Ayatollah Khomeini Biography Quotes 3 Report mistakes

Early Life and Family Background
Ruhollah Mostafavi Musavi Khomeini was born on 24 September 1902 in the town of Khomeyn, in central Iran, into a family of Shiite scholars. His lineage was associated with the Musavi sayyids, families tracing descent from the Prophet Muhammad through Imam Musa al-Kazim, a source of social prestige within Iran's clerical milieu. His father, Mostafa Musavi, was a cleric who died when Khomeini was an infant, and his upbringing fell to his mother and other relatives steeped in religious tradition. The early loss within a devout family, combined with the social role of clerics in provincial Iran, set the course for a life oriented toward religious learning and moral discipline.

Religious Training and Intellectual Formation
As a young man, Khomeini pursued seminary studies in Arak and then in Qom, which was emerging as a leading center of Shiite learning. Under the guidance of prominent scholars such as Ayatollah Abdul-Karim Haeri Yazdi, the founder of the Qom seminary, he studied jurisprudence (fiqh), principles of jurisprudence (usul al-fiqh), philosophy, mysticism, and ethics. He absorbed a wide array of intellectual influences, including classical Shiite legal thought and elements of Islamic philosophy; these currents later informed his sermons and writings. After Haeri Yazdi's death, Khomeini became more publicly active within Qom's hawza, especially as Grand Ayatollah Hossein Borujerdi rose to prominence. While Borujerdi emphasized quietism and restraint in politics, Khomeini's own lectures and writings increasingly explored the responsibilities of the clergy beyond the seminaries.

Khomeini authored works that attracted notice among students and junior clerics, including polemical writings against secularism and arguments for the centrality of Islamic governance. His study circles in Qom nurtured disciples such as Morteza Motahhari and Mohammad Beheshti, figures who would later play pivotal roles in organizing revolutionary institutions.

First Steps in Political Activism
Under Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, Iran's monarchy adopted modernization policies that expanded state power and marginalized clerical authority. Khomeini's political profile sharpened in the early 1960s, when the Shah's "White Revolution" introduced land reform, enfranchised women, and sought to realign Iran's economy and society under monarchical tutelage. Khomeini criticized these measures not simply on doctrinal grounds, but as a framework that, in his view, subordinated Iran to foreign interests and eroded Islamic norms. His fiery sermons in 1963, commemorating religious occasions while denouncing state policies, led to his arrest and sparked protests. The ensuing crackdown involved the security apparatus known as SAVAK. Although other clerics, such as Ayatollah Mahmoud Taleghani, also criticized the state, Khomeini's arrest transformed him into a national symbol of religious resistance.

Confrontation with the Shah and Exile
After a brief release, the conflict escalated. In 1964, Khomeini condemned legislation granting legal immunities to American military personnel in Iran, framing it as an affront to sovereignty. He was arrested again and exiled, first to Turkey and then to Najaf in Iraq. During his years in Najaf (1965, 1978), Khomeini taught jurisprudence and delivered lectures that would become the basis for his concept of velayat-e faqih, or guardianship of the jurist. In these lessons, later circulated as "Islamic Government", he argued that qualified Islamic jurists hold the authority and duty to govern in the absence of the infallible Imam, challenging quietist approaches that limited clerics to moral guidance.

Najaf exposed Khomeini to a broader Shiite world, and though leading clerics there, such as Grand Ayatollah Abu al-Qasim al-Khoei, did not share his political program, Khomeini's circle of students disseminated his ideas in Iran through recordings, pamphlets, and clandestine networks. Meanwhile, allies inside Iran, including Motahhari, Beheshti, and a rising cohort such as Ali Khamenei and Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, organized against the monarchy, drawing on religious associations, mosques, and professional guilds.

From Najaf to Paris
By 1978, unrest in Iran swelled into a nationwide movement. Saddam Hussein's government, seeking better relations with the Shah, pressured Khomeini to leave Iraq. Denied entry to Kuwait, he relocated to Neauphle-le-Chateau near Paris, where the global media could easily broadcast his statements. From France, Khomeini issued declarations that unified disparate opposition groups, clerics, bazaar merchants, secular nationalists, and leftists, under the demand for the Shah's departure. Figures such as Mehdi Bazargan, a liberal Islamist, and Sadegh Ghotbzadeh, active in opposition media, worked alongside clerical networks to coordinate messaging. The monarchy's last prime minister, Shapour Bakhtiar, attempted reforms to salvage the system, but Khomeini rejected compromise, insisting on a fundamental political transformation.

Revolution and the Collapse of the Monarchy
In January 1979, the Shah left Iran amid intensifying protests. On 1 February 1979, Khomeini returned to Tehran to enormous crowds. Within days, he appointed Bazargan to head a provisional government, while revolutionary committees and the newly organized Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps began to emerge as parallel power centers loyal to the revolutionary leadership. The monarchy collapsed, and the revolution's broad coalition quickly faced the challenge of constructing a new state.

Foundations of the Islamic Republic
Khomeini endorsed a referendum in March 1979 that declared Iran an Islamic Republic. He then oversaw the formation of the Assembly of Experts for the Constitution, which drafted a new basic law embedding velayat-e faqih at the heart of the political system. The constitution created institutions such as the Guardian Council to vet legislation for Islamic compliance and the Assembly of Experts to supervise the Supreme Leader. Khomeini's closest clerical associates, including Beheshti and Motahhari, guided the institutional consolidation, though Motahhari was assassinated early in 1979, and Beheshti died in a 1981 bombing that killed many senior officials.

Hostage Crisis and Consolidation of Power
The seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran by student militants in November 1979 became a defining episode. Khomeini declined to order an immediate end to the occupation, framing the crisis as a struggle against perceived American interference and rallying popular support. Bazargan, who opposed the seizure, resigned, accelerating the marginalization of moderates. The crisis lasted 444 days and deepened the revolutionary state's orientation against the United States. In the early 1980s, Khomeini's circle contended with a violent challenge from the Mojahedin-e Khalq and other opposition groups; the state responded with widespread arrests and executions. Abolhassan Banisadr, the first president after the constitution's ratification, fell out with clerical leaders and was impeached in 1981. Clerics and lay allies like Khamenei and Rafsanjani rose further, occupying key leadership roles in the presidency, parliament, and the armed forces.

War with Iraq
In September 1980, Saddam Hussein's Iraq invaded Iran, initiating a brutal eight-year conflict. The war devastated border regions and mobilized Iranian society around defense and sacrifice. Khomeini framed the conflict as both a defense of national sovereignty and an Islamic struggle. Mir-Hossein Mousavi served as prime minister during much of the war, coordinating a command economy under siege conditions, while Rafsanjani played an increasingly central role in war oversight. The Revolutionary Guards and the regular army fought costly battles that produced few decisive breakthroughs. By 1988, after immense casualties and economic exhaustion, Khomeini accepted United Nations Security Council Resolution 598, likening the decision to "drinking a bitter chalice", a phrase that captured the gravity of the compromise.

Succession Struggles and Late Directives
As the war wound down, the question of succession came to the fore. Ayatollah Hussein-Ali Montazeri, long regarded as Khomeini's designated successor, grew outspoken about abuses and the direction of the state. Disagreements, including over human rights and the conduct of security agencies, culminated in his removal as heir apparent in 1989. In 1988, amid an intensified internal security campaign following battlefield setbacks and insurgent incursions, thousands of political prisoners were executed; these actions have been widely attributed to directives issued in Khomeini's name and remain a central controversy in assessments of his rule.

Khomeini also issued far-reaching pronouncements on matters of doctrine and policy. In early 1989, he announced revisions to streamline the constitution and elevate the institutional authority of the presidency while clarifying the Supreme Leader's powers. His 1989 edict calling for the death of author Salman Rushdie, following the publication of The Satanic Verses, triggered an international crisis that reverberated through Iran's foreign relations for years.

Death and Immediate Aftermath
Khomeini died on 3 June 1989 in Tehran. His funeral drew massive crowds, underscoring his status as the central figure of the revolution. Within days, the Assembly of Experts selected Ali Khamenei, then the sitting president, as his successor as Supreme Leader after a swift constitutional clarification of the qualifications required. Rafsanjani played a critical role in the succession deliberations. The transition marked the end of the revolutionary founder's personal command and the beginning of institutionalized leadership under the framework he had designed.

Religious Thought and Cultural Impact
Beyond politics, Khomeini's legacy includes an extensive body of religious writing and instruction. His jurisprudential works, ethical treatises, and lectures on spirituality circulated widely among students. "Islamic Government" articulated his view that within Shiite doctrine, qualified jurists possess not only interpretive authority but also practical guardianship over the state, a formulation that reshaped the relationship between clerical authority and political power. Collections of his legal opinions, such as Tahrir al-Wasilah, provided guidance on religious practice and governance. His discourse fused ascetic moral themes with a modern rhetoric of anti-imperialism, creating a distinct political theology that influenced both supporters and critics across the Muslim world.

Legacy
Ruhollah Khomeini's legacy remains contested and consequential. To supporters, he restored Islamic principles to public life, overthrew a monarchy seen as autocratic and beholden to foreign powers, and forged a durable political system with indigenous legitimacy. To critics, his rule empowered security institutions at the expense of pluralism, presided over harsh repression of dissent, and entangled religious authority with state coercion. Internationally, he recast Iran's foreign policy around resistance to perceived hegemony, while domestically he left a constitutional order centered on the Supreme Leader and supervisory bodies like the Guardian Council.

The networks of people around him shaped every stage of this transformation: teachers such as Abdul-Karim Haeri Yazdi; senior clerics like Hossein Borujerdi; allies and students including Motahhari, Beheshti, Khamenei, Rafsanjani, and Taleghani; lay collaborators like Bazargan, Ghotbzadeh, and Banisadr; antagonists such as Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi and Shapour Bakhtiar; and adversaries abroad, notably Saddam Hussein. Their conflicts and collaborations produced a political order that endures well beyond Khomeini's lifetime. As the founder and first Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, his influence persists in the institutions, doctrines, and political culture that continue to shape the country.

Our collection contains 3 quotes who is written by Ayatollah, under the main topics: Ethics & Morality - War.

Other people realated to Ayatollah: Ryszard Kapuscinski (Journalist), Oriana Fallaci (Journalist), Mohammed Reza Pahlavi (Royalty), Ali Hoseini-Khamenei (Politician), Abdolkarim Soroush (Philosopher), Ayatollah Khamenei (Statesman)

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