I Knew Khomeini - Featured Documentary

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the architect and the face of the Iranian Revolution, is seen by many as the embodiment of the principles of the Islamic Republic. Rarely in history has a man who did not seek power come to wield so much of it. He wanted to serve the people of Iran and throughout his life fought the régime's oppression, corruption and the Shah's opulent lifestyle.

Forced exile empowered Khomeini even further, providing him with the freedom to speak out against Iran's ruling élite. "He became the main speaker of the opposition inside Iran... he was continuously attacking the Shah's brutality and because of that he gained the popular support of the people," says Ebrahim Yazdi, who was Iran's deputy prime minister in 1979.

The charismatic religious scholar managed to overthrow one of the strongest and most oppressive régimes in the world - and set Iran on a collision course with the West. But who was Ayatollah Khomeini and what is his legacy? Al Jazeera spoke to those who knew the man behind a revolution that shook the world. This documentary was originally broadcast on Al Jazeera English in January 2009

Salman Rushdie and The Satanic Verses Affair

An excellent historical documentary that highlights the trials and tribulations of Salman Rushdie as he struggled to lead a normal life under the constant threat of the Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwa. The part of the story that most people don't seem to hear about is Rushdie's attempt to convince the Iranian religious leaders to withdraw the fatwa on the basis that he was becoming a more devout muslim. Obviously, it didn't work, but it does show how much pressure Rushdie must have been under at the time.

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini: The Man Who Changed The World
Militant Islam enjoyed its first modern triumph with the arrival in power of Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran in 1979. In this series of three programmes, key figures tell the inside story.

Former US president Jimmy Carter talks on television for the first time about the episode that, more than any other, led American voters to eject him from the presidency. Iran's seizure of the US embassy in Tehran and the holding of its staff for 444 days took more and more of Carter's time and energy. His final days in office were dominated by desperate attempts to secure the release of the embassy hostages. Those who sat in the White House with him, planning how to rescue the hostages, how to negotiate their release and, finally, wondering whether anything could be rescued from the disaster, all tell their part in the story.

Other contributors include former vice president Walter Mondale, ex-deputy secretary of state Warren Christopher and former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski. The other side of the story is told by top Iranians: Ayatollah Khomeini's close adviser, Grand Ayatollah Montazeri; his first foreign minister, Ebrahim Yazdi; his negotiator with the US, Sadeq Tabatabai; and the founder of Iran's Revolutionary Guard, Mohsen Rafiqdoust.

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s Wife Has Died
ASSOCIATED PRESS: TEHRAN, Iran — The wife of the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the father of Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution, has died after a long illness, state media reported Sunday. She was 93.

Khadijeh Saqafi, who was known as the "mother of the Islamic revolution," died Saturday in Tehran, state TV said. Thousands of people, including Iran's president and supreme leader, attended her funeral at Tehran University on Sunday.

"After a lifetime of patience and perseverance, and months of sick health, the dear and respected wife of Imam Khomeini has finally passed way, leaving friends of the late imam in grief," her grandson Hasan Khomeini said in a statement posted on the Web site of Iran's English-language state television station, Press TV. Wife of Founder of Iran's Islamic Republic Dies >>> Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press | Sunday, March 22, 2009

Simon Scott Plummer: How the Ayatollah Overthrew the Shah
THE TELEGRAPH: Simon Scott Plummer examines Khomeini’s mesmeric hold over Iran and the Islamic world

The Islamic Revolution in Iran was the most significant event of the last half of the 20th century. Some would even rank its importance in modern history as second only to the fall of the Bastille. Along with the American and Soviet withdrawals from Vietnam and Afghanistan in 1975 and 1989, it marked the emergence of Islam as a global political force after centuries of impotence, and a corresponding decline in superpower hegemony. To read Con Coughlin’s book is largely to understand how a septuagenarian cleric who had spent 15 years in exile was able to overthrow an authoritarian monarch with a terrifying security apparatus and armed forces bristling with Western weapons.

By the second half of the Seventies the Pahlavi shah, Reza Mohammed, had alienated most of Iranian society, from the clergy to the merchants. But popular discontent went back much further than his reign. The granting by the previous Qajar dynasty of concessions to British American Tobacco in 1891; the Russian invasion of 1907; Britain’s majority stake in the Anglo-Persian Oil Company; the British and Soviet occupation from 1941 onwards; the CIA-backed overthrow of the prime minister Mossadeq in 1953; the last shah’s dependence on Washington: all these were waymarks on a road of national humiliation.

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini offered a radical alternative to the puffed-up Pahlavis. His title denoted a considerable Islamic scholar. His lifestyle was simple and his opposition to the shah coherent and courageous. Yet these qualities do not fully explain the mesmeric hold he had over Iran and the wider Islamic world.

There must have been something in his appearance and way of speaking to generate the wave of joy when he returned home in 1979, and of grief when he died 10 years later. In dealing with notorious figures, it is easy to underplay their personal charisma. >>> Simon Scott Plummer | Thursday, February 26, 2009

The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Paperback & Hardback) – Free delivery >>>

The Ayatollah couldn't have put it more plainly!
“Divine governments … set themselves the task of making man into what he should be. To juxtapose ‘democratic’ and ‘Islamic’ is an insult to Islam. Because [sic] … Islam is, in fact, superior to all forms of democracy.” - Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini 1979 [Source: The Iran Threat: President Ahmadinejad and the Coming Nuclear Crisis - Alireza Jafarzadeh

Mark Alexander