Private Property

In his forty-six years of political activity, Khomeini shifted ground on many issues, but he remained remarkably steadfast on the

crucial issue of private property. In his first major work, Kashf al-Asrar, he argued that Islam "protects private property" and by definition opposes dictators, who by their very nature threaten personal possessions.^[2] Nevertheless, he argued, governments are necessary because human beings are naturally evil — greedy, egoistic, dangerous, and rapacious. Without government, there would be no law and order; without law and order, there would be no security for life and property. He also argued that God had endowed man with private property, and consequently, no one had the right to deprive another of this divine gift. He underlined this theme by reminding his readers that the sacred law categorically safeguarded private property, and since the sacred law was divinely inspired, it followed that no earthly power had the right to interfere with private property.

Kashf al-Asrar favored not only private property but also the propertied middle class. It urged the government to set up a special fund to help bankrupt businessmen.^[3] It further urged the government to stop levying import-export duties on Iranian merchants on the grounds that such taxes were burdensome, unlawful, and against the interests of free trade.^[4] It should be noted that Khomeini wrote Kashf al-Asrar at the request of a group of wealthy bazaaris who had opposed Reza Shah's policy of building a centralized secular state.^[5]

In Towzih al-Masa'el, Khomeini continued the long Shii tradition of protecting private property in doctrinal issues. While discussing in what circumstances Muslims could be exhumed, he argued — as his predecessors had — that such a drastic act would be justified if the body was buried with someone else's belongings or in someone else's land without their permission.^[6] In short, respect for property was more important than respect for the dead. In discussing the hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca), he advised — again like his predecessors — that the expensive venture should be undertaken only by those who had enough "land, business, and real estate" to afford the trip.^[7]

In Velayat-e Faqih, Khomeini again stressed that the sacred law protected private property. He emphasized that the security of one's home was inviolable; that Islamic government, unlike

dictatorships, could not confiscate personal belongings; and that the highest religious authorities could not take from the faithful one cent more than permitted by the sacred law. Not even Prophet Mohammad and Imam Ali had had the authority to trample over people's lives and property.^[8] The Velayat-e Faqih was first presented as a series of lectures in the main bazaar mosque in Najaf. It should also be noted that Khomeini's main financial supporter in these years in Najaf was a wealthy Iranian merchant.^[9]

Similar ideas can be found throughout his public statements. In 1963, in commemorating a student massacre in Qom, he argued that since Islam gives full protection to people's property and homes, Muslims had the right to take up arms and, if necessary, to kill to defend their homes.^[10] In 1964, in his famous anti-Capitulations proclamation that prompted his deportation, he accused the shah of handing the country's bazaars over to America and Israel.^[11] In 1967, in his Moharram message, he argued that the so-called White Revolution was bankrupting the bazaars and the reputable merchants.^[12] In 1971, during the celebrations for 2,500 years of monarchy, he protested that the shah was extracting huge sums from respectable bazaaris to pay for his extravaganzas.^[13]

In 1978, while in Paris living in the house of a wealthy businessman, he told European journalists that the shah wanted to destroy the merchants because Iranians as a whole had high regard for their bazaars.^[14] In 1979, during the collapse of the old order, he reminded the country, especially the Revolutionary Guards, that they could not violate the sanctity of citizens' homes and land.^[15] He also argued on a number of occasions that Islam, unlike communism, recognized private property; that his followers had no intention of confiscating factories and farms;^[16] that the Islamic Revolution, unlike others, would not endanger people's possessions;^[17] and that the new order, in sharp contrast to the old one, would fully respect the privacy of people's homes.^[18]

In 1980, in the midst of the revolutionary turmoil, Khomeini again stressed that "wealth is a gift from God."^[19] He emphasized that the new republic, unlike the Qajar and Pahlavi monarchies,

would not treat the country as a "feudal fiefdom";^[20] and that no one, not even the clergy, had the right to violate people's farms, houses, and orchards.^[21] In 1981, he frequently reminded the public that the shah had been determined to destroy small businessmen^[22] and that without national independence there would be no real protection of private property.^[23] In the same year, he issued with much publicity his famous Eight-Point Declaration, which ordered the revolutionary authorities to fully respect people's "movable and immovable possessions," including their homes, stores, workshops, farms, and factories.^[24] They were even told not to tap the telephones of or otherwise spy on private homes.

Of course, it is true that revolutionary tribunals in this period often expropriated wealth, especially agribusinesses, large factories, and luxury homes belonging to the former elite. But it is also true that in expropriating this wealth, the tribunals carefully avoided challenging the concept of private property. Instead they accused their victims of political misdeeds, especially conspiring against the revolution. They were attacking not wealth per se, but wealthy individuals suspected of "counterrevolutionary crimes." In this regard, the Islamic Revolution behaved in much the same way as the English, French, and American revolutions. Few would describe these Western revolutions as threats against the bourgeois concept of private property.

Khomeini reiterated his commitment to private property in the last years of his life. He warned that judges who did not respect Muslim lives, property, and honor would be punished in this as well as the next world;^[25] if the Iraqis won the war, they would plunder people's possessions;^[26] if the Eight-Point Declaration was ignored, citizens' homes and privacy would be endangered;^[27] and if the new regime violated "private property" as the previous one had done, it would meet the same fate.^[28] Finally in his Vasiyatnameh-e Elahi va Siyasi, he reminded the government that Islam "recognizes private property," free enterprise would turn the "wheels of the economy," and this, in turn, would produce "social justice" for all, especially the poor. "Islam," he proclaimed, "differs sharply from communism. Whereas the former respects private property, the latter advocates the sharing of all things — including wives and homosexuals."^[29]

Ayatollah Mohammad Beheshti, the chief architect of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic, reflected Khomeini's views in many ways. In a series of articles entitled "Islam and Private Property," Beheshti argued that the Koran and the Shii traditions protect legitimate wealth (as opposed to illegitimate wealth, obtained by robbery, extortion, and prostitution) for the simple reason that human labor was the source of all such property.^[30] This labor, he explained, was physical work, mental work, such as accountancy, or public service (khedmat), especially trade and commerce. Some citizens became wealthier than others as a result of their hard work, their talent, or inheritance. Economic inequalities, especially in wages and salaries, could also be increased by legitimate market forces. Individuals, not society, owned property. The state, however, as the guardian of the community, was entitled to supervise "common property," namely, irrigation water, natural resources, and wastelands. The state could also intervene in the marketplace if the forces of supply and demand created "extreme" inequality in wages and salaries.

Similar arguments can be found in the works of Ayatollah Morteza Motahhari, a leading member of the Islamic Revolution, who, upon his assassination in 1979, was praised by Khomeini as "my son," "the product of my life," and "the outstanding thinker, philosopher, and senior jurist of Islamology."^[31] According to Motahhari, God created private property, and therefore, the state has the divine duty to scrupulously respect it.^[32] The state, of course, could collect legitimate taxes, dispose of wastelands, expropriate stolen goods, administer communal property, mine natural resources under the soil, regulate the sacred law's directives on inheritance, and, under exceptional circumstances, intervene in the marketplace to help the needy. Khomeinists hailed this as Islamic economics; skeptics could well describe it as conventional bourgeois economics tempered with a dose of welfare paternalism. This heavy emphasis placed on property rights undermines the claim made both by some Khomeinists and by Orientalists that Islam inherently advocates socioeconomic egalitarianism.

Although the Khomeinists resemble the Western bourgeoisie in their respect for private property, the two differ in their premises.

The latter, especially the Enlightenment philosophes, base their arguments on the theory of natural law, insisting that man is born with the inalienable right to liberty and property. The former, while sanctifying wealth as a "divine gift," tend to dismiss natural law as an alien and secular notion. The latter view mankind as naturally rational, even good, and, therefore, capable of respecting the rights of others. The former see the average human being as basically sinful — corrupt, greedy, irrational, and, in Khomeini's own words, "even more dangerous than the wildest jungle animals."^[33] In this respect, Khomeini resembled Saint Augustine, Edmund Burke, and Joseph de Maistre, an early proponent of fascism, more than he did the Enlightenment philosophes.

These premises help explain why so many members of the Iranian bourgeoisie leaned toward authoritarian conclusions — conclusions that did not become self-evident until well after the Islamic Revolution.^[34] The concept of natural law had liberated the Western bourgeoisie from the shackles of royal absolutism. The rejection of natural law meant that the Iranian bourgeoisie had no choice but to protect their possessions by appealing to the divine law and, thereby, linking property rights to the existence of a clerical state. The problem was compounded further by the fact that those who rejected natural law could not resort to the dominant traditional institutions to defend property rights — as Burke and others in Europe had done. After all, the monarchical institutions in Iran were reputed to have been gross violators of private property.

Thus, if property was a divine gift, as Khomeini argued, then the government, as long as it was God's government, had the ultimate right to defend and oversee private property. If mankind was inherently evil, irrational, and violent, then individual liberty was an open invitation to social chaos. Democracy paved the way to anarchy. Unbridled pluralism invited internal disorder. If individuals were instinctively rapacious, then strong authority was needed to preserve private property.^[35] Without authority, social groups, as well as individuals, would violate the rights of others. Without guidance, the average person would be led astray by bestial passions; the average person, like orphans,

widows, and the mentally incompetent, needed constant supervision.

Without the ever-present fear of the state, especially of the executioner, citizens would be tempted to violate their neighbors' rights and possessions. In light of this jaundiced view of human nature, one can view the imposition of public whippings and amputations not so much as the reintroduction of the medieval "discourse" on crime and punishment (in the Foucaultian sense) as the introduction of a modern, but fascistic, concept of political power: the essence of the state is the public executioner.^[36] It should be noted, however, that some mavericks, such as Najafabadi, the controversial author of Shahid-e Javid and Hokumat-e Salihan, have tried to reconcile Shiism with the concepts of natural law, reason, and social contract.^[37] Time will tell how far this line of argument can go.