Khomeini, Ruholla

Khomeini, Ruholla (b. 24 Sept. 1902, d. 3 June 1989). Iranian revolutionary leader Born in Khomein into a family of scholars, he became a student of Islam with one of the most important Islamic theologians at the time, Ayatollah Haieri, with whom he moved to Qom. He soon attracted a following through his charismatic speeches, and in 1952 gained the high honour of becoming an Ijtihad. Critical of Shah Reza Pahlavi's secular regime since the 1940s, he was arrested for his protests against the ‘White Revolution’, which was partly designed to reduce the influence of Islam in Iranian society. He was exiled in 1964. He became one of the leaders of the Iranian exile movement in Iraq, which he was forced to leave in 1978, following an improvement in Iran–Iraq relations. By now the accepted religious leader of his people, the Ayatollah advocated the establishment of an Islamic theocracy in response to the Shah's ‘alien’ Western regime. Church and state should not only be indistinguishable, but the former should be superior to the latter.

On 1 February 1979 he returned to Iran after the fall of the Shah and guided his country's revolutionary social, legal, and political development until his death. He supervised the enactment of an Islamic constitution, and used the Iran–Iraq War, which he proclaimed to be a ‘holy war’, to strengthen his own spiritual and political authority. In practical politics, he heeded a deep mistrust of politicians, and thus maintained his power by playing off parliament against the government. The longevity of the Iran–Iraq War led him to accept a cease-fire with Saddam Hussein, but only with extreme reluctance (‘I have drunk poison’). His death led to the outbreak of a power struggle between moderates and radicals within the regime, which was ultimately won by Rafsanjani. Khomeini inspired Islamic fundamentalist leaders beyond Iran, as he confounded predictions of a seemingly inevitable advance of globalization and ‘modernization’ at the expense of Islamic religion and culture.