During the first decade of the Islamic Republic, Martyr Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Khamenei served as a member of Parliament and subsequently as president—neither of which was considered a religious office. At the same time, however, Imam Khomeini had appointed him Friday prayer leader of Tehran, and in the first election for the Assembly of Experts for Leadership, he entered the Assembly as one of the candidates elected by the people of Tehran, a position requiring ijtihad at least at the level of partial ijtihad. At the session held on June 4, 1989, some members of the Assembly of Experts also attested to his absolute ijtihad.
Perhaps Martyr Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Khamenei’s first media appearance concerning jurisprudence dates back to January 1988, when he spoke during a Friday prayer sermon about the scope of the Guardian Jurist’s authority and maintained that this authority operated within the framework of the primary rulings of the Sharia. This statement was rejected by Imam Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic and the theorist of the Guardianship of the Jurist. Imam Khomeini regarded Ayatollah Khamenei’s remarks as entirely incompatible with his own views. In a brief letter, Ayatollah Khamenei explained that he regarded Imam Khomeini’s views as among the established principles of jurisprudence and accepted them. In another published letter, Imam Khomeini described Ayatollah Khamenei as a believer in the foundations of the Absolute Guardianship of the Jurist.
Before that, Ayatollah Khamenei had, of course, expressed jurisprudential opinions on various occasions, but none had received widespread media attention. Some of his remarks that also had jurisprudential dimensions were published in the book Art from the Perspective of Sayyid Ali Khamenei in 1988.
Less than two years after that renowned sermon, Ayatollah Khamenei himself assumed the position of Guardian Jurist, and five years later he was introduced as one of the Shi‘i maraji‘ al-taqlid.
In the early 1990s, a request for a fatwa concerning whether workers’ strikes were permissible was published. Several jurists had responded according to their own principles and perspectives. Among them, Martyr Ayatollah Khamenei wrote in response that any action causing the weakening of the Islamic Republic was forbidden.
On June 4, 2010, during the annual address commemorating the anniversary of Imam Khomeini’s passing—which was usually devoted to speeches on the foundational concepts of the Islamic Republic—he discussed the obligation to preserve the Islamic Republic and explained its jurisprudential grounds. He explained that preserving Islam—specifically, pure and undistorted Islam—depended on preserving the Islamic Republic.
Perhaps Ayatollah Khamenei’s most controversial jurisprudential fatwa was his ruling prohibiting the manufacture of nuclear weapons, which went beyond matters of people’s daily lives and reached the international media and the International Atomic Energy Agency. Despite the clear import of verse 60 of Surah al-Anfal—“Prepare against them whatever force and steeds of war you can, by which you may terrify the enemy of God”—Ayatollah Khamenei did not consider the manufacture of nuclear bombs permissible. In a speech delivered on June 3, 2008, he noted that nuclear bombs had no deterrent effect. In fact, his subject-oriented analysis of nuclear weapons, together with his understanding of international relations and the balance among political powers, had led him to conclude that nuclear weapons “cannot be deployed or used” and “have no benefit other than generating the costs of their production and maintenance.” In a gathering of nuclear scientists in 2011–2012, he also explicitly stated that nuclear weapons were not “a source of power.”
Another distinctive fatwa issued by Martyr Ayatollah Khamenei was his ruling prohibiting insults against Sunni sanctities. The martyred Ayatollah was regarded as a scholar committed to Islamic rapprochement and sought to reduce interdenominational tensions. To this end, he maintained clear relations with scholars from other Islamic denominations and gave this matter his full attention in his positions and speeches. In a message issued following the assassination of a Sunni scholar in Kurdistan, he prayed for divine mercy upon that scholar. Likewise, following the martyrdom of Palestinian fighters such as Ismail Haniyeh, he regarded them as martyrs deserving of divine mercy. His fatwa prohibiting insults against Sunni sanctities can also be analyzed within this discourse of Islamic rapprochement. In a recollection narrated by Reza Amirkhani, the Ayatollah described his conduct not as a tactic but as a fundamental conviction.
Perhaps the Ayatollah’s final distinctive jurisprudential opinion was his fatwa permitting taqlid of women, which he expressed in December 2025, several months before his martyrdom, during a speech commemorating the birth of Lady Fatimah al-Zahra (peace be upon her). The martyred Ayatollah’s approach to women’s jurisprudential issues requires a separate discussion.