What comes following has been extracted from a speech delivered by Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei about Imam.
By nature, Imam was a person who advocated and who brought about transformation. As for bringing about transformation, his role was not confined to being a mere teacher and instructor, rather he played the role of a commander active on the field and leading in the true sense of the word. He brought about the greatest transformations in his era which covered numerous areas and fields. I would like to mention some of them today:
First of all, he had the spirit of advocating transformation since long ago. This was not something that emerged in him in the beginning of the Islamic movement in the year 1341. Since his youth, he was an advocate of transformation. An evidence for this is the piece he wrote at the office of the late Vaziri-Yazdi in his youth – when he was in his thirties. Later on, the late Vaziri-Yazdi showed me the same writing.
I have seen it published and many people have access to it today. In that essay, he quotes this holy ayah: “I admonish you on one point: that you do stand up before Allah, in pairs or singly” [The Holy Quran, 34: 46].
This ayah invites the masses of people to rise for the sake of God. He had such a mentality. After that, he put his idea into practice and as I mentioned, he carried out a transformation. He entered the arena of transformation in action, not just in words and in commands.
The changes that he brought about included exerting psychological influence on a group of young seminarians in Qom – I will expand on this issue later on – and urging the masses of the Iranian nation into action.