For most of its history, Shi‘a Islam carried around a tension it never fully settled. The Twelfth Imam was absent, and that absence wasn’t just a theological idea—it shaped how people actually thought about power. If the only fully legitimate authority isn’t present, then anyone who is ruling is, in some sense, provisional. That assumption carried weight. It meant scholars, especially in places like Najaf, handled politics with a certain caution. They weren’t withdrawn from it, but they kept themselves in check. There was a boundary you didn’t cross. You could push back against injustice, even influence events, but you didn’t act as if you could finally set things right ahead of God.

That’s why it’s misleading to call Shi‘a Islam simply “quietist.” There were real moments of political intervention. Clerics helped drive movements like the Tobacco Protest and played visible roles in the Constitutional Revolution. They weren’t passive observers. But even in those moments, they stopped short of claiming full control. The aim wasn’t to take over and rule indefinitely. It was to limit damage, to correct abuses, to stabilize things where possible. Underneath it all, the same assumption held: justice, in its fullest sense, belonged to the Imam. Until he returned, you worked within constraints. Waiting—انتظار—was active in some ways, but it also set boundaries. It told you where action had to stop.

Khomeini only really comes into focus once you see how far he moves past that line. He doesn’t reject political engagement—he intensifies it. What he won’t accept is keeping it contained. In Islamic Government, he makes the case pretty bluntly: if unjust systems continue when people have the ability to change them, that’s not caution—it’s a failure of duty. That’s where things turn. Waiting no longer functions as a brake on action; it starts to justify it. If the Imam isn’t present, then someone still has to take responsibility—for order, for justice, for law. And once you say that out loud, the old limits don’t hold in quite the same way anymore. And once you say that clearly enough, the older limits start to look less like humility and more like avoidance.

This is where velayat-e faqih shifts from a legal concept into something much larger. Shi‘a jurists already had a kind of authority. They dealt with legal questions, looked after certain social responsibilities, stepped in where protection was needed—but it was limited. It didn’t extend to running the whole political system. What Khomeini does is take that existing idea and push it much further. He expands it until it reaches into the entire structure of public life. At that point, the jurist isn’t just someone who advises or interprets the law from the sidelines. He’s the one actually governing. Not because he replaces the Imam—Khomeini never says that—but because someone has to hold things together in the meantime. What used to be fragmented authority becomes centralized. And once that happens, the old gap between illegitimate rule and necessary governance starts to close.

What’s really changing here, though, isn’t just authority—it’s time. Traditionally, Shi‘a thought treated history as unfinished in a very specific way. You lived in it, you acted in it, but you didn’t expect to complete it. Khomeini tightens that gap. He’s not saying he can bring about the end of history. But he is saying that the present doesn’t have to sit at a distance from divine justice the way it once did. It can be shaped, moved closer to it, at least in some real sense. Waiting starts to shift—it becomes something more active, more like preparation. And that preparation isn’t abstract; it begins to take form in institutions, in systems. The future isn’t just something you look toward anymore. It starts to feel like it’s bearing down on the present. And when that happens, politics starts to carry a different kind of urgency.

After 1979, this isn’t theory anymore. It’s built into the structure of the Iranian state. The constitution places the Supreme Leader—a jurist—at the center of political authority, not on the margins. That’s new. Clerics had influenced power before, sometimes heavily, but this is different. Now they govern directly, and they do so with a framework that justifies it theologically. The state becomes more than something to manage or tolerate. It becomes the main vehicle for shaping society according to Islamic principles. And that changes how ordinary believers relate to power as well.

Not surprisingly, this is where the pushback comes in. A number of Shi‘a scholars, especially in Najaf, never accepted this expansion of clerical authority. Figures like al-Khoei, and later Sistani, hold the older line more firmly. For them, there are still lines you don’t cross before the Imam returns. And the issue isn’t just political—it cuts deeper than that. If you move too quickly, if you take on too much authority too soon, you start blurring the difference between what’s temporary and what’s ultimate. That’s the real concern. So the disagreement isn’t just about strategy or how to run a government. It’s about how you understand the moment you’re living in—and what that allows you to do, or not do.

Seen that way, what Khomeini does isn’t get rid of waiting. He changes what it means. انتظار is still there, but it doesn’t function the same way anymore. Instead of holding action back, it starts to push it forward. And once that shift happens, it doesn’t stay contained. It reshapes everything—the theory behind it, the structure of the state, even how the whole project extends beyond Iran. Whether that move solves the problem Shi‘a Islam always faced—or just relocates it into a new form—is still an open question. But it’s hard to miss what changed. Khomeini didn’t just lead a revolution. He forced a tradition that had learned to live with delay to decide what it would do with power now.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)