Ali Khamenei, a least likely leader on Khomeini’s death, capitalized on his years of political and organizational experience to outmaneuver and outfox friends and foes alike and to emerge as Iran’s paramount leader. Khamenei’s ascent was slow and by no means certain, with the leader having to take a back seat to the likes of Rafsanjani on the political front and to Montazeri in matters of jurisprudence. Steadily, however, with political assistance from the Revolutionary Guards and the Basij, and ideological support from Mesbah Yazdi and other ascendant figures within the Qom clerical establishment, Khamenei’s position was increasingly strengthened. Simultaneously, Khamenei’s traditionalist, conservative brand of Shia theology emerged as the formal ideology of the state. Starting with the second term of the Ahmadinejad presidency in 2009, “Khameneism” became politically and ideologically dominant in Iran. Today, whatever this Khameneism is meant to signify is far from uncontested. But its political, ideological, and jurisprudential dimensions rule over the country. The absolute velayat-e faqih, a position devised and first occupied by Khomeini, has found its full expression during Khamenei’s long tenure as Iran’s leader.

The focus of the chapter is the overriding assumption in Shia fiqh in general and theories of the velayat-e faqih in particular that society is in need of proactive protection and guidance. The notion of velayat is neither exclusively nor predominantly Shia in origin and development. However, it has played a central role in Shia theology. The logic underlying the notion of velayat-e faqih is that society needs proper guidance and protection, both from the hostile world in which it exists and from itself. Guidance needs to be provided by a specialist of fiqh, a mujtahid who has reached the esteemed position of marja‘iyat and is a “source of emulation,” a marja‘-e taqlid. Protection, or velayat, meanwhile, in its fullest sense is also to be provided by a specialist of fiqh, a faqih, who would be selected to serve in a system based on the velayat-e faqih. In relation to Iran, the clergy have long assumed that Iranian society needs protection from a number of clear and present dangers, be they communism, secular nationalism, unchecked republicanism, modernity, indiscriminate autocracy, or, more recently, the reformist “sedition” (fitna).

At the broadest level, conceptions of the Islamic Republic’s political legitimacy are guided by one of three assumptions. The first assumption is that legitimacy is divinely bestowed, with the velayat-e faqih installed by God as someone who has the wisdom necessary to guide his people. There is no need for popular vote for the system to become legitimate, although there is no harm in it either. This popular vote is valid only when it has the leader’s approval. A second perspective assumes that God has given people the right and the ability to determine their own destiny and their affairs. Therefore, according to the shari‘ah, legitimacy rests with the people. A third outlook bridges these two perspectives, maintaining that while legitimacy is exclusively divine in genesis, it is practically irrelevant without acceptability, which makes the system functional when people participate in it. Legitimacy comes only from God, while it is the people who give the system the acceptance it needs by deciding what is in their interests. Moreover, acceptance has the added benefit of drawing people closer to the political system.

The reformist religious intellectuals of the 1990s and the 2000s sought to articulate a new jurisprudence that drew inspiration from dynamic, reason-centered ijtihad. The characteristics of the new, reconstituted fiqh were meant to include a comprehensive research program of reformism, deconstruction of commonplace understanding of religion and religion hermeneutic, and reexamining religious experiences and expectations. It was also meant to historicize religion and reimagine jurisprudence through the application of secular and scientific tools and methods. The project’s spectacular failure, slowly made clear about a decade after its zenith in the mid-2000s, owed much to the right’s merciless and multipronged onslaught. But that failure – more accurately, its violent obstruction – did not come until after the project of deconstructing hermeneutics and ijtihad had been taken to their logical extension, namely efforts to construct a sustained theory of Islamic democracy.

As the 1978–1979 revolution approached, Khomeini’s reactionary conceptions of the ideal social order were all but forgotten. The popular assumption was that Khomeini and, along with him, the rest of the clerical establishment were “revolutionary” in the true sense of the word. But the clerical establishment, which had long been divided among itself, had engaged in little innovation of any kind, either on its own or through the institution of the howzeh. Equally valuable for the victors of the revolution has been the howzeh, a hallowed institution of religious teaching and learning for the better part of a century. For nearly as long, it has been a bastion of jurisprudential traditionalism. Khomeini saw it as archaic. Two decades later, Khamenei extended the state’s capture to the howzeh, bureaucratized it, ensured its financial dependence, and, through added administrative units, made it a practical extension of the state. If the howzeh was ever a forum for jurisprudential innovation, that rare possibility is even rarer now. Not surprisingly, what jurisprudential innovation has taken place, by Khomeini and by successive generations of religious scholars, has been overwhelmingly outside of the howzeh.

Khomeini’s arguments were foundational to the Islamic Republic. The significance of his jurisprudential contributions and innovations cannot be overstated. For the first time, he theorized about direct rule by a faqih. He revolutionized the position of velayat-e faqih by taking it out of the social and cultural realms only and planting it firmly in the domain of politics. First, he made the velayat-e faqih a political supervisor, then a ruler, and finally an absolute ruler. Khomeini gave the absolute ruler the authority to issue injunctions that superseded the injunctions of religion if necessary and empowered him to decide on what was expedient and in the interest of the greater good. These ideas continue to remain foundational to the Islamic Republic. Today, Khomeini the ruler has been all but forgotten. His portraits continue to adorn government buildings, his mausoleum is a frequent stop for visiting dignitaries, and his legacy is duly praised on official occasions and in state ceremonies. But the state has long moved on from what one scholar aptly called “Khomeinism.” From the 1990s on, it has been “Khameneism” that has ruled Iran politically and jurisprudentially, with its own conceptions of velayat-e faqih.

In recent years, we have witnessed increases in the frequency and intensity of spontaneous protests by Iranians from all walks of life. For the status quo to continue, therefore, the state will need to rely on ever greater coercive means to ensure the compliance of the different social actors, or, at the very least, their ambivalence. With Khamenei’s advanced age, and the rising cost of keeping the status quo going, both politically and in human life, a continuation of Khameneism as it has taken shape over the past decade or so, especially beyond Khamenei, seems highly unlikely in the long run. Even if the Revolutionary Guards become politically more powerful, which in the immediate aftermath of Khamenei’s death seems highly likely, the possibility of a stale, archaic state ruling over a dynamic society appears untenable in the long run. The state will have no alternative but to modify some of its austere approach toward society if it is to survive.

In today’s Iran, state–religion relations exhibit three key features. An obvious feature is the deep basis of the state in innovative interpretations of Shia jurisprudence. The Islamic Republic is based on the system of the velayat-e faqih, generally translated in English as the “guardianship of the jurisconsult.” As a concept, the notion of the velayat-e faqih had existed in Shia thought for some time before Ayatollah Khomeini elaborated on it in his 1970 book by the same name. Khomeini’s contribution lay in his innovative interpretation of the velayat-e faqih as a supreme political leader who oversaw not just religious affairs, as previous theologians had theorized but was in overall charge of all affairs of the entire community, profane and political as well as religious. Today, Khomeini’s conception of velayat-e faqih underlies the institutional and political foundations of the Islamic Republic. The Iranian political system is far more ideologically informed, and hence ideological, than may at first meet the eye.

This chapter focuses on the arguments of precisely the kind of individual described by Kadivar. More specifically, within the intellectual reformist current described in the previous chapter, the arguments of a number of particular figures associated with it deserve more in-depth treatment. These individuals took the hermeneutics movement started by Soroush one step further by theorizing about Islamic democracy. They made explicit one of the key dimensions that is implicit in the hermeneutics movement, namely that, interpreted correctly, there is deep theoretical and structural consistency between Islam and democracy. As with their intellectual predecessors, this new crop of scholars start with the assumption that religious teachings are powerfully influenced by social conditions. Many religious rules came about to address specific social conditions that existed at a particular time and place, they argue, and therefore may not apply at other times. By the same token, understanding the teachings of religion and acquiring religious knowledge also depend on prevailing conditions.