over the explosive Palestinian issue. Khomeini accused Pahlavi
of forming an unspoken alliance with the United States and
Israel, Muslims’ avowed enemy.
He became a prolific author during his years at Qom. In
the early 1940s, he penned The Unveiling of the Secrets(Kashf
al-Asrar), in which he bluntly condemned the behavior and
policies of the recently deposed shah. Khomeini considered
the elder shah an intolerable dictator who was antagonizing
the Muslim leadership.36 AYATOLLAH RUHOLLAH KHOMEINI
WHO WERE KHOMEINI’S FOLLOWERS?
Intellectuals were among the earliest protesters against the Pahlavi
regime in the 1950s and 1960s. They expressed their opposition
effectively in pamphlets, letters, and other writings. They would join
Ayatollah Khomeini in pressing for the shah’s overthrow.
Meanwhile, the mustazafin, Iran’s poor, naturally were attracted
to Khomeini’s demands for an equitable distribution of wealth. Even
when oil sales pumped up the country’s economy, little of the income
found its way down to the lower classes of society. Basically, those
close to the oil industry and the Pahlavi regime simply grew richer,
and the division between rich and poor deepened and broadened into
a dangerous chasm.
Those parts of Khomeini’s support base—the intellectuals and
the downtrodden—were predictable. One of the unusual aspects of
Khomeini’s rise to power, on the other hand, was his appeal to
middle-class university students, including young women. In Western
countries, students were rebelling againstmoral authority. But in Iran,
they seemed to clamor for the more strict brand of Shiite authority
urged by the exiled ayatollah.
Khomeini also attracted the attention of militant Muslim leaders
elsewhere. Notably, Yasir Arafat of the Palestine Liberation Organization
(PLO) paid him a personal visit.
Clearly, opposition to the regime of the shah was becoming general
in nature. It eventually spanned most sectors of Iranian society.
But while Iran’s religious leadership preached the fire of revolu-
tion, it was the youth who would carry it out. Most of the militants
who would overrun the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979 would be
university students.http://www.ebook3000.com