Book of the Week: The Cypress Tree

Kamin Mohammadi explains the appeal of Ayatollah Khomeini’s ideas in 1977 Iran

Khomeini was the answer to the prayers of the oppressed, who were already calling him Imam. In a world that was rapidly changing into something the traditional majority of Iran did not recognise, with everything shifting and changing shape, Khomeini’s particular brand of nationalism offered what the shah’s new world did not: certainty. And the certainty was built on a return to Iran’s traditional culture, of which Shiism was a vital part.

The shah’s brutal oppression of political opposition had left the country with no other viable leaders and Khomeini’s long years in exile had kept him untainted by the changes that had swept through the country so quickly. After Saddam Hussein, at the shah’s request, removed Khomeini from Iraq (the shah rejected the Iraqi government’s offer to have the turbulent priest assassinated), he settled in a suburb of Paris from where, although now many thousands of miles further away from Iran, mass media coverage meant that his message was more available to people in both Iran and the rest of the world than it could have been at home.

The various factions who were clamouring for change – the Marxist groups, the socialist groups, the students, elites and intellectuals – united under Khomeini, seeing in his uniquely austere charisma and ability to communicate with the ordinary people an expedient leader who would, once the harj-o-marj – the peculiarly Iranian brand of chaos – was over, quietly step aside and allow those best qualified for the job of running the country to take over.

The Western media flocked to Khomeini’s headquarters, desperate to understand this new phenomenon. Khomeini, an old man, humble in his robes and turban with an authority in both Islamic jurisprudence and, allegedly, Western philosophy, gave interviews that assured a nervous world that he had no intention of ruling Iran, that the Islamic system of government he proposed would be one based on social justice and freedom of expression, where everyone would be equal.

Far from being a throwback to medieval Islam, Khomeini’s ideas were, in fact, radically modern, adapted from young radical Islamic thinkers such as Ali Shariati, who had been frequently arrested and jailed by the shah until he died in 1977. Shariati, educated in Paris like so many young Iranian intellectuals, had synthesised ideas of Marxism – of class war and revolution – with resurgent ideas of Islam and had in the process revitalised Jalal Al-e Ahmad’s ideas of gharbzadegi – Westoxification.

Shariati harmonised his ideas into strains that resonated with Shiism and advocated that Muslims, instead of just waiting for the return of the Twelfth Imam, should instead work to bring about his return – by fighting for social justice – “Red Shiism”. After Shariati’s death in Southampton where he was exiled from Iran – and which his supporters maintained was the work of SAVAK in spite of the British coroner’s verdict of a heart attack – Khomeini came to represent the marriage of modern and traditional that Iran was looking for, a modernity that sat more comfortably in this deeply devout society.

In his unyielding figure Khomeini managed to embody the two themes that had haunted Iran for nearly a century – tradition (he was a man of God) and modernity (in the Marxist Islam of his followers). With the vitriolic sermons and the uncompromising exterior, Khomeini led the dispossessed and the traditional sections of society, the bazaaris with all their money and influence and the passionate young intellectuals with their burning ideas of freedom and equality.

To most of his followers, political philosophy and theory were not what Khomeini was about. He had appeared to lead them out of oppression, of poverty, of exploitation, and, dispatching with reason altogether, they chose instead to believe that he was the manifestation of an eighth-century Shiite prophecy: “A man will come out of Qom and he will summon the believers to the right path. There will rally to him pieces of iron, not to be shaken by violent winds, unsparing and relying on God.”

For them Khomeini was this man, this unshakeable man with the uncompromising stare whose coming had been foretold. The people of Iran were furious and they were possessed by righteousness. There was a full moon that winter which, it was promised, would bear the face of the Imam Khomeini. His spin machine promised that the moon would show the face of the implacable priest and the people of Iran, in a sort of heinous love with this dark energy that flowed through their veins, looked up at the moon that night and saw – actually were sure they saw – the face of the priest shining down on them.

This extract is from The Cypress Tree: A Love Letter to Iran by Kamin Mohammadi (£12.99, Bloomsbury)

Kamin’s new Idler Academy online course A Brief History of Iran is launched this week and we’ll be chatting to her about the situation for women in Iran today on “A Drink with the Idler”, Thursday 3 February at 6pm London time. Book your tickets here. Free to subscribers.

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