providing it with legal-moral guidance in the "Practical Guide" he publishes; and he supervises its financial affairs by appointing his agents (wukala’), mostly recruited from among his disciples in his "study circles," to collect and distribute religious taxes for capital projects in various parts of the Shiite world in accord with his ex‌plicit instructions. Hence, according to a well-established Shiite convention, even before an ayatollah dies, the community leaders have, more or less, formed a con‌ sensus on the next person to occupy that prestigious position so as to provide the necessary continuity in the sensitive and crucial juridical leadership.
In due course, both the supervisory and managerial roles of the mujtahid were legitimized under the juridical doctrine of wilayat al-faqih ("the guardianship of the jurist"), which was strictly limited in scope to the realms of applied Islamic law. This included issuing legal opinions (fatwa) when the mujtahid was consulted; arbitrat‌ing personal conflicts among the community members; and managing the affairs of minors and legally incompetent persons. However, this "guardianship" did not in‌ clude political governance as it came to be interpreted by the Ayatollah Khomeini in response to the quietism of the senior mujtahids in the face of the corrupt govern‌ments of Iran in the ١٩٥٠s.
The highly contested political role under the rubric of "guardianship" of the jurist
was a culmination of the reforms that had been introduced earlier in the century tolegitimize the political involvement of the marja in directing the Shiite society to‌ ward modernization and activist ideas regarding social responsibility in Islam. For the first time in the history of Shiite Islam, Khomeinis juridical inference regard‌ ing the "governance," and not merely the "guardianship," of the qualified jurist en‌ sured the enforcement of Shiite activist ideology in the context of a modem nation‌ state of Iran under the mujtahids social and political leverage.٩
Although al-Khui emerged as an independent, leading authority in Shiite juris‌prudence quite early in his career, his wide recognition as the marja al-taqlid did not materialize until١٩٧٠, the year in which the renowned Ayatollah Muhsin al-Hakim died. In the late ١٩٧٠s, al-Khuis widely acknowledged juridical-spiritual leader‌ ship was faced with the revolutionary call to rise against the unjust governments of the region-a message preached by Ayatollahs Khomeini and Muhammad Baqir al‌-sadr.
return of Khomeini to Iran in February of ١٩٧٩, televised worldwide, provided a first
glimpse of the new political position assumed by a Shiite mujtahid for the Muslim communities around the globe.
The relevance of the marja leadership to the existing social and political conditions became a critical question for the followers. They exerted enormous pressure on al-Khui not only to respond to issues related to the communitys everyday reli‌gious life but also to direct them in political matters, thereby asking him to abandon his heretofore politically cautious attitude toward the rulers of Iran and Iraq. Al-Khui had resisted the revolutionary wave of the ١٩٧٠s. He now had to consider taking a critical stance and confronting the corrupt and oppressive political regimes. It was precisely in the assumption of the activist political role by the marja al-taqlid that al-Khui differed with Ayatollah Khomeini.
In ١٩٧٩, after the Iranian government had criticized al-Khui for his failure to sup‌port the validity of "the governance of the jurist," as advocated by Khomeini, I had