Parviz Keramat, a Muslim intellectual from New Zealand was among honorable foreign guests who attended the 26the heavenly anniversary of passing away ceremony of Imam Khomeini in Tehran.
What follows is a rough transcript of the first part of an interview with the scholar:
Q: First of all, you’re welcome to presence at this ceremony and let me continue the rest of this interview with another question. How did you become familiar with the personality of Imam Khomeini for the first time?
- When I was a young man, I was following the changes that were happening in Iran and I was very curious about how things are changing. At that time Iran was one of the most important countries in this region. I used to watch it directly at that time and I was watching it very carefully how things are happening here and what are the qualities of a leader, in fact. Because I teach leadership, I always try to see what the qualities of a good leader are. And I think a good leader is someone who is able to head people from others willingly. That’s really why he [Imam Khomeini] was a great leader. The great change I’ve seen here, especially the women was transformed. Every time I see a woman here, they are very well-dressed. They are very confident about it, that doing all the jobs here, they are driving, they are doing anything. But covering themselves, they are dignified and I think that’s a big change, and that’s a change that isn’t happened in the rest of the Islamic world, even in Arab area, they used have been not ready very much that taking it for granted but here I feel a lot of disciplines of very clean city.
- In fact when I came out of the airport, it’s a really give you a feel of a big country, and a country which is full of resources. The roads are very clean, in fact the weather is so good but, you feel a bit different between here and the….When I stopped in Bahrain, and Canada to come here, I found a big change. And I think those are due to the leadership qualities of imam Khomeini and I like to go back and write may be same articles about this issue, giving it to people in New Zealand and my student. Because I think most of my people in New Zealand doesn’t have enough knowledge and not present it properly. That’s exactly what I want to do, to pick up my impression. Write them in some kind of articles and publish it to papers and will give it to my students.
Q: As you mentioned, that you are familiar with the qualities of the good leader and teaching leadership is the field of study you are doing at the university. How do you think that the dynamic thought of Imam Khomeini has helped the current movements over the region and inspired the Muslim world?
- That’s exactly why I am here, to be able to collect and update my knowledge, but I think he was a very moderate leader, because that is exactly what he did. In fact that was a very difficult time when Iran was attacked also by Iraq and we had a very big war & in fact it was run by Iran & shown that even the younger part of the country can be mobilized, and they can stand, and they can defeat any bigger military. I think that is exactly where the leader is image; there are challenges at that time. We had a lot of challenges, and I think all the challenges were very well-fulfilled & I’ll be able to contribute go to enters, presentations and seminars and read more about it. I’ll be able to do all together because I have very good friends there & I would like to see how many qualities Imam Khomeini had and then I’ll come back and will mail you some of my impressions.
(Continues)