Idea of Ummah in the Eyes of Imam Khomeini (ra)

Recognition of basic keywords in political thinking of Imam Khomeini (ra) is an important passage to desirably know the politico-mental system of a foundation he laid and memorably left behind legally and institutionally after revolution of Iran in 1357 (1978). “Ummah” is known as a word that has Islamic nature and theme and it has been incorporated from religious literature into political thinking of Islamic thinkers, particularly the great leader of the Islamic Revolution. Research done on practical and theoretical works of Imam Khomeini (ra) indicates that the word keeping its religious originality and adopting its Quranic and narrative origin stands together with conceptual changes of the day like the words of nation and nationalism; it can reproduce itself in thinking of Imam Khomeini (ra) by making use of tools of Ijtihad with the time and space exigencies. The present article tries to make a study of idea of Imam Khomeini (ra) in this regard by means of analytic-descriptive method and library-based studies. By checking the old used word literature by Imam Khomeini (ra), one can draw the conclusion that concept of nation is found a marginal concept and in contact with concept of Ummah and he has never negated nationalism in the sense of rule of people or nation in his statements made about nationalism; rather, he has abandoned ethnicism and tribalism and their undesirable effects that result in division and disunity of Islamic Ummah.