Islamic Government: Governance of The Jurist - History

History

While in exile in Iraq in the holy city of Najaf, Khomeini gave a series of 19 lectures to a group of his students from January 21 to February 8, 1970 on Islamic Government. Notes of the lectures were soon made into a book that appeared under three different titles: The Islamic Government, Authority of the Jurist, and A Letter from Imam Musavi Kashef al-Qita (to deceive Iranian censors). The small book (fewer than 150 pages) was smuggled into Iran and "widely distributed" to Khomeini supporters before the revolution.

Controversy surrounds how much of the book's success came from its persuasive power, and how much from the political skill and power of its author, who is generally considered to have been the "undisputed" leader of the Iranian Revolution. Many observers of the revolution maintain that while the book was distributed to Khomeini's core supporters in Iran, Khomeini and his aides were careful not to publicize the book or the idea of wilayat al-faqih to outsiders, knowing that groups crucial to the revolution's success—secular and Islamic Modernist Iranians—were likely to be irreconcilably opposed to theocracy. It was only when Khomeini's core supporters had consolidated their hold on power that wilayat al-faqih was made known to the general public and written into the country's new Islamic constitution.

The book has been translated into several languages including French, Arabic, Turkish and Urdu. The one reliable translation in English is generally agreed to be that of Hamid Algar, an English-born convert to Islam, scholar of Iran and the Middle East, and supporter of Khomeini and the Islamic Revolution. It can be found in his book Islam and Revolution or on the internet at . The one other English language edition of the book, also titled Islamic Government, is a stand-alone edition, translated by the U.S. government's Joint Publications Research Service. Algar considers this to be an inferior work, being based on Arabic translation rather than the original Persian as well as being "crude" and "unreliable", and claims its publication by Manor books is "vulgar" and "sensational" in its attacks on the Ayatollah Khomeini.