The shu’ubiyya movement originates from the early days of Islam. Its main purpose was to challenge the Arabic elite by showing prominent abilities in non-Arabic groups. The movement disappeared in the eleventh century. In the twentieth century a new wave of shu’ubiyya thoughts reappeared called neo-shu’ubiyya. The twist however was that it was used by the Arabs as derogatory term against their rivals. One accused as a shu’ubiyya was Ayatollah Khomeini, the leader of the Iranian revolution. He never proclaimed to be shu’ubiyya yet the Arabic elite still used it against him. This study compares Ayatollah Khomeini’s speech Message to the Pilgrims from the 1980s with the shu’ubiyya member Ibn Garica’s risala from the eleventh century in al-Andalus. The purpose of the study is to question that Ayatollah Khomeini can be seen as a true shu’ubiyya. By examining their messages the study tries to understand how the shu’ubiyya discourse has evolved in fields such as the sacred, traditions, history and the surrounding world. The result shows that part of Ayatollah Khomeini’s argumentation is similar to that of Ibn Garcia, but that his main purpose deviates too much to be called shu’ubiyya. Ibn Garcia tries to turn the Arabic “us against them” upside down and show how superior the non-Arabs are in comparison. He argues that this should allow the non-Arabs to join the Arabic culture. Ayatollah Khomeini has no desire to enter the Arabic discourse instead he asks all Muslims to unite in his new discourse for the greater god of Islam. The claims of the Arabic elite that Iran is the enemy in a “us against them” scenario is not true according to Ayatollah Khomeini. He tries to change the established view of the Iranian as “them”, and instead make all Muslims “us” and the Americans “them” by showing their evil interactions in the middle east. He wants all Muslims to join together by the core of Islam. The trend goes from a more cultural approach to be completely theological.