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Ayatollah Khomeini (1902-89)Iranian religious leader. Born on 24 September 1902, into a family of scholars in Khomein, Ruholla Khomeini became a student of Islam. He studied with Ayatollah Haieri, one of the most important Islamic theologians of his day, and moved with him to Qom. Because of his charismatic personality and ability to preach, Khomeini soon attracted a following, and in 1952 was honoured with the title of Ijihad. He criticised the Western ideas of Shah Reza Pahlavi's regime, especially the emancipation of women. He was arrested when he protested against the 1960s 'white revolution', a series of reforms that were partly intended to reduce the influence of Islam in Iran. In 1964, Khomeini was exiled. He became one of the leaders of the Iranian exile movement in Iraq, where his activities alarmed vice-president Saddam Hussein. He was forced to leave in 1978, after relations between the countries improved. By now, the Ayatollah Khomeini had become the accepted religious leader of the Iranians, receiving visitors and advocating an Islamic theocracy, in which religion would be superior to the state. After the fall of the shah, who was brought down by a popular revolution, Khomeini returned to Iran from Paris on 1 February 1979, and was greeted at the airport by three million Iranians. Guiding the spiritual, political, social and economic development of the new regime, he promoted an Islamic constitution and used the bloody Iran-Iraq War (1980-8) to strengthen his hold on the nation. In practical terms, he was adept at playing off parliament against government, and appealed to the population to make sacrifices to fight the Jihad, or holy war. But military deadlock led him to accept a ceasefire with Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, although he likened this to drinking poison. On 14 February 1989, he issued a fatwa calling on all Muslims to kill the British novelist Salman Rushdie for his allegedly blasphemous and anti-Islamic book The Satanic Verses. His death on 3 July 1989 was widely mourned in Iran, despite the repressive nature of his strictly Islamic regime. |
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