Ruhollah Khomeini
Ruhollah Khomeini led the Iranian revolution of 1979 and created the first modern state governed by clerics. Born in 1902 in Khomeyn to a family of religious scholars, he lost his father as an infant, reportedly murdered, and trained in the seminaries of Arak and then Qom, becoming a teacher of Islamic philosophy and ethics. He kept out of open politics while the senior ayatollah Boroujerdi lived. After Boroujerdi's death in 1961 he attacked the Shah's White Revolution, particularly the land reform that touched clerical endowments and the extension of the vote to women, and in 1964 denounced the law granting American servicemen immunity from Iranian courts. He was arrested and exiled. He spent fourteen years in Turkey, then Najaf in Iraq, then Neauphle-le-Château outside Paris. In Najaf he developed velayat-e faqih, the guardianship of the jurist — the argument that in the absence of the hidden Imam, government belongs by right to qualified religious scholars. It was a departure from the Shia tradition of clerical distance from the state. His sermons were smuggled into Iran on cassette tapes and reproduced in enormous numbers, an effective network the Shah's censorship could not intercept. The Shah left in January 1979 and Khomeini returned on 1 February to crowds of millions. A referendum established an Islamic republic, and the constitution made him Supreme Leader for life. He endorsed the seizure of the American embassy in November 1979, prosecuted the eight-year war with Iraq to enormous cost, presided over mass executions of leftists and dissidents including thousands of prisoners in 1988, and issued the fatwa against Salman Rushdie in 1989. He died that June.
- Lived: 1902 CE – 1989 CE
- Nationality: Iranian
- Roles: Supreme Leader of Iran (1979–89)
