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Name:
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini
Dates:
Born: September 24 1902
Died: 1989
Exiled from Iran: 1964
Returned to Iran: February 1, 1979
Biography:
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (1902?-1989) is famous for having led an Islamic
revolution in Iran and thereafter leading the country from 1979 until his death in 1989.
During this time, Iran was a symbol for fundamentalists throughout the Middle East as
an example of an Islamic revolution which really could succeed at remaking a Westernized
society into an Islamic state - despite the fact that Khomeini was a Shi'ite and most
Muslims, including most fundamentalists are Sunni.
Ruhollah Khomeini was born on September 24, 1902 in Khomein, Iran. He studied theology, like his father Sayyid Mostafa, and then later he moved to becoming a jurist. As a seminary student and teacher from the 1920s through the 1940s he watched Reza Shah Pahlavi, a monarch followed the model of Kemal Ataturk, worked to secularize Iranian society and limit the powers of religious leaders.
Even during the 1950s, Khomeini did not act when Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, the son of Reza Shah, relied upon American power to solidify his hold on Iran. Reza Shah himself had come to power in 1921 with the aid of the Russian government and his son, Mohammad, came to power through the aid of Great Britain, France, and the United States.
It was during this time that Khomeini received the title ayatollah, or supreme religious leader. He came to embrace a more mystical theology of Islam in which he believed that it was necessary to abandon material and earthly pleasures in order to better understand and obey the will of God. In time, his combination of law, logic, philosophy, mysticism and populist politics drew many students and followers.
In 1962, Khomeini's mentor and teacher Ayatullah Mohammed Boroujerdi, died. Boroujerdi had long been a supporter of the traditional policy of clerics being subordinate to political leaders in Iran. Khomeini, however, decided that this was the wrong policy to follow and revealed a yet-unrevealed anger at Iranian politicians and their Western backers. He joined with populist dissenters by attacking the Shah's support of Israel, friendship to America, and un-Islamic policies.
This required him to develop new religious doctrines because traditionally, Shi'ism simply asked that the political leadership remain amenable to religious guidance, not that it become subservient to religious guides. Even at this stage, however, Khomeini's speeches were more warnings to the regime rather than calls for revolutionary action. It was not until the late 1960s that Khomeini developed his new theories about the state and the role of the clergy in Iran.
Between 1964 and 1978 Khomeini lived in exile for criticizing the Shah and sparking riots. First he was in An Najaf, a Shia holy city in northern Iraq, but later he was evicted by Saddam Hussein and moved to a Paris suburb. In 1978, huge demonstrations and strikes rocked cities in Iran - it wasn't just the poor or the extremely religious who were calling upon the Shah to abdicate, but also the middle class, merchants, and members of the military. The Shah continued to try to hold on to power, but his position became hopeless and in January 1979 he fled to the West. Just two weeks later, Khomeini came home in triumph.
Amost immediately, Khomeini worked to remake Iran along his own, religious vision. While in exile he developed an ideal called "Rule of the Jurist,' in which the clergy were called to govern. Gangs of armed vigilantes eliminated the last of the Shah's followers while kangaroo courts eliminated those who lacked sufficient revolutionary zeal. He experimented briefly with a parliament, but ended that quickly when he found that he could not control them well enough. After that, Khomeini called together an "Assembly of Experts" to draft an Islamic constitution.
They, of course, created a state which would be lead by Khomeini (who was named Imam and declared leader of Iran for life) and run by the clergy, despite objections from various Shi'ite religious leaders who still believed that the state should be independent of clerics. Over time, he may have come to better appreciate the validity of these objections because disagreements among the clergy over political matters at times threatened the stability of the Iranian government. Thus, there were occasions when Khomeini called upon them to return to their "proper profession" rather than be involved with government.
In terms of ruthlessness, Khomeini was no less determined and violent than the Shah had been. Thousands in Iran were killed because they did not fit in with or approve of his religious state. Government bureaucracies were run almost entirely by religious students and clerics who could be counted on to strictly follow religious rules and values. Both the military and the police services were purged of possible dissenters and rebuilt upon more narrow, sectarian lines.
Although Khomeini is popularly regarded as a regressive fundamentalist, it has been argued that it would be better understood as a revolutionary populist, more along the lines of populist revolutionaries in Central and South America. According to Ervand Abrahamian, in his book Khomeinism: Essays on the Islamic Republic:
Khomeinism should be seen asa flexible political movement expressing socio-economic grievances, n to simply as a religious crusade obsessed with scriptural texts, scriptural purity, and theological dogma.
Abrahamian certainly does not argue that Khomeini was not religious, but rather that he transformed Shi'ism from a quietist faith into a basis for more militant political activism in pursuit of particular economic and social goals. Both foreign imperial powers and the domestic upper class were challenged in how they used the country and treated the common people.
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Common Misspellings: none
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