Applying Political Tolerance in the Leadership Strategy of Imam Khomeini

The beginning of Islamic republic's era in the initial months after the victory of the Islamic Revolution was a unique experience shaped by the combination of republicanism and religious idea in a country with an ancient history and longstanding civilization. The nascent and innovative nature of the new political system in Iran along with the lack of a relevant and internationally acceptable pattern for collaboration between religion and politics in the framework of the theory of nation-state has challenged the dominant paradigm of political secularism. For this reason, we have witnessed the occurrence of internal crises and foreign interventions during the consolidation years of the Islamic Republic of Iran, on the one hand, and the efforts made by the leaders of the Islamic Revolution to explain the principles and foundations of the Islamic Republic, on the other hand. The special situation of the Islamic Republic of Iran in confronting its opponents and engaging with them during internal crises and foreign interventions, has been one of the fundamental problems of Iranian political system since its establishment which has exposed the government to sympathetic, oppositional, and ironic viewpoints focusing on its lack of political tolerance. Given the unrivalled role of the thoughts and political behavior of the founder of the Islamic Revolution in formulating and legitimating policy-making processes, the main question of this article is that why and how the component of political tolerance has been realized in the leadership strategy of Imam Khomeini? The authors while defining the notion of tolerance in Western and Islamic thoughts and stating their meaning differences by using a data-based method and focusing on conceptualization, examine political tolerance as a strategic component in Imam Khomeini's thoughts as a desired model. In the second section, they represent and reinterpret Imam Khomeini's political behavior in confronting its opponents and engaging with them in the three fields of insight, orientation and action, and then, explain and provide the realized model of political tolerance during the first period of the Islamic Revolution to respond the question related to the application of political tolerance in the leadership strategy of Imam Khomeini.