The Intelligentsia, the Clerics, and the Bazaaris: Clerical Discontentment with the Islamic Republic
Most of Iran's grand ayatollahs are now dead. But in their lifetimes none of them referred to Khomeini as imam, a title that in Iran has been reserved for the twelve direct descendants of the Prophet Mohammad. Khomeini's notion of an omnipotent religio-political leader, who can, if the need arises, even order the violation of the Sharia,9 was rejected by eleven of the twelve grand ayatollahs living in 1981 (Montazeri excepted). Some of the grand ayatollahs, notably Abol Ghassem Khoi and Kazem Shariatmadari, directly opposed Khomeini, while others, such as Mohammad Reza Golpayeghani, Haj Hassan Ghomi, Mohammad Shirazi, and Najafi Mar'ashi, distanced themselves from the regime and refused to accept official posts (Roy, 1994, p. 173).
The schism between Iran's traditionalist clergy and Ayatollah Khomeini came to the fore shortly after the success of the revolution. The grand ayatollahs were unanimous in expressing disenchantment with the Assembly of Experts (packed with Khomeini's proteges), which had been convened to revise Iran's 1906 Constitution, when the assembly produced an entirely new draft modeled after Khomeini's velayat-e faqih concept. By far the most devastating denunciations against the new constitution emanated from the liberal Grand Ayatollah Shariatmadari, who favored the creation of "a pluralistic political system . . . where elected officials, not the ulama, would wield . . . power, and where the clergy would interfere in politics only when the state grossly violated the Sharia" (Abra-hamian, 1989, p. 45). Shariatmadari attacked the Constitution for being at odds with the Sharia and the notions of democracy and popular sovereignty. He also reiterated the view that members of the clergy should be above politics so that they can fulfill their essential duty of guarding Islam. Meanwhile, the conservative Grand Ayatollah Ghomi argued that Khomeini and his followers had "monopolized the mosques, [made] a mockery of Islam, and encouraged corruption".
