190 No god but God
class, and nearly every sociopolitical organization in Iran—from the
communists to the feminists—put aside their ideological differences
and joined together in an anti-imperialist, nationalist revolt against a
corrupt monarchy. Despite the post-revolution propaganda, this was
by no means a monolithic revolutionary movement initiated at the
behest of the Ayatollah Khomeini with the aim of establishing an
Islamic theocracy. On the contrary, there were dozens of diverse and
sometimes conflicting voices raised against the Shah. Khomeini’s, for
better or worse, was merely the loudest.
Khomeini’s genius, both as a politician and as a religious leader,
was his recognition that in a country steeped in the faith and culture of
Shi‘ism, only the symbols and metaphors of Shi‘ite Islam could pro-
vide a common language with which to mobilize the masses. Thus, in
transforming Iran into his personal vision of theocratic rule, Kho-
meini turned to the best example history had made available to him:
Ismail, the Safavid ruler who five hundred years earlier had created
the first Shi‘ite state by proclaiming himself the Mahdi.
Of course, Khomeini never likened himself to the Divine, nor did
he ever explicitly claim the title of Mahdi—to have done so would
have been political suicide. Rather, Khomeini consciously embraced
the messianic charisma of the Mahdi, and allowed his followers to
draw their own conclusions. Like all the Mahdis before him, Kho-
meini claimed descent from the seventh Imam, Musa al-Kazim, and
eagerly accepted the messianic title “Imam.” He deliberately cast
Iran’s horrific eight-year war with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq as revenge
for the massacre of Husayn and his family at Karbala, even though
such vengeance was the exclusive right of the Mahdi. In fact, the ten
thousand Iranian children who were thrown onto the front lines of the
war as human mine sweepers wore “keys to paradise” around their
necks and headbands emblazoned with the word Karbala to remind
them that they were not fighting a war for territory, but walking in the
footsteps of the martyrs.
By far the most overt connection Khomeini established between
himself and the Mahdi was his doctrine of the Valayat-e Faqih: “the
guardianship of the jurist.” The particulars of this doctrine, in which
popular sovereignty and divine sovereignty are united in a single gov-
ernment, will be detailed in the final chapter of this book. For now, it