The Idea of Ommah in Imam Khomeini's Political Thoughts

Recognition of major keywords in Imam Khomeini's thoughts is an important path to completely know the intellectual-political collection of the structure which he legally and institutionally built after the revolution of 1979 and left for us. "Ommah" is one of those keywords with religious essence and Islamic feature that came to the political thinking of Islamic thinkers specifically the great leader of our Islamic revolution. The investigation of theoretical and practical works of Imam Khomeini indicates that the word "Ommah" has been able to compete with conceptual changes of the day such as nation and nationalism in addition to maintaining its validity and Quranic origin. In fact, it has reproduced itself employing the instrument of Ejtehad, adjusting itself to the conditions of time and place in Imam Khomeini's thoughts. The present research tried to study Imam Khomeini's attitude employing descriptive-analytical technique and library method. By studying the terminology used by Imam Khomeini, it is concluded that the concept of "nation" is a marginal one, in relation with the concept of "Ommah" In fact, Imam Khomeini has not negated nationalism with the meaning of national authority in his comments, but he has negated ethnicity and clanship and their undesirable impact as the factors of separation among Islamic Ommah.