Ayatollah Khomeini: Islamic Government: Governance of the Jurist

About the Author

Ruhollah Musawi was born in Khomein, Iran, the source of “Khomeini,” a later addition to his name. Regarding the date of his birth, some contend that he was born in 1900, but many others cite his birth date as September 24 or 25, 1902. The early decades of his life were spent in study, teaching, and writing. He was particularly interested in philosophy, ethics, and Islamic law, and he also wrote a considerable amount of poetry. He rose to political power in 1963, when he gained the title ayatollah and led Muslim clerics in their opposition to Shah Pahlavi's White Revolution, for which he was placed under house arrest from June 5, 1963, until April the following year. After his release he continued to oppose the shah, and he was forced into exile in November 1964, first in Turkey and then in An Najaf, Iraq, where he delivered the speeches that would form Islamic Government. In 1978 he was forced out of Iraq by the future dictator Saddam Hussein, and he spent the last few months of his exile just outside Paris, France.

Throughout the 1970s, while he was living in Iraq, Khomeini consolidated his position as Iran's immensely popular spiritual leader. When he believed that he had the backing of Iran's important clerics and of the Iranian people, he ordered the revolution against the shah to begin. In the face of widespread protest in 1978, the government broke down. The shah fled Iran on January 16, 1979, and Khomeini returned in triumph on February 1, to denounce the provisional government and call for a referendum on replacing the monarchy with an Islamic republic. The referendum was held on March 30 and 31, 1979, and passed with an overwhelming majority of the vote. In the months that followed, Khomeini and his supporters accomplished the prompt passage of a constitution that would place the spiritual and governmental leadership of the country under a supreme religious leader. Khomeini himself took the oath of office as supreme leader on December 3, 1979. Despite his popularity, numerous political organizations throughout the country opposed the type of theocracy Khomeini envisioned. The supreme leader banned these organizations and proceeded to rule Iran with an iron fist.

Throughout the 1980s Khomeini was the face of Islam, particularly radical Islam, to the West. He supported the seizure of hostages at the American embassy in Iran, setting off a 444-day crisis that dominated headlines in the United States; ironically, the precipitating invasion of the embassy by students was intended merely to be symbolic. Khomeini led the nation through the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s, and he was back in the headlines in 1989 when he issued a fatwa, or theocratic ruling, that called for the assassination of the British author Salman Rushdie, whose novel The Satanic Verses was perceived to be offensive to Islam. Khomeini died on June 3, 1989, of a heart attack suffered while recovering from surgery.