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But from discussions with former students, talks with Western scholars who have visited Khomeini, profiles prepared by Western intelligence analysts, and the speeches and interviews he has given during his year on the world stage, it is possible to gain some insight into the Ayatullah's thinking. First and foremost, all sources agree, he is an Islamic mystic who believes that God tells him directly how to apply the principles of the Koran and the Shari'a (Islamic law) to life and politics.
For Khomeini, the essence of the mystic attitude is detachment—serenity in accepting and preaching God's will. He does feel emotion; intimates insist that with students and his family, he weeps, laughs and even cracks jokes. In public, however, Khomeini will not permit himself to display joy, sorrow, rage or any other emotion. His angriest words are delivered in a soft, uninflected voice that seldom rises above a murmur.
And what is it that Khomeini's God commands? An all-embracing code of behavior. Says Chicago's Zonis, who is preparing an English translation of one of the Ayatullah's major works: "It is a rigorous, minute, specific codification of the way to behave in every conceivable circumstance, from defecation to urination to sexual intercourse to eating to cleaning the teeth. Khomeini does give attention to human frailties; he says, in essence, 'If you don't do it this way, well, if you feel bad, that's okay.' But the scheme is appallingly oppressive to us Westerners, in that there is a right way and a wrong way to do everything."
As in personal routines, so in politics: to Khomeini the only just state is one ruled by Islamic theologians, who alone can be trusted to interpret God's commands correctly. There is no separation of church and state, or division between sacred and secular, in Islamic teaching. The Ayatullah, however, carries his theocratic vision much farther than most other Muslim scholars by insisting on the clergy's duty, not just to pass moral judgment on the acts of government, but to rule the state directly—a concept enshrined in the constitution that Iran adopted last month. The ideal Islamic government, Khomeini has declared many times, was the five-year reign over the Arabian peninsula of Muhammad's son-in-law Ah', who died in A.D. 661.
Khomeini's zeal for theocracy has led to the charge that he is seeking to drag Iran back to the Middle Ages. One scholar argues instead that the Ayatullah is something of an innovator in his application of the Shari'a to contemporary situations. Certainly his justification of the students' seizure of the hostages has no precedent in Muslim jurisprudence. Although he can be mysteriously vague about programmatic approaches to specific political and economic issues, Khomeini has a social philosophy that Hamid Enayat of Oxford sums up in this manner: "The country should be content with a simple way of life. His ascetic example should be the standard for all Iran." Says an American scholar: "He has an earthy sense of justice. He is for private property, cheap'meat and electricity and plenty of water. That makes him an Iranian populist. He has a George Wallace sense of how people think."