ABSTRACT
Ayatollah Khomeini and his associates invariably state that the Iranian Revolution began in 1962.1 Also, specific reference is made to that effect in the preamble of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran. But the literature concerning the Islamic Revolution is generally silent about that year and the preceding years. The literature, at the most, dates to the events of June 5, 1963. In effect, those events were the culmination of a movement that began earlier in 1961, found its direction in practice in 1962 and engulfed a wide spectrum of the religious establishment. The main question is how did the Qom Seminary and the religious establishment, that had remained politically aloof until 1961, appear on the political scene within a period of one year, and how was it able to start a movement which was unprecedented on such a scale since the Mossadeq era in the early 1950s? This chapter deals with the developments within the religious community, and in particular within the Qom Seminary after the death of Ayatollah Boroujerdi in 1961, in the process of the rise of political Islam.
