188 No god but God
ics, bazaari merchants, feminists, communists, socialists, and Marxists,
Muslims, Christians, and Jews, men, women, and children—all bound
by their disdain for the despotic American-backed régime that had
made life in Iran unbearable for so many people for so many years.
The crowd pumped their fists in the air, shouting “Death to the
Shah!” and “Death to Tyranny!” Angry young men gathered through-
out the city to burn American flags and chant anti-imperialist slogans
against the superpower that had, a little more than two decades ear-
lier, extinguished Iran’s first attempt at democratic revolution. That
revolution took place in 1953, when the same improbable coalition of
intelligentsia, clerics, and bazaari merchants managed to topple Iran’s
monarchy, only to have it forcibly restored by the CIA a few months
later.
“Death to America!” they shouted, their chants a warning to the
American embassy in Tehran that this revolution would not be hin-
dered, no matter the cost.
There was also on that day another, more singular contingent of
demonstrators consisting mostly of bearded men and black-veiled
women who marched through the streets shouting the names of the
martyrs, Hasan and Husayn, and calling for the advent of the Last
Days: the coming of the Mahdi. Almost to a person this raucous group
displayed portraits and posters of the stern, brooding cleric who had
over the last few years become the dominant voice of anti-imperialism
in Iran: the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
Born in 1902 to a respected family of Shi‘ite clerics, Khomeini
studied law and theology in the esteemed seminaries of Najaf and
Qom. He quickly ascended to the heights of Shi‘ism’s enormously
complex clerical hierarchy, becoming a mujtahid worthy of emulation
at the extraordinarily young age of thirty-two, and an ayatollah soon
after. Like most Iranians, Khomeini blamed Iran’s weak-willed
monarchy for allowing the country to be “the slaves of Britain one
day, and America the next.” However, unlike most of his fellow ayatol-
lahs, who insisted on maintaining their traditional political quietism,
Khomeini unabashedly injected his moral authority into the sociopo-
litical machinations of the state. His ruthless condemnations of the
Shah and his repeated calls for the abolishment of the throne finally
led to his arrest and exile in 1964.