Ayatollah Khomeini

Who was Ayatollah Khomeini?

Ayatollah Khomeini was a key figure in the Iranian revolution and became the leader of the new Islamic State.

What was Ayatollah Khomeini's life like?

There were 4 important moments in Ayatollah Khomeini's life.

• ❖ Ayatollah Khomeini was 76 years old when he became the leader of Iran.
• ❖ He had a traditional religious education and spent much of his life studying, writing and teaching Islamic law.
• ❖ He became an ayatollah (senior religious teacher) in the 1920s.
• ❖ Between 1964 and 1979 Khomeini lived in exile in Turkey, Iraq and Paris. However, he smuggled cassette tapes of his teachings over the border for Iranians to hear.

What were Ayatollah Khomeini's beliefs?

Khomeini followed traditional Islamic law, but was also a revolutionary nationalist who campaigned for better conditions in Iran. Some of his slogans were:

• ❖ 'Islam represents the slum dwellers, not the palace dwellers.'.
• ❖ 'The poor die for the revolution, the rich plot against the revolution.'.
• ❖ 'Islam will eliminate all class differences.'.
• ❖ 'In Islam there will be no landless peasants.'.