Khomeini and Muhammad Shirazi (1928-2001): From Velāyat-e Faqīh to Shawrā-ye Foqahā’

Among the various transnational factions within contemporary Twelver Shiism, the so-called Shiraziyyin constitute a loose network of clerical families, their followers and political groups who adhere to the religious and socio-political teachings of Mohammad Shirazi and his younger brothers. Stemming from a prominent clerical family of Iranian descent, based in Karbala, Shirazi challenged the pre-eminence and political quietism of the clerical establishment in Najaf in the 1960s. Initially with close ideological ties to Khomeini, Shirazi settled in Qom in 1979. After the Islamic Revolution, the Shiraziyyin played a significant role in exporting Khomeini’s ideology and in mobilising Shia communities in the Gulf. However, Shirazi grew increasingly disillusioned by the Iranian regime and was one of the few Qom-based clerics who rejected the Islamic Republic’s autocratic tendencies openly in the 1980s.
This paper discusses Shirazi’s socio-political views in the context of late 20th century Shii political thought and in relation to Khomeini’s velāyat-e faqīh. Already in the early 1960s, Shirazi advanced a collective and consultative leadership role for jurisconsults in an Islamic state in his notion of shawrā-ye foqahā’. Shirazi concluded from the collective deputyship of the ‘olamā’ during the occultation of the Hidden Imam that they should also exercise collective and consultative executive power in an Islamic state. Shirazi’s notion of the collective leaderships role of jurisconsults influenced Khomeini’s own conception of clerical political authority in the latter’s Ḥokūmat-e Eslāmī and found its manifestation in the 1979 Constitution of the Islamic Republic. However, from the late 1980s onwards, Shirazi presented his understanding of the socio-political authority of the jurisconsults as an alternative to Khomeini’s velāyat-e faqīh in order to voice his increasing opposition to the Iranian regime.