* 1989 – Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini offers a US $ 3 million bounty for the death of The Satanic Verses author Salman Rushdie.

* 1980 – Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini states that Iran's parliament will decide the fate of the American embassy hostages.

* 1979 – Islamic revolution of Iran establishes an Islamic theocracy under the leadership of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989 pronounced a death sentence on Salman Rushdie, the author of The Satanic Verses.

* 1980 – Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini names Abolhassan Banisadr as president of Iran.

Hezbollah was largely formed with the aid of the Ayatollah Khomeini's followers in the early 1980s in order to spread Islamic revolution and follows a distinct version of Islamic Shi ' a ideology ( Valiyat al-faqih or Guardianship of the Islamic Jurists ) developed by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, leader of the " Islamic Revolution " in Iran.

... As for our culture, it is based on the Holy Quran, the Sunna and the legal rulings of the faqih who is our source of imitation ...</ div > Hezbollah follows the Islamic Shi ' a theology developed by Iranian revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

Central figures of modern Islamism include Sayyid Qutb, Hasan al-Banna, Abul Ala Maududi, Taqiuddin al-Nabhani, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and Navvab Safavi.

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini

In a major shock to the rest of the world, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini led the Iranian Revolution of 1979 to overthrow the oil-rich, well-armed, Westernized and pro-American secular monarchy ruled by Shah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi.

* 1963 – Movement of 15 Khordad: Protest against arrest of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini by Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

The Basij militia founded by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in November 1979 is composed of 10, 000 regular soldiers, and ultimately draws from about 11 million members, and is subordinate to their Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution in Iran.

* 1979 – Iran hostage crisis: Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini orders the release of 13 female and black American hostages being held at the US Embassy in Tehran.

He defended Salman Rushdie after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini condemned Rushdie to death in 1989, but also criticized his Satanic Verses as " insulting " to Islam.

In 1989, after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's fatwa calling for Salman Rushdie and his publishers to be killed, Mahfouz called Khomeini a terrorist.

In early 1979, Iran's Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was overthrown by the Islamic Revolution, thus giving way to an Islamic republic led by the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

< imagemap > File: 1970s decade montage. png | From left, clockwise: US President Richard Nixon doing the V for Victory sign after his resignation from office after the Watergate scandal in 1974 ; Refugees aboard a US naval boat after the Fall of Saigon, leading to the end of the Vietnam War in 1975 ; The 1973 oil crisis puts the nation of America in gridlock ; Both the leaders of Israel and Egypt shake hands after the signing of the Camp David Accords in 1978 ; The 1970 Bhola cyclone kills an estimated 500, 000 people in the densely populated Ganges Delta region of East Pakistan in November 1970 ; The Iranian Revolution of 1979 transformed Iran from an autocratic pro-western monarchy to a theocratic Islamist government under the leadership of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini ; The popularity of the disco music genre peaked during the middle to late 1970s .| 420px | thumb

* The Iranian Revolution of 1979 transformed Iran from an autocratic pro-western monarchy under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi to a theocratic Islamist government under the leadership of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

* February 4 – Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini names Abolhassan Banisadr as president of Iran.

* February 23 – Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini states that Iran's parliament will decide the fate of the American embassy hostages.

** Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returns to Tehran, Iran after nearly 15 years of exile.

* November 1 – Iran hostage crisis: Iranian Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini urges his people to demonstrate on November 4 and to expand attacks on United States and Israeli interests.

** Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini places a US $ 3-million bounty on the head of The Satanic Verses author Salman Rushdie.

** Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Supreme Leader of Iran ( b. 1902 )

* 1979 – The Ayatollah Khomeini is welcomed back to Tehran, Iran after nearly 15 years of exile.

The media, in an attempt to explain the ideology of Ayatollah Khomeini and the Iranian Revolution to a Western audience described it as a " fundamentalist version of Islam " by way of analogy to the Christian fundamentalist movement in the U. S. Thus was born the term " Islamic fundamentalist ", which would come to be one of the most common usages of the term in the following years.

Its leaders were inspired by Ayatollah Khomeini, and its forces were trained and organized by a contingent of Iranian Revolutionary Guards.

Ayatollah Khomeini sparked attacks on American embassies when he announced:

While Iran has outlawed homosexuality, Iranian Shi ' a thinkers such as Ayatollah Khomeini have allowed for transsexuals to change their sex so that they can enter heterosexual relationships.

He defended Salman Rushdie, the novelist who was subject to a fatwā requiring Rushdie's execution by Ayatollah Khomeini, and took a strongly pro-interventionist position against Serbia during its conflict with Croatia and Bosnia, supporting NATO forces whilst citing defence of civilian populations in the latter countries.

Khomeini held the title of Grand Ayatollah and is officially known as Imam Khomeini inside Iran and by his supporters internationally, and generally referred to as Ayatollah Khomeini by others.

* 2003 – Ayatollah Sayed Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, the Shia Muslim leader in Iraq, is assassinated in a terrorist bombing, along with nearly 100 worshippers as they leave a mosque in Najaf.

" Islamists " who have spoken out against the use of the term insisting they are merely " Muslims ", include Ayatollah Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, the spiritual mentor of Hizbullah, and Abbassi Madani, leader of the Algerian Islamic Salvation Front.

At the age of 61, Khomeini found the arena of leadership open following the deaths of Ayatollah Sayyed Husayn Borujerdi ( 1961 ), the leading, although quiescent, Shi ' ah religious leader ; and Ayatollah Abol-Ghasem Kashani ( 1962 ), an activist cleric.

Tensions between Bahrain and Iran had already been raised in the summer of 2007, when Hossein Shariatmadari, an Advisor to Iran ’ s supreme leader Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and editor of the Iranian newspaper, Kayan, called for Bahrain to be incorporated into Iran as its 14th province – a stance that echoed Saddam Hussein ’ s designs on Kuwait in the late 1980s.

Its leader, Ayatollah al-Hakim, was killed in a car bomb attack in the Iraqi city of Najaf on August 29, 2003.

The leader of Iran's Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa declaring sex reassignment surgery permissible for " diagnosed transsexuals.

Politicians include the nationalist leader Mohammad Mosaddegh, Ayatollah Mohammad Beheshti, former Prime Minister Jamshid Amouzegar and the recent reformist President Mohammad Khatami.

The state-run and influential Kayhan newspaper, whose managing editor is appointed by Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, ran nearly three dozen articles defaming the Bahá ' í Faith.

More than 80 people were killed, including the influential cleric Ayatollah Sayyid Muħammad Bāqir al-Ħakīm, the Shīia leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq ( SCIRI ).

Revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini — who had been exiled by the Shah for 15 years — heightened rhetoric against the " Great Satan ", the United States, talking of what he called " evidence of American plotting ".

Amid massive protests, the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, fled his country in early 1979 and the Ayatollah Khomeini soon became the new leader of Iran.

* Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei condemned the September 11th attacks but added that attacking Afghanistan might cause a human catastrophe and could trigger more problems for the United States.

* Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei advised the United States against a full-scale war in Afghanistan.

After this period it also interacted with the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the future spiritual leader of Iran, during his exile in Najaf in Iraq.

More than 125 people are killed, including the influential cleric Ayatollah Sayed Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, the Shiite leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq ( SCIRI ).

* Tens of thousands of people turn out in Baghdad for the funeral procession of the murdered Shia Muslim leader Ayatollah Sayed Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim.

This was the year when Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa death sentence against writer Salman Rushdie after the publication of his novel The Satanic Verses.

* April 10, 2003, Shia leader Sayed Abdul Majid al-Khoei, the son of Grand Ayatollah Abu al Qasim al-Khoei, was killed near the mosque.

Somewhere between 85 to 125 people were killed, including the influential Ayatollah Sayed Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, the Shia leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

Ayatollah Mohammad Bahr al-Ulloum () ( born 1923 ) is a prominent Twelver Shi ' a Islamic leader and politician in Iraq.