ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Jihad al-Akbar, The Greatest Jihad: Combat with the Self Introduction In New York City on West Broadway there is a bookstore affiliated with a Turkish Sufi order. In the summer of 1993, I purchased a few books there, and one of the other customers, a black man wearing a small white cap began talking with me.

After exchanging Salams , and after I told him that I was working in Iran, he asked me whether I had ever seen a book by Imam Khomeini called Jihad al-Akbar . I told him that although I was not familiar with the work, I thought that it had been translated by Hamid Algar, and included in his collection of translations of Imam’s speeches, Islam and Revolution (Mizan Press).

He was not familiar with that work, but insisted that the Muslims in America had a real need for translations of Imam’s works, and he was particularly interested in Jihad al-Akbar . When I went home, I found that a couple pages of the speeches of Imam which were given in Najaf and later collected under the title Jihad al-Akbar had been translated by Prof. Algar. The following autumn, when I returned to Iran, I found the Jihad al-Akbar had recently published as a small booklet.

This is a work in morals, in Farsi and Arabic, akhlaq . It is not a philosophical work, but a moral exhortation directed toward the seminary students of Najaf, and toward the institution of the seminary, or hawzah ‘ilmiyyah , as well. The work reveals the moral sensitivity of Imam Khomeini, his paternal anxiety regarding the seminarians and his dedication to the institution of the seminary.

Upon reading this work one will discover that along the revolutionary fervor and condemnation of foreign imperialism there can be found a mystic’s taste for spiritual devotions. The waters of ‘irfan (gnosis) run deep in the thought of Imam Khomeini and nourish his moral outlook.