TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/061289/06128900.016

Text File | 1990-09-22 | 10KB | 177 lines

WORLD, Page 36

IRAN

Sword of a Relentless Revolution

Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini: 1900-1989


    He came to symbolize everything the West found incomprehensible
and baffling about the East: his intense, ascetic spirituality and
air of otherworldly detachment; his medieval, theocratic mind-set,
which drew its parallels and precedents from the Islamic world of
the 7th century; the mystical certitude that he spoke in the name
of God, his country and Muslims everywhere.

    Yet when Tehran Radio announced early this week that the
Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran's revolutionary zealot, was dead
at 89, millions of his countrymen mourned the loss. They did so
even though the movement he led plunged them into a devastating war
with Iraq and left a legacy of turbulence at home and terrorism
abroad. To his people, the patriarch with the baleful dark eyes and
white beard had been the heart and sword of their revolution, the
icon of implacable opposition -- first to the dictatorship of Shah
Mohammed Reza Pahlavi and then to the U.S., which the Ayatullah
relentlessly denounced as the Great Satan.

    He translated his hatred of America into acts of terrorism and
defiance that helped undermine one U.S. presidency and led a second
into scandal. His followers held 52 Americans captive in the U.S.
embassy in Tehran from November 1979 to January 1981, thus dealing
a severe blow to the re-election chances of Jimmy Carter. Then, in
what began as an effort to secure the release of American hostages
held in Lebanon, the Reagan Administration became enmeshed in the
Iran-contra affair, its gravest foreign policy blunder.

    Khomeini vowed to pursue the conflict with Iraq to the
"frontiers of martyrdom," and sent an estimated 900,000 Iranians,
many of them not yet teenagers, beyond that frontier. But in August
1988, the loss of key positions forced Tehran to accept a United
Nations-sponsored cease-fire in the eight-year war. It was, said
the Ayatullah, a decision "more deadly than drinking poison."

    Tehran's utter isolation in the world of nations had become
apparent just two weeks before the cease-fire decision, when a U.S.
frigate mistakenly shot down an Iranian jetliner with 290 people
aboard: international response was notably muted. In the following
months, leading Iranian politicians such as Parliamentary Speaker
Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, 54, attempted to soften their
country's radical image. But Khomeini would have none of it. Last
February he prompted a worldwide outcry when he demanded the death
of Salman Rushdie, the Indian-born, British author of The Satanic
Verses, a book many regard as blasphemous to Islam. "It is
incumbent on every Muslim to do everything possible to send him to
hell," declared the Imam. An angry Britain broke off diplomatic
relations with Iran, and many Western ambassadors were temporarily
recalled from Tehran.

    Khomeini's reassertion of radical Islamic rejectionism soon
claimed his appointed successor, Ayatullah Ali Montazeri, 65, as
a victim. Montazeri had harshly criticized the war with Iraq and
did not endorse the killing of Rushdie. In late March he was forced
to resign.

    How was it possible for an obscure religious fanatic to lead
one of the great revolutionary upheavals of this century? To begin
with, the time was ripe. The Shah had pushed his feudal and devout
country into the modern, secular world too far and too fast, using
torture and execution to suppress dissent. In addition, Khomeini's
place in the world of Shi`ite theology gave him a platform. Unlike
Sunni Muslims, members of Islam's other, much larger branch,
Shi`ites believe in an intermediary between God and man. In
Shi`ism's first centuries, this role of mediator was played by the
Twelve Imams, who were thought to be the rightful successors to the
Prophet Muhammad and who combined religious and secular authority.
Most Shi`ites continue to believe that the Twelfth Imam, who
disappeared in A.D. 940, will one day emerge from hiding to
establish a purified Islamic state. Some Iranians hailed Khomeini
as an Imam qualified to be the deputy for the Shi`ite messiah.

    Khomeini was educated as a scholar in Qum, the holy city where
he worked as a teacher, married and reared a family of six
children. An excellent instructor, he was fascinated by the Greek
philosophers, especially Plato, whose Republic provided the
Ayatullah with a model for his own concept of the ideal state, in
which the philosopher-king was replaced by the Islamic theologian.

    Khomeini's long rise to power began with a series of
confrontations with the regime of the Shah. In 1962 he led a
general strike of the clergy to protest reforms allowing witnesses
in court to swear by any "divine book," instead of the Koran alone.
By the spring of 1963 he was under house arrest for telling huge
crowds at Qum that just a "flick of the finger" could sweep away
the Shah. Soon after his release a few months later, Khomeini was
arrested again, this time for fomenting riots against a
modernization program that included land reform. He was imprisoned
for half a year, then exiled to Turkey. He soon moved to the Iraqi
city of An Najaf, one of Shi`ism's holiest shrines. There for 14
years he taught, meditated and taped messages of hate against the
Shah that were distributed on cassettes to mosques back in Iran.

    Then the Shah's government made the crucial mistake of asking
Iraq to expel Khomeini. Iraqi President Saddam Hussein complied,
thereby earning Khomeini's abiding hostility. In October 1978 the
Ayatullah went to France and settled in Neauphle-le-Chateau, a
Paris suburb, where for the first time he enjoyed the full glare
of Western press attention. Shortly after his arrival, the
continuing massive street demonstrations and battles between the
Iranian soldiers and protesters turned the tide against the regime
and led, within three months, to the Shah's exile. In February 1979
Khomeini made his triumphant return to Iran, where ecstatic
million-strong crowds greeted him.

    Khomeini's ascent to power worked a remarkable change in a man
who had once seemed a gentle, if extraordinarily zealous, cleric.
During the upheaval that toppled the Shah, Khomeini urged his
followers to remain nonviolent. In part, this was a shrewd wish to
avoid harsh military reprisals, but his caution also reflected
Khomeini's temperament at that time. Abolhassan Banisadr, whom
Khomeini ousted as President in 1981, notes that in the final weeks
of Khomeini's exile the Ayatullah "would not even kill a fly." Yet
after Khomeini became Iran's ruler, he exhorted his countrymen to
kill, burn and destroy.

    Khomeini and his followers attempted to stifle every vestige
of opposition to the imposition of a Muslim theocracy. In so doing
they set standards for brutality and injustice that at least
equaled -- and probably surpassed -- the worst excesses of the
Shah's regime. A clergy-dominated security system soon rivaled
SAVAK, the Shah's secret police, in terror and bloodthirstiness.

    As the military underwent repeated purges and came under the
influence of the clerics, its force was swiftly applied to suppress
ethnic minorities that had supported the revolution in hopes of
gaining greater cultural and political autonomy. The excesses led
to nearly 10,000 executions -- some put the actual figure as high
as 20,000 -- and tens of thousands of arrests. This provoked a
campaign of assassination by dissident Islamic guerrillas that
eliminated hundreds of top members of the Ayatullah's regime.

    While he was consolidating his revolution at home, Khomeini
was seeking to extend it to other nations. Iraq attacked Iran
across the Shatt al-Arab in September 1980 after Khomeini called
for an uprising of Iraqi Shi`ites and fomented skirmishes along the
border. Iranian forces blunted the Iraqi offensive, and two months
after the war began, the conflict was largely stalemated. After
years of fighting, Tehran lost all hope of victory when Iraq
stopped an Iranian drive for the port city of Basra in early 1987;
a year later, Iraq began the offensive that eventually brought Iran
to the peace table. The fighting reportedly cost both countries an
estimated $500 billion. More than 900,000 Iranian lives were lost;
300,000 Iraqis died during the war.

    Khomeini's ability to hold together the squabbling factions
that produced Iran's revolution was one of his major achievements.
After first setting the direction of the nation through
proclamations and statements, Khomeini left it to his followers to
forge specific policies. Still, he remained the pivotal figure of
Iranian politics, even toward the end, when his various illnesses
made it impossible for him to follow events closely. The dismissal
of Montazeri, in the opinion of many experts, put increased power
in the hands of the pragmatic Rafsanjani, who is also Commander in
Chief of the Iranian armed forces. In the final months of
Khomeini's life, the spotlight also turned on his son, Ahmed
Khomeini, 43, who has lately been increasingly visible in public
life. In his zeal and rigid ideology, Ahmed appears to be very much
his father's son.

    For whoever succeeds the Ayatullah, many fruits of the
revolution will remain bitter. Unbending militance has turned Iran
into an international pariah, and most Muslims have resisted
Khomeini's call for the spread of Islamic fundamentalism. It is
possible, though, to compare his role with that of the 20th
century's other great revolutionaries. Like the Soviet Union's
Vladimir Lenin, he fomented a revolution from distant exile, then
returned to try to bend it to his will. Like India's Mohandas
Gandhi, he mobilized spiritual forces for political ends. Like
China's Mao Zedong, he attempted to push beyond nationalism to
ideological and cultural revolution, believing that by destroying
the old order, he could create the conditions for the emergence of
a utopia. As it turned out, however, Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini
could destroy but he could not build, and his legacy is a country
in chaos.