The Seed of Sultaniat: When a Leader’s Son Becomes the Throne – Echoes from Muawiya [R.A] to Mojtaba in the Heart of Iran

At last, the name is finalized. Mojtaba Khamenei, the 56-year-old son of the martyred Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has been named the new Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran by the Assembly of Experts. His father, slain barely a week earlier in the fires of a war that shook the region, now passes the mantle not through the free breath of shura, but through the quiet inheritance of blood.
The ancient land of Iran – Persia of the poets, cradle of Cyrus and Darius, keeper of 2,800 years of unbroken sovereignty – stands at this crossroads again. Is this the wisdom of centuries speaking, or the old gate of malukiyat creaking open once more? I am no politician, no diplomat, no emissary of any foreign power. This is pure journalistic opinion, written from the quiet desk of a scribe who loves history more than headlines. And in that love, I say plainly: President Donald Trump, or any other leader beyond Iran’s borders, has no right to dictate, veto, or reject this selection. The Iranian people are a free nation since thousands of years, heirs to a history richer than oil and deeper than any sanction. They carry the wisdom of centuries in their veins. Let them choose. Let their souls decide.
Yet the choice itself invites reflection – not condemnation, but contemplation. For in this moment, the shadow of a 14-century-old decision falls across Tehran like the long twilight of Damascus.
Syed Abual A’la Maududi [Mercy be upon him], the towering Islamic scholar whose pen still cuts through time, wrote precisely of this in his immortal work Khilafat o Malukiyat. In the seventh stage of his analysis – “Muawiyah’s Khilafah and Yazid’s Nomination” – he lays bare the turning point where the radiant Khilafat of the Rashidun transformed, forever, into hereditary malukiyat, into sultaniat. Here is the selected paragraph, the heart of his argument, drawn directly from the book’s core thesis (as rendered in the English translation Islam’s Political Order and confirmed across scholarly editions):
“This change [from Khilafat to monarchy] was brought about by Muawiyah’s succession to the office which was occupied by the sword and not by the free will of the people. He further maintains that this change was strengthened by his nomination of his son Yazid, introducing the practice of nominating a son or sons by the reigning khalifah — a practice which continued till the abolition of the khilafah by Mustafa Kamal Pasha in 1924… If Muawiyah had left the choice of his successor to the free will of the people of knowledge and justice, or allowed them, in his own lifetime, to choose him freely, the advent of Mulukiyat would have been stemmed or stopped altogether; but unfortunately he nominated his son Yazid and that too under threat9 and duress. This fulfilled the Prophetic hadith that the Khilafat would last only thirty years, after which it would become biting kingship (mulkan adudan).”
Syed Abual A’la Maududi [Mercy be upon him] does not rage; he reasons like a surgeon with a lantern. He shows how one nomination – not forced by battlefield alone, but sealed in the quiet chambers of power – opened the gate. The consultative spirit of The Prophet [Peace and blessings be upon him] and the first four Caliphs withered. The sword became crown. The son became successor. And the Muslim world walked for centuries under the shadow of dynasties that called themselves Islamic yet ruled as kings.
Now look across the centuries. The grandson of the founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, might have been the choice – a generational break, a breath of fresh air, a return to the revolutionary spirit that toppled the Peacock Throne in 1979. Some voices in Qom whispered it. A skip in the bloodline could have honoured the founder without chaining the future to one family. But instead, the son of a martyred ruler takes command. Mojtaba Khamenei steps forward. And in that single stride, the seed of the Khamenei dynasty is planted in the soil of the Islamic Republic. Not by foreign hand, but by internal decision. The gate Syed Abual A’la Maududi [Mercy be upon him] warned of – the gate Muawiya first pushed open in 676 CE – swings again in 2026.
Is this kingship? The question is not accusation; it is the mirror history holds up to every nation. The Quran itself speaks with thunderous clarity on how power must flow:
“And those who have responded to their Lord and established prayer and whose affair is [determined by] consultation among themselves…” (Surah Ash-Shura, 42:38).
Shura – consultation – is not a footnote. It is the heartbeat of Islamic governance. The Prophet [Peace and blessings be upon him] practised it even in war. Abu Bakar [R.A] and Umer bin Khatab [R.A] trembled before it. When power passes from father to son without the open, fearless voice of the ummah, the verse asks us gently but firmly: Is this the affair determined by consultation, or by inheritance?
The Hadith of Safina, recorded in Musnad Ahmad and Sunan Abu Dawood, seals the warning The Prophet [Peace and blessings be upon him] gave his ummah fourteen centuries ago:
“The Prophethood will remain among you for as long as Allah wills, then He will lift it. Then there will be Khilafah upon the Prophetic methodology for as long as Allah wills, then He will lift it. Then there will be biting kingship (mulkan adudan), and it will remain for as long as Allah wills, then He will lift it. Then there will be tyrannical kingship, and it will remain for as long as Allah wills, then He will lift it. Then there will be Khilafah upon the Prophetic methodology again.”
Thirty years of true Khilafat, the Hadith says. Then the biting kingship begins. Muawiya’s nomination of Yazid was the first bite. And every hereditary succession since has carried the same taste.
Yet poetry and mysticism remind us that thrones are dust, and true sovereignty lives in the heart. From English literature comes a couplet that could have been written for every ruler who mistakes blood for blessing:
“Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown,”
— William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 2.
How heavy that crown must feel today in Tehran, with the region in flames and the world watching. The head that inherits it may wear it with sincerity, with piety, with love for Iran. But Shakespeare’s line does not judge character; it judges the nature of power itself. Crowns breed unease because they were never meant to pass like family heirlooms.
And here, in the land of Iran, we turn to her own mystic son for the deeper truth. Baba Taher – that 11th-century Persian dervish of Hamadan whose do-bayti still make the soul weep – left us verses that cut through every palace wall:
“I am that sea whose waves are lost in You,
Yet on the shore of kings I find no peace.
The throne is but a cage of golden bars;
The heart that knows You needs no crown, no keys.”
(Translated from his do-bayti on divine love and worldly illusion – a favourite among Iranian mystics even today.)
Baba Taher did not write political treatises. He wrote fire. He reminded every sultan and every seeker that the real khilafat is the vicegerency of the heart under Allah alone. When a nation chooses its leader, it must ask: Does this choice draw us closer to that inner sea, or does it build another golden cage?
I write these words not to wound Iran, but to honour her. The Iranian people have toppled kings before – the Shah in 1979 was no different from the Pahlavis who came before. They rose with the cry of “Independence, Freedom, Islamic Republic!” They rejected hereditary monarchy in the name of faith and dignity. Today, in the shadow of war, assassination, and existential threat, they face the oldest temptation: the comfort of bloodline over the risk of true shura. The choice is theirs alone.
Some will call this column naive. Others will say it ignores realpolitik – the need for stability in crisis, the loyalty of the Revolutionary Guards, the continuity of resistance against external aggression. I hear them. Stability matters. Continuity matters. But when stability is purchased by closing the gate of consultation that the Quran itself commanded open, then history whispers Syed Abual A’la Maududi’s [Mercy be upon him] warning again: the seed becomes a tree, the tree becomes a forest, and one day the forest claims the garden was always meant to be its kingdom.
No matter that Mojtaba Khamenei is a Shia Muslim. This is not the hour for sectarian arithmetic but for civilizational solidarity. The time has come for the leaders of the Muslim Ummah to strengthen his hands by standing hand-in-hand with him. Every leader representing the Muslim world must stand shoulder to shoulder with Iran’s new Supreme Leader.
At this moment Iran is not acting for a particular fiqhi circle, nor for any narrow sectarian constituency. Its confrontation with the United States has been framed in defence of the wider Middle Eastern region. In the recent escalation, Iran’s retaliation was directed primarily toward American bases in the region.
In that sense Mojtaba Khamenei is no longer merely an Iranian figure. History has suddenly pushed him into a broader role. For millions across the Muslim world, he now stands as a watchful guardian in a moment when the dignity and sovereignty of the entire region are being tested. Whether one agrees with Tehran’s theology or not, the political moment demands unity of voice and clarity of purpose.

The heart that carries history beats beyond thrones and crowns,
And even the desert wind knows which way the soul of a nation leans.