Imam Khomeini’s Last Will and Testament

If you consider the afflictions of this Islamic Republic, such as plots and conspiracies, malicious propaganda, armed attacks from across the borders and by others inside our country, the unavoidable infiltration of certain corrupt people and opponents of Islam in all government organizations for rousing the people against Islam and the Islamic Republic, the lack of experience of all or the majority of administrators of the Islamic government, the airing of malicious rumors by those who are now unable to reap the unjust profits such as they did during the previous regime or who pocket less than they did at that time, the acute shortage of religious judges, the onerous economic burdens, the colossal problems in the administrative purging affecting several million employees as well as their ideological reformation, the shortage of well-wishing experts, and tens of other problems which may not be known by anybody except by those who themselves are in the scene, the mal-wishing monarchists and owners of large amounts of capital who engage in usury, outrageous profiteering, sending out foreign exchange, smuggling and hoarding and thereby pressuring the impoverished and deprived masses of the society and leading the society to corruption; who at times come to you for campaigning dishonestly and for cheating you, occasionally pretending to be true Muslims by handing over sums of money to you as religious tariffs on their shoulders, who shed crocodile tears and make you angry and rouse your feelings against the Islamic government- many of them privately sucking the blood of people by illegitimate profiteering and crippling the national economy; I only humbly advise them in a spirit of brotherhood to guard against falling prey to such gossipy rumors, and instead uphold this Islamic Republic for the sake of God and Islam, and I must remind them that if this Islamic Republic should happen to collapse it will not be replaced by an Islamic government having the seal of approval of the Imam of Our Time, or doing according to the wishes of people like you, but that the regime to substitute this Islamic Republic will be one such as is the wish of either of the two superpowers.
At that time, the deprived masses of the world who have placed their trust in Islam and the Islamic system of government and who look to it as their refuge will be disappointed and frustrated and it will be too late then for making good on past mistakes. If you people expect to see things being reformed according to the principles of Islam and to divine decrees overnight then you are in error, for never at any time in the past did men witness such a miracle, nor are they likely to experience that overnight transformation any time in the future.
Do not allow yourselves to think that once, God willing, the Last Reformist should make his advent then the people will witness the miracle of a universal reformation in only one day, but even at that time the tyrants will be suppressed and isolated only as a result of the self¬ sacrificing efforts of the people. If, however, you belong in the circle of those aberrant and ignorant people who maintain that to speed up the advent of the Imam of Our Time we should try to spread injustice and tyranny throughout the world as the preliminary requisite for his advent, then why, of course, We are all from God and to Him shall we return.
Q. My last word to Muslims and oppressed masses of the world is: You should not sit back and expect to be gifted with independence and freedom by the people at the helm of your country or by the foreign powers. At least during the present century, which has witnessed the gradual coming of the big world¬ devouring powers to all Muslim countries as well as to other [third world] countries, you and we have observed or read in true history books that hardly any one government in those countries was concerned about the freedom, independence and welfare of its own people, nor are they so at the present time.
On the contrary, the large majority of those governments have either tyrannized and strangulated their own people, doing so to safeguard only the interests of a few or a small group or for the welfare of the well-to¬ do upper class society in the face of the deprivation of tyrannized people and of those living in reed shelters and pit-dwellers who are denied all comforts of life and even such things as water, bread and the means of daily sustenance; and exploiting the oppressed masses only for the benefit of the well-to-do class and fun-making people; or [they] have been puppet governments of the big powers which have done everything in order to subjugate countries and nations and make them dependent countries, only markets for the products of the Western or Eastern bloc countries, protecting the interests of the latter and keeping nations backward and consumption¬ oriented. Even today they are pursuing the same plot.
You oppressed masses of the world, you Muslim countries and you Muslims Rise to your feet and get your dues with your teeth and claws, defying the noisy propaganda of the superpowers, and expel the criminal men and the helm who give out the fruits of your toil to your enemies and the enemies of Islam, and let the self¬ committed and serving sectors of the society take the helm of your country, all joining together under the dignifying banner of Islam and rising against the enemies of Islam, marching towards an independent and free Islamic Republic and resting assured that the realization of the proposition would mean the subjugation of all oppressors of the world, and helping the oppressed masses to become leaders and inheritors of your lands. Let us hope for the advent of that day which the Supreme Lord has promised us.
R. At the conclusion of this last Will and Testament of mine I wish to remind the noble nation of Iran that man toils, and suffers and performs acts of self-sacrifice and self-abnegation to the extent of the loftiness and worthy sublimity of his goal.
What you rose for, what you pursue, what you sacrifice your lives and your means for is the noblest of all goals since the creation of the universe throughout eternity. It is the divine ideology in the extended sense of the word and the idea of the unity of God in its lofty magnitude, which is the foundation and the final goal of the earthly world and of the Invisible and which idea is fully crystalized in the Muhammadan faith, and which was the goal of all leading prophets (A.S.W) and is something without which man will not attain absolute perfection or find reunion with the Absolute Glory and the Infinite Beauty of His Divinity.
It is this very same thing which has exalted earthlings beyond the rank of those in the Kingdom of God, and the journey to that very destination by an earthling has a consequence unique solely to him and not to any of His other creatures, visible or invisible. You struggling people, you are marching under a banner hoisted throughout the material and the spiritual world.
Whether or not you will realize what your quest is, you will have marched on the same road that was the path of all prophets (A.S.W.) and is the only road to absolute salvation. It is this same motive which prompts all saints to embrace martyrdom on that path and which makes the sanguine death sweeter to them than honey15.Your youngsters have taken a gulp of that in the battlefronts and have felt elated at doing so, the effect of which is also manifest in their mothers, sisters, fathers and brothers. Truly we must say: Blessed be they with that cheerful zephyr and with that inspiring sign.
We must remember also that one aspect of this divine revelation is manifest to all who struggle in such other places as the blazing farmlands, factories, workshops and in the centers for industries and technological developments, and to the majority of those who engage in our markets, in our city streets, in our villages and to all others who have assumed a task for the cause of Islam, the Islamic Republic and for helping the country move towards self¬ sufficiency. God willing, as long as the spirit of cooperation prevails in our society our country will be protected from all worldly harm.
Thanks God our theological schools, our universities, our beloved youth and our educational and learning centers are gifted with this divine gift; those centers are under their total command and the hands of criminals and deviated people are very far from those centers.