchy. Appealing both to the historic
sentiments of the country’s Shi‘ite majority and the democratic aspira-
tions of its disaffected masses, Khomeini argued that only a supreme
religious authority could manage the “social and political affairs of the
people in the same way as the Prophet [had done].”
All three of these political leaders were, in one way or another,
trying to restore some sense of unity to what has become a deeply
fractured worldwide community of Muslims. Yet without either a cen-
tralized political authority (like a Caliph) or a centralized religious
authority (like a Pope), the only institutions in the modern world that
have had any measure of success in uniting the Muslim community
under a single banner have been the religious institutions of the
Ulama.
Throughout Islamic history, as Muslim dynasties tumbled over
each other, Muslim kings were crowned and dethroned, and Islamic
parliaments elected and dissolved, only the Ulama, in their capacity as
the link to the traditions of the past, have managed to retain their self-
imposed role as the leaders of Muslim society. As a result, over the
past fifteen centuries, Islam as we know it has been almost exclusively
defined by an extremely small, rigid, and often profoundly traditional-
ist group of men who, for better or worse, consider themselves to be
the unyielding pillars upon which the religious, social, and political
foundations of the religion rest. How they gained this authority, and
what they have done with it, is perhaps the most important chapter in
the story of Islam.