What comes following are excerpt from Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei about Imam and history of Islamic Revolution.
The Qom issue revolves around his ethics classes. Before the advent of the Islamic movement, he used to teach ethics, apart from fiqh and usul and rational sciences, in Qom for years.
He would hold classes on ethics. Of course, when I went to Qom, those classes had ended, but those who had participated in them recounted that – he had a class once a week at Feyziah School where youth would gather together to participate in his classes – when he began to speak, the whole class would be deeply moved.
He would deeply move hearts. Of course, I saw this quality of Imam in his fiqh and usul classes as well. When he gave moral lessons in the middle of his fiqh and usul courses, the clergy would cry and shed tears. When he had a moral discussion, the clergy would weep. His words were touching and he possessed the talent to revolutionize hearts.
This was the method of prophets as well. Prophets also began their mission by revolutionizing people..
The Commander of the Faithful says, “…To fulfil the pledges of His creation, to recall to them His bounties, to exhort them by preaching, to unveil before them the hidden virtues of wisdom and show them the signs of His Omnipotence” [Nahjul Balaghah, Sermon 1]. “To fulfil the pledges of His creation” means that prophets awakened people’s hidden nature which acted as a force to guide their actions and their moves.
Imam began his movement like this as well. Of course, I cannot say for sure that he held those classes in order to launch a great Islamic movement later on. I do not know this, but what is certain is that our magnanimous Imam’s method was to awaken spiritual instincts and human nature by teaching moral lessons, giving words of advice and keeping hearts prepared.
This was how he began his movement which resulted in bringing about a transformation at a national level.
He transformed the Iranian nation, in the true sense of the word, whether during the time of revolutionary activities or after the victory of the Revolution. I will cite some examples of these transformations later on.
Notice that his transformation addressed the whole Iranian nation. Before the beginning of Imam’s revolutionary movement, there were some political activities in Iran.
There were different groups who had been fighting for tens of years, but their sphere of influence was confined to a few students. They could at most influence 100, 150 students and organize them for a small demonstration.
However, Imam did not want to focus on a small group of people with a particular profession, rather he wanted to address the whole Iranian nation.
A nation is like an ocean. Not everyone can move an ocean. You can do something to create waves in a pool of water, but doing so in an ocean is a gigantic task. A nation is like an ocean and Imam managed to move it. He succeeded in carrying out a transformation.