7 Ruhollah Khomeini 7ruler, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, his denunciations
of Western influences, and his uncompromising advocacy
of Islamic purity that won him his initial following in
Iran. In the 1950s he was acclaimed as an ayatollah, or
major religious leader, and by the early 1960s he had
received the title of grand ayatollah, thereby making him
one of the supreme religious leaders of the Shī‘ite com-
munity in Iran.
In 1962– 63 Khomeini spoke out against the shah’s
reduction of religious estates in a land-reform program
and against the emancipation of women. His ensuing
arrest sparked antigovernment riots, and, after a year’s
imprisonment, Khomeini was forcibly exiled from Iran on
Nov. 4, 1964. He eventually settled in the Shī‘ite holy city
of Al-Najaf, Iraq, from where he continued to call for the
shah’s overthrow and the establishment of an Islamic
republic in Iran.
From the mid-1970s, Khomeini’s influence inside Iran
grew dramatically owing to mounting public dissatisfac-
tion with the shah’s regime. Iraq’s ruler, S·addām H·ussein,
forced Khomeini to leave Iraq on Oct. 6, 1978. Khomeini
then settled in Neauphle-le-Château, a suburb of Paris.
From there his supporters relayed his tape-recorded mes-
sages to an increasingly aroused Iranian populace, and
massive demonstrations, strikes, and civil unrest in late
1978 forced the departure of the shah from the country on
Jan. 16, 1979. Khomeini arrived in Tehrān in triumph on
Feb. 1, 1979, and was acclaimed as the religious leader of
Iran’s revolution. He appointed a government four days
later and on March 1 again took up residence in Qom. In
December a referendum on a new constitution created an
Islamic republic in Iran, with Khomeini named Iran’s
political and religious leader for life.
Khomeini himself proved unwavering in his determi-
nation to transform Iran into a theocratically ruled