For eleven centuries Shi’ite consensus held that clergy should not rule the state

Evidence

Let us look at a few examples of how Islam has been reinterpreted to serve explicit political goals. Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran adapted Shi’a Islam to serve as a means to mobilize the clergy and to lead a popular revolution against the Shah. Up to that point, Shi’a Islam had, for the most part, had a politically passive or quietist orientation. While sections of the clergy were sometimes involved in political activity, there was a consensus for some eleven centuries that the clergy should not control the state. Rather, as Ervand Abrahamian notes, most “viewed the clergy’s main responsibilities, which they referred to as the velayat-e faqih (jurist’s guardianship), as being predominantly apolitical.” Khomeini broke radically with this quietist Shi’ite stance in the context of the social upheavals of the late 1960s and ’70s; he called for Muslims to overthrow the Shah in the name of Islam and to establish an Islamic state based on Sharia law. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 317

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains velayat-e faqih as an apolitical doctrine that Khomeini inverted.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: how exactly did Khomeini’s inversion win the quietist clergy over, and what material conditions made it possible?