Ruhollah Khomeini

The exiled Ayatollah Khomeini pictured during prayers at his temporary refuge at Neauphle le Chateau, 25 miles from Paris in December 1978, two months before his return home Ayatollah Khomeini arrived back home on February 1, 1979, after flying in from Paris on an Air France Boeing 747 He was greeted by jubilant crowds who numbered in their millions Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the American-backed Shah, and his wife, Farah, has already fled into exile in Marrakech, Morocco An effigy of the Shay...Read Full Story

The leader of the Iranian Revolution in 1989, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, wrote extensively on Islamic Jurisprudence. A two-volume book, which was published originally in Arabic, was called ‘Tahrir al Wasilah’. Translated into Farsi, the book is called “Tahrirolvasyleh.” (read entire text here.) Khomeini also had another treatise on Islamic rules for living, called in English, “The Little Green Book.” (see entire text here.) It is useful to understand what an esteemed Islamic leader such as...Read Full Story

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's top dissident cleric Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, a fierce critic of the hardline leadership who denounced June's disputed presidential election as fraudulent, has died at the age of 87. A moderates' website said supporters of Montazeri, an architect of the 1979 Islamic revolution, were flocking to the holy city of Qom to attend his funeral on Monday. A reformist website also reported that opposition supporters were gathering in squares of Tehran on Sunday...Read Full Story

Ayatollah Seyyed Ruhollah Khomeini had a profound impact on specifically the Middle East, but also the whole world. His vicious hate of the West, especially America, heightened tensions between Muslims around the world and America, paving the way for terrorist bodies such as al-Qaeda. As an Iranian Shia cleric, Khomeini was the political and spiritual leader of the 1979 Iranian Revolution that overthrew Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, then the Shah of Iran. Khomeini ruled Iran from 1979 until his...Read Full Story

Thirty years ago this week hundreds of Iranian students stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, touching off a hostage crisis that lasted 444 days and beginning an era of enmity between Iran and the United States that continues today. The studentsÕ action grew out of the Iranian revolution, in which supporters of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini overthrow Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, who had long ruled Iran. After Khomeini, revered in the Muslim world, rose to power in January 1979, he led the...Read Full Story