Grand Ayatollah Seyyed Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini (listen (Persian pronunciation) (help·info)) (Persian: روح الله موسوی خمینی Rūḥollāh Mūsavī Khomeynī (September 21, 1902 – June 04, 1989) was a senior Shi`i Muslim cleric, Islamic philosopher and marja (religious authority), and the political leader of the 1979 Iranian Revolution which saw the overthrow of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran. Following the revolution, Khomeini became Supreme Leader of Iran—the paramount symbolic political figure of the new Islamic Republic until his death. Khomeini was known as an anti-colonial leader who created the post-colonial state, Islamic Republic of Iran after a referendum.
Khomeini was a marja al-taqlid, ("source of imitation") and important spiritual leader to many Shi'a Muslims. He was also a highly-influential and innovative Islamic political theorist, most noted for his development of the theory of velayat-e faqih, the "guardianship of the jurisconsult (clerical authority)". He was named Time's Man of the Year in 1979 and also one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people of the 20th century.

Early life
Ruhollah Khomeini was a lecturer at Najaf and Qom seminaries for decades before he was known in the political scene. He soon became a leading scholar of Shia Islam.

Khomeini as a teacher and scholar
Khomeini was now 60 and the arena of leadership was now open to him following the deaths of Ayatollah Sayyed Muhammad Burujerdi (1961), the leading, although quiescent, Shiite religious leader; and Ayatollah Abol-Ghasem Kashani (1962), an activist cleric. The clerical class had been on the defensive ever since the 1920s with the rise to power of the secular, anti-clerical Reza Shah Pahlavi. The "White Revolution" of Reza's son Muhammad Reza Shah, was a further challenge.

Early political activity
In January 1963, the Shah announced the "White Revolution", a six-point program of reform calling for land reform, nationalization of the forests, the sale of state-owned enterprises to private interests, electoral changes to enfranchise women and allow non-Muslims to hold office, profit sharing in industry, and a literacy campaign in the nation's schools. All of these initiatives were regarded as dangerous, Westernizing trends by traditionalists, especially by the powerful and privileged Shiite ulama (religious scholars). Khomeini was kept under house arrest for 8 months and he was released in 1964.

Opposition to the White Revolution
During November 1964, Khomeini denounced both the Shah and the United States, this time in response to the "capitulations" or diplomatic immunity granted by the Shah to American military personnel in Iran. In November 1964 Khomeini was re-arrested[21] and sent into exile.

Opposition against capitulation
Khomeini spent over 14 years in exile, mostly in the holy Shia city of Najaf, Iraq. Initially he was sent to Turkey on 4 November 1964 where he stayed in the city of Bursa for less than a year. He was hosted by a Turkish Colonel named Ali Cetiner in his own residence, who couldn't find another accommodation alternative for his stay at the time.[22] Later in October 1965 he was allowed to move to Najaf, Iraq, where he stayed until being forced to leave in 1978, after then-Vice President Saddam Hussein forced him out (the two countries would fight a bitter eight year war 1980-1988 only a year after the two reached power in 1979) after which he went to Neauphle-le-Château in France on a tourist visa, apparently not seeking political asylum, where he stayed for four months. According to Alexandre de Marenches, chief of External Documentation and Counter-Espionage Service (now known as the DGSE), France would have suggested to the shah to "organise a fatal accident for Khomeini"; the shah declined the assassination offer, as that would have made Khomeini a martyr.
While in the 1940s Khomeini accepted the idea of a limited monarchy under the Iranian Constitution of 1906-1907 -- as evidenced by his book Kashf-e Assrar -- by the 1970s he did not.
In early 1970 Khomeini gave a series of lectures in Najaf on Islamic Government, later published as a book titled variously Islamic Government or Islamic Government, Authority of the Jurist (Hokumat-e Islami: Velayat-e faqih).

Main article: Hokumat-e Islami : Velayat-e faqih (book by Khomeini) Life in exile

Supreme leader of Islamic Republic of Iran

Main article: Iranian Revolution Return to Iran
As Khomeini's movement gained momentum, soldiers began to defect to his side and Khomeini declared jihad on soldiers who did not surrender.

Establishment of new government
As Ayatollah Khomeini had mentioned during his exile and people support this idea through mass demonstrations Islamic constitution was written. However communists as well as liberals protest against it but they were minority and couldn't change the situation. Although revolutionaries were now in charge and Khomeini was their leader, many of them, both secular and religious, did not approve and/or know of Khomeini's plan for Islamic government by wilayat al-faqih, or rule by a marja` Islamic cleric -- i.e. by him. Nor did the new provisional constitution for the Islamic Republic, which revolutionaries had been working on with Khomeini's approval, include a post of supreme jurist ruler.[23] In the coming months, Khomeini and his supporters worked to suppress these former allies turned opponents, and rewrite the proposed constitution. Newspapers were closing and those protesting the closings attacked and revised the proposed constitution to include a clerical Supreme Leader, and a Council of Guardians to veto unIslamic legislation and screen candidates for office.
In November 1979 the new constitution of the Islamic Republic was passed by referendum. Khomeini himself became instituted as the Supreme Leader , and officially decreed as the "Leader of the Revolution." On February 4, 1980, Abolhassan Banisadr was elected as the first president of Iran. Helping pass the controversial constitution was the Iran hostage crisis.

Hostage crisis
Khomeini believed in Muslim unity and solidarity and its spread throughout the world. "Establishing the Islamic state world-wide belong to the great goals of the revolution." .

Relationship with other Islamic and non-aligned countries

Main article: Iran-Iraq War Iran-Iraq War

Main article: The Satanic Verses controversy Rushdie fatwa
In a speech given to a huge crowd after returning to Iran from exile February 1, 1979, Khomeini made a variety of promises to Iranians for his coming Islamic regime: A popularly elected government that would represent the people of Iran and with which the clergy would not interfere. He promised that "no one should remain homeless in this country," and that Iranians would have free telephone, heating, electricity, bus services and free oil at their doorstep. While many changes came to Iran under Khomeini, these promises have yet to be fulfilled in the Islamic Republic.

Life under Khomeini
After eleven days in a hospital for an operation to stop internal bleeding, Khomeini died of cancer on Saturday, June 04, 1989, at the age of 86. 11,000,000 or more Iranian officials aborted Khomeini's first funeral, after a large crowd stormed the funeral procession, nearly destroying Khomeini's wooden coffin in order to get a last glimpse of his body. At one point, Khomeini's body actually almost fell to the ground, as the crowd attempted to grab pieces of the death shroud. The second funeral was held under much tighter security. Khomeini's casket was made of steel, and heavily armed security personnel surrounded it. In accordance with Islamic tradition, the casket was only to carry the body to the burial site.

Death and funeral
Grand Ayatollah Hossein Montazeri, a major figure of the Revolution, was designated by Khomeini to be his successor as Supreme Leader. The principle of velayat-e faqih and the Islamic constitution called for the Supreme Ruler to be a marja or grand ayatollah, and of the dozen or so grand ayatollahs living in 1981 only Montazeri accepted the concept of rule by Islamic jurist.[26] In 1989 Montazeri began to call for liberalization, freedom for political parties. Following the execution of thousands of political prisoners by the Islamic government, Montazeri told Khomeini `your prisons are far worse than those of the Shah and his SAVAK.`

Successorship

Main article: Political thought and legacy of Khomeini Political thought and legacy
In 1929, Khomeini married Batol Saqafi Khomeini, the daughter of a cleric in Tehran. They had seven children, though only five survived infancy. His daughters all married into either merchant or clerical families, and both his sons entered into religious life. The elder son, Mostafa, is rumored to have been murdered in 1977 while in exile with his father in Najaf, Iraq and Khomeini accused SAVAK of orchestrating it. Ahmad Khomeini, Khomeini's younger son, died in 1995 under mysterious circumstances.
Khomeini's notable grandchildren include:
Iranians need freedom now, and if they can only achieve it with American interference I think they would welcome it. As an Iranian, I would welcome it.

Zahra Eshraghi, granddaughter, married to Mohammad Reza Khatami, head of the Islamic Iran Participation Front, the main reformist party in the country, and is considered a pro-reform character herself.
Hassan Khomeini, Khomeini's elder grandson Seyyed Hassan Khomeini, son of the Seyyed Ahmad Khomeini, is a cleric and the trustee of Khomeini's shrine.
Hussein Khomeini, (Seyyed Hossein Khomeini) Khomeini's other grandson, son of Seyyed Mustafa Khomeini, is a mid-level cleric who is strongly against the system of the Islamic Republic. In 2003 he was quoted as saying:
Other notable relatives Family and descendants

Wilayat al-Faqih
Forty Hadith (Forty Traditions)
Adab as Salat (The Disciplines of Prayers)
Jihade Akbar (The Greater Struggle) Works
Politics: Iranian revolution  · Islamic Cultural Revolution  · Guardianship of the Islamic Jurists  · Political thought and legacy of Khomeini Books: Islamic Government  · Tahrir-ol-vasyleh  · Forty Hadith  · Adab as Salat

Hezbollah
Islamic scholars
Politics of Iran
Mahmoud Taleghani
Hossein-Ali Montazeri
People's Mujahedin of Iran
1988 Massacre of Iranian Prisoners
Tahrir-ol-vasyleh See also

Works cited

Willett, Edward C. ;Ayatollah Khomeini, 2004, Publisher:The Rosen Publishing Group, ISBN 0823944654
Bakhash, Shaul (1984). The Reign of the Ayatollahs : Iran and the Islamic Revolution. New York: Basic Books. 
Harney, Desmond (1998). The priest and the king : an eyewitness account of the Iranian revolution. I.B. Tauris. 
Khomeini, Ruhollah (1981). in Algar, Hamid (translator and editor): Islam and Revolution : Writing and Declarations of Imam Khomeini. Berkeley: Mizan Press. 
Khomeini, Ruhollah (1980). Sayings of the Ayatollah Khomeini : political, philosophical, social, and religious. Bantam. 
Mackey, Sandra (1996). The Iranians : Persia, Islam and the Soul of a Nation. Dutton. ISBN 0525940057. 
Moin, Baqer (2000). Khomeini: Life of the Ayatollah. New York: Thomas Dunne Books. 
Schirazi, Asghar (1997). The Constitution of Iran. New York: Tauris. 
Taheri, Amir (1985). The Spirit of Allah. Adler & Adler. 
Wright, Robin (1989). In the Name of God : The Khomeini Decade. New York: Simon & Schuster. 
Wright, Robin (2000). The Last Revolution. New York: Knopf. 
Lee, James; The Final Word!: An American Refutes the Sayings of Ayatollah Khomeini, 1984, Publisher:Philosophical Library, ISBN 0802224652
Dabashi, Hamid; Theology of Discontent: The Ideological Foundation of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, 2006, Publisher:Transaction Publishers, ISBN 1412805163
Hoveyda,Fereydoun ; The Shah and the Ayatollah: Iranian Mythology and Islamic Revolution, 2003, Publisher:Praeger/Greenwood, ISBN 0275978583