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

Currently, marjas are accorded the title Grand Ayatollah ( Arabic / Persian: آية ‌ الله العظمی Ayatollah al-Uthma ), however when referring to one, the use of Ayatollah is acceptable.

Carter hoped to gain their freedom through a combination of pressure and threats to Iran alongside negotiations with officials of the Bani-Sadr government, but the Reagan / Bush campaign short-circuited that strategy and won the covert support of the clique around the Ayatollah Khomeini by pledging to provide continued supplies of desperately needed US-made replacement parts and weapons systems to Iran — a project culminating in the Iran-Contra scandal that consumed the final years of both the Reagan and Bush presidencies.

Ayatollah Sayyed Ali Naqi Naqvi ( Arabic / Persian / Urdu: آية الله العظمی سيد على نقى نقوى ) ( born 26 December 1905-18 May 1988 ) ( 26 Rajab 1323 AH-1 Shawal 1408 AH ), also known as Naqqan (), was a mujtahid from Lucknow, India who graduated from Najaf, Iraq.

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

... 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.

Ayatollah Khomeini sparked attacks on American embassies when he announced:

Ayatollah Khomeini summoned a meeting of the other senior marjas of Qom and persuaded them to decree a boycott of the referendum on the White Revolution.

* Executive Orders ( 1996 ) – Saddam Hussein is assassinated ; Iran and Iraq merge forming the United Islamic Republic ; the UIR launches a biological attack on the U. S. using the Ebola virus ; the US launches the Second Persian Gulf War against the UIR and defeats them ; the Ayatollah is killed in a smart-bomb attack by the US.

* 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.

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.

Al-Dawa, on the other hand, follows the position of Iraq's late Ayatollah Mohammad Baqir al-Sadr, and al-Dawa co-founder, that government should be controlled by the ummah ( Muslim community as a whole ).

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

One such attack was the failed assassination attempt on Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah in the Beirut car bombing on March 8, 1985.

Furthermore, a confidential letter sent on October 29, 2005 by the Chairman of the Command Headquarters of the Armed Forced in Iran states that the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei has instructed the Command Headquarters to identify people who adhere to the Bahá ' í Faith and to monitor their activities and gather any and all information about the members of the Bahá ' í Faith.

It continued on under the leadership of Ayatollah Khomeini and helped bring about the Islamic Revolution of Iran

General Hassan Pakravan, Director of Savak from 1961 – 1965, had an almost benevolent reputation, for example dining with the Ayatollah Khomeini while Khomeini was under house arrest on a weekly basis, and later intervened to prevent Khomeini's execution, on the grounds it would " anger the common people of Iran ".

A turning point in SAVAK's reputation for ruthless brutality was reportedly an attack on a gendarmerie post in the Caspian village of Siahkal by a small band of armed Marxists in February 1971, although it is also reported to have tortured to death a Shia cleric, Ayatollah Muhammad Reza Sa ' idi, in 1970.

Regularly his trustees would update the Ayatollah with new information on the death toll, Khomeini would not show any reaction to this.

But when they told Khomeini about the possible death of Ayatollah Beheshti, Khomeini turned around put his hands on his back and showed some signs of affection.

* Ayatollah Dr. Beheshti on the elections

The Shah left Iran for exile on January 16, 1979 as the last Persian monarch and in the resulting power vacuum two weeks later Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Tehran to a greeting by several million Iranians.

He was once the designated successor to the revolution's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini, with whom he had a falling-out in 1989 over government policies that Montazeri said infringed on people's freedom and denied them their rights.

The Lion and Sun was succeeded by a new symbol, designed by Hamid Nadimi and officially approved by Ayatollah Khomeini on 9 May 1980, consisting of four crescents and a line.

One issue of National Front News featured a front cover depicting the ' new alliance ' of the NF with Libya ’ s Muammar al-Gaddafi, Iran ’ s Ayatollah Khomeini and Louis Farrakhan, the leader of the Black Nationalist Nation of Islam, effectively endorsing an ethnopluralist form of racial separatism ( although critics were quick to point out the anti-Semitism linking the chosen allies ).

An example of takfir that has featured prominently in Western media is the case of Salman Rushdie, who was forced into hiding after Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa officially declaring him to be a kafir who should be executed for his book The Satanic Verses, which is perceived to contain passages that drawn into question the basis of Islam.

ROH was featured in the 2008 film The Wrestler, where it promotes the final bout of the film between Randy " The Ram " Robinson ( played by Mickey Rourke ) and The Ayatollah ( played by Ernest " The Cat " Miller ).

This idea led to the publication of the most notorious issue of NF News which featured a cover extolling the ' new alliance ' of the party with the Ayatollah Khomeini, Muammar Gaddafi and Louis Farrakhan, a previously unthinkable stance in the NF.

That the revolution replaced the monarchy and Shah Pahlavi with Islamism and Khomeini, rather than another leader and ideology, is credited in part to the spread of the Shia version of the Islamic revival that opposed Westernization, saw Ayatollah Khomeini as following in the footsteps of the beloved Shi ' a Imam Husayn ibn Ali, and the Shah in those of Husayn's foe, the hated tyrant Yazid I.

He has worked with MC's such as the Notorious B. I. G., Mobb Deep, Sadat X, Akinyele, Chuck D of Public Enemy, Jedi Mind Tricks, Kool G Rap, Wu-Tang Clan, Rakim, Killah Priest, and producers Trackmasters, Erick Sermon, DJ Quik, Buckwild, Havoc, Alchemist, and Ayatollah.

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

The idea behind the plan was for Israel to ship weapons through an intermediary ( identified as Manucher Ghorbanifar ) to the Islamic republic as a way of aiding a supposedly moderate, politically influential faction within the regime of Ayatollah Khomeni who were believed to be seeking a rapprochement with the United States ; after the transaction, the U. S. would reimburse Israel with the same weapons, while receiving monetary benefits.

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 ).

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.

Islamic leaders, particularly the exiled cleric Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, were able to focus this discontent with an ideology tied to Islamic principles that called for the overthrow of the Shah and the return to Islamic traditions, called the Islamic revolution.

Ayatollah Khomeini stated that " 60, 000 men, women and children were martyred by the Shah's regime ," but estimates compiled by a researcher ( Emad al-Din Baghi ) at the Martyrs Foundation ( Bonyad Shahid ) come to only 2, 781 killed in the 1978 and 1979 clashes between demonstrators and the Shah's army and security forces.

Two major political groups formed after the fall of the shah that clashed with, and were eventually suppressed by, pro-Khomeini groups were the moderate religious Muslim People's Republican Party ( MPRP ) which was associated with Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Kazem Shariatmadari, and the secular leftist National Democratic Front ( NDF ).

The reforms were regarded as dangerous, Westernizing trends by traditionalists, especially by the powerful Shia religious leaders, including Ayatollah Khomeini.

Montazeri's leadership qualifications were further hurt by not being a seyyed, or descendant of the Prophet Mohammed, traditionally wearing the black turban in Shiite Islam, like Khomeini and Khomeini's successor Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The " core " of the reform movement is said to be made up of Islamic leftists disqualified for running for office as they were purged and generally " disempowered " by Islamic conservatives following the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989.

In 1987, the courts were revived by decree of Ayatollah Khomeini in order to try an outspoken critic of the Iran-Contra Affair, Mehdi Hashemi.

He and Frank " Poncho " Sampedro saw newspaper photos of the Ayatollah Khomeini's body being carried to his grave as mourners were burning American flags in the street.

However, the majority of seats in the Majlis were won by the Islamic Republican Party of Ayatollah Beheshti and leftist and nationalist organizations were forced out of the loop, by 1979.

Armed revolutionary committees loyal to Khomeini ( which came to be known as the Pasdaran ) arrested many thousands of youth and activists from both nationalist and leftist groups, many of whom were later tried by Ayatollah Sadegh Khalkhali, who was known as the Hanging Judge, and executed.

As Ayatollah Khomeini and the clergy consolidated their grip on the new state, mainly through the elimination of leftists and liberal moderates such as Bani Sadr and the venerable Mehdi Bazargan, these claims were denied.

These factors were exacerbated by King Hussein's public support for the shah of Iran in his confrontation with Ayatollah Khomeini and the forces of opposition, by continued relations with Egypt in the wake of the 1979 Treaty of Peace Between Egypt and Israel, and by the king's support for Iraq in the Iran – Iraq War.

This newspaper was closed in 1979 on the orders of Ayatollah Khomeini and its editor and senior staff were all imprisoned.

Contributions from many of these learned men were then compiled in a book form by Ayatollah Sayyed Ali Naqi Naqvi and initially 500 copies were printed for review by the members of the mentioned organization ( who were asked to review the text and revert with their comments ) so that the final version could be published with any amendments if required.