Forty years after the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the holy city of Qom is once again caught in a struggle over the future of the seminary — and perhaps the country. But while the essence of the clash may not be novel, the camps — and indeed the broader composition of the seminary — have vastly changed.
Sheikh Abdolkarim Haeri Yazdi established the Qom seminary in 1922. After his death, many senior Shiite clerics urged Ayatollah Seyyed Hossein Borujerdi to chair the institution, which he eventually accepted. Soon, Borujerdi became the sole "marja," which is the supreme religious authority in Shiite Islam. Like many of his predecessors, he largely avoided entering politics — partly due to the persecution of activist clergy in the aftermath of the 1905-11 Iranian Constitutional Revolution. Hence, Borujerdi's priority was to rather focus on enhancing the stability and position of the seminary. In this vein, he did not enjoy a good relationship with a number of politically active clerics, such as Ayatollah Abol-Ghasem Kashani as well as the Fada'iyan-e Islam, a group led by cleric Navvab Safavi who was later executed by the shah’s regime.
Borujerdi’s largely apolitical posture earned him the Iranian monarch’s respect, and yet he was also feared. For instance, following the Grand Ayatollah's positioning against the Bahai faith — an "unacceptable" offshoot of Shiite Islam to the clerics — the shah in 1955 ordered the destruction of the national Bahai center in Tehran. Yet after Borujerdi’s death in 1961, the shah decided to send his condolence message to a quietist ayatollah based in Iraq, Seyed Mohsen Hakim, rather than to any of the senior clerics in Iran in a failed effort to strengthen Najaf’s claim to supremacy in its rivalry with Qom.
Around that time, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was a senior teacher at the Qom seminary under the umbrella of Borujerdi. Known as the "foreign minister" of the marja, he had met with the shah — albeit only on religious matters — since his patron had requested that he abstain from entering politics.
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