What comes following are excerpts from statements delivered by Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei regarding Imam Khomeini and the Islamic Revolution.
In my youth, during the time when the movement began to take shape, the Iranian nation was a nation that was not preoccupied with its fundamental issues. They had given up and they were passive.
They did not have an opinion about their personal lives. There was no trace of dynamism, active presence and insistence, on big and important issues, in the behavior and conduct of our people.
However, Imam aroused these qualities in the people. He turned the same submissive and passive nation into a determined nation that pursued its demands.
His inspiring, stirring and stimulating speeches moved the people in a way that they turned into a people with demands.
An example of this pursuance of demands is the events of the year 1341 – when the Islamic movement started – during which time, the people held massive demonstrations in different cities which ended in the events of the 15th of Khordad. On the 15th of Khordad, despite a large-scale massacre, the regime could not extinguish the movement.
And the people continued to stage uprisings until the end. That was an astonishing transformation that had been masterminded by Imam.
Another transformation that Imam brought about was changing the people’s outlook towards religion.
The people used to look at religion as a tool for attending to personal matters and acts of worship. They looked at it as a means to say prayers, to fast, to settle their financial affairs, to get married and to divorce. Religion’s function was that.
They confined the responsibility, function and mission of religion to these issues. However, Imam entrusted religion with the duty of creating a government, a civilization and society and advancing humanity.
As a result, the people’s outlook towards religion changed dramatically.