During the heyday of the Islamic Revolution, under the capable and visionary leadership of Imam Khomeini, Muslims were faced with two accusations in response to the challenge posed by the Islamic leadership, the Islamic Revolution and the Islamic state to the powers that be...
In order to properly understand the achievement of the late Imam Khomeini (r.a.) and the Islamic Revolution in Iran, we need to understand them as being simultaneously located within four concentric circles: the oppressed peoples, the Islamic peoples, the Shi’i peoples, and the Iranian peoples...
The results of the Iranian Majlis elections in February silenced many who had expected them to produce a massive popular rejection of the Islamic system. But in Islamic Iran people are looking ahead, not back. ZAFAR BANGASH looks forward...
One of the first messages to have been proclaimed by the Islamic Revolution and the line of the Imam was that the Islamic Revolution in Iran is neither of eastern nor of western affiliation...
1All the West’s well-established theories about the political evolution of the Islamic state of Iran were thrown into disarray on February 20, when Iran’s parliamentary elections passed off peacefully...
Over the last few weeks, the Western media has watched keenly as Iran went to the polls to elect a new Majlis (parliament), highlighting every perceived shortcoming in the electoral procedure and hoping that the elections would prompt a crisis in Iran’s Islamic system of government...
We open the section with IQBAL SIDDIQUI, editor of Crescent International, discussing the centrality and relevance of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, and the Islamic State that it created, to the struggle of the contemporary global Islamic movement.
For this special section, we particularly wanted an Iranian perspective on post-Revolutionary Iran. HUJJAT UL-ISLAM M. SAEED BAHMANPOUR, an academic currently based in London, discusses Iran’s progress in the last 25 years.
Last month’s student protests in Tehran have once again demonstrated the West’s animosity to Islam and the Islamic Republic. Despite the miniscule size of the protest group–a few hundred at most–it was immediately projected in the Western media and by American officials as reflecting the "unpopularity" of the Islamic government.
The student demonstrations in Tehran during the second week of July were widely interpreted, especially in the west, as a major crisis in the Revolution and possibly even the beginning of the end for the Islamic Republic. Western media and government officials welcomed them as the beginning of a popular uprising against the Islamic state.
Imam Khomeini, the tenth anniversary of whose death on June 4, 1989, was marked by millions of Muslims all over the world this month, was undoubtedly the most important figure in recent Muslim history, the man whose thought and leadership effectively gave birth to what we now know as the global Islamic movement.
When the Iranian soccer team beat the US team at the World Cup Finals in France last year, the west was shocked to see Muslims pouring into the streets in cities across the world to celebrate.
Compulsions of geography and economics have combined to frustrate America’s political designs in Central Asia, forcing Washington to revise its policy vis-a-vis Iran.
For the past few months, prospects of a rapprochement between the US and the Islamic Republic of Iran have captured the western media’s headlines, notwithstanding the fallout from subcontinental nuclear explosions. In a January 7 television interview with Cable News Network (CNN)...
Over the past few months, Iran and Saudi Arabia have edged closer toward warmer relations after nearly two decades of acrimony, tension and hostility. Tangible signs of improved ties between Tehran and Riyadh include the numerous visits of Iranian and Saudi officials to each other’s countries...
Change in relations between the US and Iran may be characterised by a supertanker on the high seas. Changing its direction takes a long time and it needs a lot of space.
[Paper was written and published as the introduction to Kalim Siddiqui (ed), Issues in the Islamic Movement 1981-82, London and Toronto: The Open Press, 1983, and reprinted in Zafar Bangash (ed), In Pursuit of the Power of Islam: Major Writings of Kalim Siddiqui, 1996.]
The present anthology is designed to serve as a detailed and reliable introduction to the ideas and pronouncements of Imam Khomeini for those who have no access to the original Persian texts. Imam Khomeini has been a prolific writer and frequent speaker, and this volume represents only a fraction of his total output. We have excluded writings that deal with technical aspects of Islamic jurisprudence and philosophy, although passing reference to such matters inevitably does occur in some of the texts we have translated. We begin with the best-known work of Imam Khomeini, his lectures on Islamic Government, and then proceed to offer a selection of his speeches and declarations, which, chronologically arranged, form an outline documentary history of the Islamic Revolution.
1[Paper presented at a seminar of the same name organized by the Muslim Institute in London on March 1, 1980, to mark the first anniversary of the Islamic Revolution in Iran. Two other papers were also presented at this seminar, by Dr Ali Afrouz and Dr Abdur Rahim Ali. Dr Siddiqui refers to these presentations in this paper. The papers presented at this seminar, and one by Iqbal Asaria presented at an internal seminar of the Muslim Institute, were later published as Kalim Siddiqui et al, The Islamic Revolution: Achievements, Obstacles and Goals, London: The Open Press, 1980. This paper was reprinted in Zafar Bangash (ed), In Pursuit of the Power of Islam: Major Writings of Kalim Siddiqui (London and Toronto: The Open Press, 1996). This version is based on the 1996 printing.]
[Kalim Siddiqui, The state of the Muslim world today, London: The Open Press, 1980. This is the text of a lecture given at the University of Manchester Islamic Society on December 8, 1979. It was reprinted in Zafar Bangash (ed), In Pursuit of the Power of Islam: Major Writings of Kalim Siddiqui (London and Toronto: The Open Press, 1996). This edition is based on the 1996 printing.]
