The paradise which is given to man for the sake of moral...

The paradise which is given to man for the sake of moral excellence is the paradise of Attributes, incomparable to the physical paradise of Act.[4] Ethics, with this peculiar status, has always had Imām Khomeinī’s attention.

From the very beginning when he was a regular teacher up to the time when he was in the midst of the political arena, led the people’s uprising, and established the Islamic Republic, he always paid particular attention to morality, and viewed almost all socio-political issues from the moral perspective.

His recommendations and political messages to the officials and the people speak for this, and these [recommendations] can be treated, apart from the occasion of their issuance, as profound moral lessons from which we can learn. However, from his point of view morality cannot be restricted to some recommendations and decrees. Rather, it is anchored in profound philosophical, theosophical and anthropological principles and precepts. His view on morality is a philosophical one.

It is in this sense that he keenly scrutinizes moral vices and virtues, discusses them wisely, and enumerates the benefits and harms of this and that item.

In fact, he has a remarkably profound belief in religious morality and uncovers vices and virtues from the heart of the narrations [ ahādīth ] from the Infallibles [ ma‘sūmīn ][5] ( ‘a ); nevertheless, he does not content himself with the tradition of quoting, but perfectly utilizes intellect in analyzing these narrations [ ahādīth ] and in elucidating moral concepts.

This mode of striking a balance between the intellect [ ‘aql ] and narration [ naql ], which has been acceptable to the great Shī‘ah scholars, is very manifest and conspicuous in the moral discourses of the Imām. Anyone who assiduously scrutinizes the ethical and gnostic works of the Imām can deduce his system of ethics. The truth of the matter is that he has based his code of ethics and mystical-moral understandings on theoretical principles, which he does not specify so much.

In the same manner that he juxtaposes the fragments of a riddle with one another, so also the researcher must carefully find these principles and place them together. In doing so, he could present the Imām’s code of ethics, which is rooted in a long-standing tradition and founded on the great gnostic and ethical heritage of the Muslim mystics and teachers of ethics. The writer of these lines has tried his best to accomplish this task to the best of his ability.