Ramadan 1389 AH (Second Half of November 1969)
Sayyed Khamenei’s manner in his political actions was not direct entry and recklessly heading. This method was remarkable in teaching, commentary, scientific circles, and educational gatherings, but was less seen during preaching and addressing on different occasions, especially in religious occasions such as Ramadan and Muharram and Safar. There was a difference in the community of intellectuals and scholars in Seminary and universities — when he faced them; perhaps a sign language could also express his intention. In any case, what was needed to be explained in other communities made a difference in the manner of his expression.
Some of his close friends who were subtly and secretly watching over him, apparently his companions, but were picked up as mercenaries, doing intelligence work and spying for intelligence service, called him “a secret person who is really difficult to be understood of all his affairs.”
Sayyed Khamenei, during his Ramadan propaganda travel to Tehran, like his pulpits in Birjand and Zahedan in 1964, raised his protesting remarks to the point that it prompted SAVAK officials to respond.
His pulpit lecture was at the Shaykh Abdol-Husayn Tehrani School at the end of the Shoemakers Bazaar; Sayyed Khamenei’s speech began at around 1:30 p.m. and lasted more than an hour. After this gathering, he went to another sitting. As he made his way to Pachenar (a prominent locality in Tehran Bazaar district) after the November 28 speech, he attended a meeting that was run by Yadollah Fotovvat, the owner of a tailor’s, next to the Sayyed Nasroddin Mosque.
The assembly held in the Pachenar neighbourhood and the “Kaghazchi deadlock” was of a different gender. There were fifty metal chairs. Across the row of chairs was a board with a yellow plaster on it, “Islam is superior to anything and nothing is superior to Islam; Islam is pure and encourages the cleanness, and love pure ones; shake hands with each other because it destroys the hatred.”
An announcement was also made for the people to attend the ceremony, “You are hereby invited to attend a religious ceremonial on Wednesday, Ramadan 15, at 9:30 p.m. Ramadan. Please come and use the words of the esteemed scientist Sayyed Khamenei. Khayyam St., Pachenar district, between Gholi Passway and Mostofi Passway.
In that setting, after the introductory reciting of the Quran, a free discussion started and then Sayyed Khamenei spoke to the audience. The meeting, held at Mr. Ghanem’s house, was called the “Islamic Youth Association.”
Khamenei did not return to Mashhad immediately after the end of Ramadan; he was some days of Shawwal in Tehran. Perhaps one of his tasks was to pursue the publishing of the book Sulh al-Hasan.
The security service could not provide a trap for Khamenei in the capital, so Nasser Moghaddam sent a letter to Khorasan SAVAK, referring to his speeches at the Shaykh Abdol-Husayn Tehrani Seminary School as “Its contrary to the interests of the government, including critical contents,” and, subsequently, ordered that he must be monitored, “in case, any harmful and suspicious activity is observed” to be reported to the Third Administration.
Islamic Charter
Sayyed Khamenei and his contemporaries in Tehran sought the basis for the realization of Islamic ideals in the context of cultural endeavours, believing that popular uprisings would not be made public except through the spread of consciousness and political knowledge. Besides, the spread of communism, especially among the educated, would not be cured unless pioneering Islamic views are produced and presented. They saw that the communist ideals were well placed in the minds of intellectuals and advocated as a method of struggle. The imperial system also welcomed the expansion of that thinking to the extent that it was not a threat to it and prevented the growth of Islamic awareness; or, conversely, the government benefited from the development of non-political Islam to prevent communist tendencies. The third trick of the government was to demonstrate militant Islam and Marxist thoughts in order to prevent the Muslim masses from turning to the political aspects of Islam, which they referred to and emphasized as “Islamic Marxism.” The followers of social Islamic thoughts and supporters of the movement that had emerged in Iran since the early 1960s have always considered those cases and suffered from a lack of well-presented Islamic theory that represents the social-political foundations of this heavenly religion; What can be called the “outline of the Islamic thoughts;” a complete Islamic theory, an Islamic charter, an Islamic worldview.
Sayyed Khamenei and his contemporaries have always thought about this issue and considered it necessary for Iran in the 1960s when Marxist thoughts had become the dominant intellectual stream of universities and intellectual communities. Practical steps had to be taken.
The first working meeting might be in the year 1969. Sayyed Khamenei’s coming to Tehran was not limited to his religious lectures, but to his monthly meetings. The members of the meetings were Sayyed Mahmoud Taleqani, Sayyed Mohammad Hoseyni-Beheshti (After Returning from Germany), Sayyed Ali Khamenei, Ali-Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, Mohammad-Javad Bahonar, Sayyed Abolfazl Mousavi-Zanjani, Ali Shariati, Mahdi Bazargan, Yadollah Sahabi, Ezzatollah Sahabi, Abbas Sheybani, Taher Ahmadzadeh, Jalaloddin Farsi, Habibollah Peyman.
The first session, which took a long time, concluded that by formulating the foundations of the school of Islam, a Muslim intellectual could become acquainted with the Islamic view of creation, life, and society. It was also decided that each member should write on paper what he had in mind for the next session. It took forty-five days for that.
In the second session, Sayyed Khamenei, Ahmadzadeh, Taleqani, Bazargan, Sahabi, and Farsi shared their ideas written on paper. After some discussions at the meeting, the opinions were decided to be submitted to a group that Shaykh Mortaza Motahhari was one of them to comment on.
In the next session, Sayyed Motahhari spoke about the nature of the members’ writings. It was clear that Islam’s opposition to the phenomena of exploitation, politic-based arrogance, colonialism, and also social, political, and economic tyranny was a common denominator, but Sayyed Motahhari cited the issue of combating atheism as a distinctive aspect of Sayyed Khamenei’s. Cited as a privilege over other writings. Mr. Bazargan later said that “among them, Sayyed Khamenei’s proposed text was somehow the most notable.”
It was in the fourth or fifth session that fewer but more prominent individuals decided to adopt the Islamic Charter and then put it up for general discussion. The small group consisted of Khamenei, Hashemi-Rafsanjani, Bahonar and Peyman. Sayyed Khamenei would come to Tehran from Mashhad every time to participate in that meeting. The meetings were held at the house of Mr. Peyman and Mr. Bahonar — and sometimes at Mr. Sheybani’s — who at the end of the editorial work was asked with his family to leave them alone. The sessions sometimes lasted up to twenty hours. One of those meetings held in a garden near Tehran that Mr. Taleqani had prepared. These connections led to the deliberation of the general issues and the collection of the first notes of the general members and then were temporarily closed due to the arrest of Sayyed Khamenei in 1970, and shortly after that time the arrest of Mr. Peyman and afterward Mr. Hashemi-Rafsanjani. The arrests disrupted the continuity of the sessions. As the arrests spread, they decided to keep the pamphlets, notes, and whatever related to the compilation of the Islamic Charter secretly in a box at the Refaah Girls’ High School until later.
Muharram 1390 AH
Sayyed Khamenei’s stay in Mashhad lasted for about two months and again he travelled to Tehran in March. The month of Muharram had arrived. March 8 coincided with the first of Muharram. The security service noticed his presence in the capital when he spoke to the people at the Ibrahim Khalil Mosque on March 10. The jamaat imam of the mosque was Sayyed Abol-Qasem Mousavi-Hamadani. In the city of Rey, he was a supporter of Ayatollah Khomeyni’s movement. It was the fourth anniversary of the opening of the mosque and his imamate.
On March 14 (Muharram 7), he first went to the Hayat of Ansar al-Husayn. The committee was founded in 1968 by the efforts of Mostafa Haerizadeh Yazdi, a member of the Islamic Coalition, and his friends. Ansar al-Husayn Hayat was moveable and was formed at the house of a member each time. All the ceremonies held on this board were accompanied by speeches by those who had a clear or implicit opposition to the government. The most famous speakers of Ansar al-Husayn Hayat are Sayyed Motahhari, Beheshti, Khamenei, and Rafsanjani. On that day, the Hayat, which was set up at Abbas Babakhani’s house on Mazandarani Street, had begun at dawn, and Sayyed Khamenei was not the only speaker in the meeting.
On Thursday, the 11th of Muharram, a mass meeting was held at the al-Jawad Mosque by the Islamic Society of Engineers, attended by about one thousand people. The ceremony began at 19:30. The first speaker was Sayyed Abdol-Karim Hasheminejad and the second was Sayyed Ali Khamenei. Most likely, the two had coordinated their speeches before the beginning of the gathering, as they both spoke about the rise of Imam Husayn and the need for jihad in the present.
In his remarks, Hasheminejad said that “a Husayn-style uprising is necessary for all Muslims ... to rise so people can have a better life.” After Hasheminejad, Sayyed Khamenei explicitly compared the government of Mu’awiyah with that of Iran, “At that time, the dictatorship of Mu’awiyah was equal to halal and haram, and now we see that in our country such a dictatorial government is also found. They do not recognize God’s lawful and forbidden.” One of Khamenei’s closing statements was: “Ladies and gentlemen! Jihad is necessary in Iran... May God replace the spirit of Husayn’s uprising in our bodies.”
The Second Decade of Muharram
March 21, 1970 (the beginning of the Iranian New Year 1349), coincided with the 13th of Muharram 1390 AH. Hayats, mosques, and religious circles invited Sayyed Khamenei to speak and preach for the two months of Muharram and Safar. During the second decade of Muharram, he continued to speak for enthusiasts at the Ansar al-Husayn Hayat and the Ibrahim Khalil Mosque.
Sayyed Khamenei in Tehran was in contact with the centers which were in any way affiliated with the religious struggle. He was present at the clerics’ assembly to discuss how the movement was going. Among the socio-political activities of the clerics at the time, were fundraising for Palestinian combatants.
Safar 1390 AH (April 1970)
Sayyed Khamenei’s speeches at the Hedayat Mosque show that all or some of the days of the second decade of Safar, he was there at the invitation of Ayatollah Taleqani.
The Ansar al-Mahdi Youth Hayat was another group where Sayyed Khamenei went to the pulpit in Safar. On April 30 (Safar 23), he introduced a number of books to the audience at the same place — recommended the books to be read; Westernization [Jalal Ale-Ahmad], The Future in the Realm of Islam, The Geography of Hunger [Josué de Castro], The Geopolitics of Hunger [Josué de Castro], Work and Islam [Mahdi Bazargan], Islam and Ownership [Sayyed Mahmoud Taleqani], Sartre on Cuba [Jean Paul Sartre], Tanbih al-Ummah wa Tanzih al-Millah (the awakening of the community and refinement of the nations) [Ayatollah Naini].
He described the book Tanbih al-Ummah wa Tanzih al-Millah as a book about real constitutionalism, “not that crude and vulgar kind of constitutionalism.” He considered the main cause of the backwardness and misery of Muslim societies to be the influence of colonialism and explained the problem. The topic of “the colonization and the living and dead nations” continued to be the subject of his remarks in the following days. After speaking about “world peace and the role of the United Nations about that issue,” he said goodbye to the attendees on May 6 (Safar 29), and said that he would head to Mashhad next week. During the ten days he was preaching at the Ansar al-Mahdi Youth Hayat, every night he and the attendees prayed for Ayatollah Khomeyni who a picture of him was there at the Hayat.
Archive of Ayatollah Khamenei
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