AYATOLLAH KHOMEINI Biography - Royalty, Rulers & leaders

 
 

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AYATOLLAH KHOMEINI
       

O Westerners, his hooded eyes and severe demeanor, his unkempt gray beard and his black turban and robes conveyed an avenger’s wrath. The image is the man.

       

Ruhollah Khomeini, the dour cleric who led an Islamic revolution in Iran, perceived himself above all as an avenger of the humiliations that the West had for more than a century inflicted on the Muslims of the Middle East.

       

He was among many Muslim autocrats in this century to embrace a mission designed as a corrective to the West. Kemal Ataturk, the most daring of them, introduced Turkey, after the fall of the Ottoman Empire in World War I, to Western-style secularism in order to toughen his society against Europe’s imperial designs. In the 1950s, Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser, more intemperately, initiated a fierce campaign of Arab nationalism aimed at eradicating the vestiges of Western colonialism from the Arab world.

       

Khomeini took a different course. All three, at their apogee, were rulers of once great empires that had fallen into political and social disarray. But Ataturk and Nasser were committed to resurrection by beating the West at its own game of building strong secular states. Khomeini’s strategy was to reject Western ways, keeping Iran close to its Islamic roots.

       

Some ask, focusing on this strategy, whether Khomeini was riding a popular wave in global affairs. In the late 20th century, Muslims were not alone in organizing to restore religious belief to government. Christians in America, Jews in Israel, even Hindus in India were promoting the same end. As a revolutionary, Khomeini sought to bring down not just the Shah’s Western-oriented state but also the secular Weltanschauung that stood behind it. Did Khomeini’s triumph augur an intellectual shift of global magnitude?

       

While historians ponder this question, it is enough to say that Khomeini presided brilliantly over the overthrow of a wounded regime. He was merciless and cunning. His well-advertised piety complemented a prodigious skill in grasping and shaping Iran’s complex politics. Most important, he knew how to exploit the feelings of nationalist resentment that characterized his time.

       

Ruhollah Khomeini - his given name means “inspired of God” - was born to a family of Shi’ite scholars in a village near Tehran in 1902. Shi’ism, a minority sect in Islam, is Iran’s official religion. Like his father, he moved from theological studies to a career as an Islamic jurist. Throughout his life, he was acclaimed for the depth of his religious learning.