Hojatoleslam
Hujjat al-Islam (from ''ḥujjat-u l-Islām'') (also Hojatoleslam) is an honorific title meaning "authority on Islam" or "proof of Islam".
Sunni Islam
Its first recorded use was in a Sunni Islam, Sunni context, as a title for the 11th-century t ...
Sayyid
''Sayyid'' (, ; ar, سيد ; ; meaning 'sir', 'Lord', 'Master'; Arabic plural: ; feminine: ; ) is a surname of people descending from the Islamic prophet Muhammad through his grandsons, Hasan ibn Ali and Husayn ibn Ali, sons of Muhamma ...
Hussein Khomeini (in fa, حسین خمینی) (born 1959) is an
Iranian
Iranian may refer to:
* Iran, a sovereign state
* Iranian peoples, the speakers of the Iranian languages. The term Iranic peoples is also used for this term to distinguish the pan ethnic term from Iranian, used for the people of Iran
* Iranian lan ...
scholar and reformist cleric. He is the grandson of
Grand Ayatollah
Marji ( ar, مرجع, transliteration: ''marjiʿ''; plural: ''marājiʿ''), literally meaning "source to follow" or "religious reference", is a title given to the highest level of Twelver Shia authority, a Grand Ayatollah with the authority giv ...
Ruhollah Khomeini, the son of Ruhollah's first son,
Mostafa Khomeini
Mostafa Khomeini ( fa, مصطفی خمینی ; 12 December 1930 – 23 October 1977) was an Iranian cleric and the eldest son of Ayatollah Khomeini. He died before the Iranian Revolution.
Early life and education
Khomeini was born in Qom on ...
, and his wife, Masoumeh Haeri Yazdi, daughter of
Morteza Haeri Yazdi.
Views
Unlike his grandfather, Khomeini is a
liberal
Liberal or liberalism may refer to:
Politics
* a supporter of liberalism
** Liberalism by country
* an adherent of a Liberal Party
* Liberalism (international relations)
* Sexually liberal feminism
* Social liberalism
Arts, entertainment and m ...
secularist
Secularism is the principle of seeking to conduct human affairs based on secular, naturalistic considerations.
Secularism is most commonly defined as the separation of religion from civil affairs and the state, and may be broadened to a sim ...
and an outspoken critic of the
theocratic
Theocracy is a form of government in which one or more deities are recognized as supreme ruling authorities, giving divine guidance to human intermediaries who manage the government's daily affairs.
Etymology
The word theocracy originates fr ...
Islamist government in Iran. Khomeini has denounced the Iranian government as the "
dictatorship of clerics". In 2003, he declared Iran's reformist movement "finished", questioned the theocratic principle of
velayat-e faqih
The Guardianship or Governance/''Wilāyat'' of/by an Islamic Jurist/''Faqīh'' ( fa, , Velâyat-e Faqih; ar, وِلاَيَةُ ٱلْفَقِيهِ, Wilāyat al-Faqīh), is a concept in Twelver Shia Islamic law which holds that until the re ...
, and "called for a referendum to decide how the country should be governed in the future."
[Iran's rulers 'should call referendum' By Pam O'Toole, BBC News, 7 August 2003]
/ref> He has also advocated for a nonclassical interpretation of Islamic law applied in the country.
His mentor is thought to be Grand Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri
Grand Ayatollah Hussein-Ali Montazeri ( fa, حسینعلی منتظری ; 24 September 1922 – 19 December 2009) was an Iranian Shia Islamic theologian, Islamic democracy advocate, writer and human rights activist. He was one of the lead ...
.[Ayatollah's grandson calls for US overthrow of Iran Philip Sherwell]
''Telegraph'' 18 June 2006 However, Montazeri was against invasion of Iraq and called for withdrawal of American troops from Iraq. In strong contrast to his grandfather's politics, Khomeini is a cleric who has spoken out against the Islamic Republic system. He is sympathetic to American neoconservative
Neoconservatism is a political movement that began in the United States during the 1960s among liberal hawks who became disenchanted with the increasingly pacifist foreign policy of the Democratic Party and with the growing New Left and count ...
s, and has lectured at the American Enterprise Institute
The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, known simply as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), is a center-right Washington, D.C.–based think tank that researches government, politics, economics, and social welfare. A ...
.
Arrest
Hossein Khomeini was arrested in 1981 for saying "the new dictatorship established in religious form is worse than that of the Shah and the Mongols." He was then placed "under virtual house arrest."
Trips outside Iran
After the 2003 American-led invasion of Iraq
The 2003 invasion of Iraq was a United States-led invasion of the Republic of Iraq and the first stage of the Iraq War. The invasion phase began on 19 March 2003 (air) and 20 March 2003 (ground) and lasted just over one month, including 26 ...
, Hossein relocated to the holy city of Karbala.[ During the same year he visited ]United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...
and, in a historic meeting, was received by Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi II, son of the last Shah of Iran
This is a list of monarchs of Persia (or monarchs of the Iranic peoples, in present-day Iran), which are known by the royal title Shah or Shahanshah. This list starts from the establishment of the Medes around 671 BCE until the deposition of th ...
.[Khomeini's grandson: Oust Iran clerics 14 June 2006 ''The Jerusalem Post'']
/ref>
After his quick visit to America, he returned to Iraq for several months, then suddenly departed for his native Iran
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...
after receiving an urgent message from his grandmother, asking him to come back. According to Michael Ledeen
Michael Arthur Ledeen (; born August 1, 1941) is an American historian, and neoconservative foreign policy analyst. He is a former consultant to the United States National Security Council, the United States Department of State, and the United St ...
, who has quoted "family sources," he was blackmailed into returning. During a stay in Washington
Washington commonly refers to:
* Washington (state), United States
* Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States
** A metonym for the federal government of the United States
** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered o ...
, he met with famed author and antitheist Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Eric Hitchens (13 April 1949 – 15 December 2011) was a British-American author and journalist who wrote or edited over 30 books (including five essay collections) on culture, politics, and literature. Born and educated in England, ...
, according to whom he received Hitchens' Quran
The Quran (, ; Standard Arabic: , Quranic Arabic: , , 'the recitation'), also romanized Qur'an or Koran, is the central religious text of Islam, believed by Muslims to be a revelation from God. It is organized in 114 chapters (pl.: , s ...
, kissed it and added to it the references he considered canonical in disapproving of the Islamic republic's legitimacy. He also met Hitchens in Qom in 2005. In ''Christopher Hitchens Arguably'', page 455, their meeting is described in “Iran’s Waiting Game” which features in (page 466) “Vanity Fair,July 2005.”
In his memoir, '' Hitch-22'', Hitchens praised Khomeini as a "courageous foe of his grandfather's theocracy".[Christopher Hitchens, ''Hitch-22'', image caption following p. 212]
Call for overthrow of the Islamic Republic
In 2006, he broke "a three-year silence" when he called for American destruction of the Islamic Republic by invasion on the Al-Arabiya television station, saying 'freedom must come to Iran in any possible way, whether through internal or external developments. If you were a prisoner, what would you do? I want someone to break the prison pen
A pen is a common writing instrument that applies ink to a surface, usually paper, for writing or drawing. Early pens such as reed pens, quill pens, dip pens and ruling pens held a small amount of ink on a nib or in a small void or cavity wh ...
.[ This position was even more extreme than that of the fiercely anti-regime Iranian exiles, "who oppose military action while urging the US to back a domestic uprising."][
Since returning to Iran, he has been closely monitored by the Iranian government and has been restricted in granting interviews to the Western media,][ but is thought to "be protected from retribution by his grandmother, ]Khadijeh Saqafi
Khadijeh Saqafi ( fa, خدیجه ثقفی; 1913 – 21 March 2009) was an Iranian revolutionary and the wife of Ruhollah Khomeini, the Supreme Leader of Iran and figurehead of the Iranian Revolution. In Iran, she was known as "the mother of the ...
" (d. 2009).[
]
References
External links
Ynet article
Slate Interview
Daily Telegraph
Briefing by American Enterprise Institute
{{DEFAULTSORT:Khomeini, Hossein
20th-century Iranian people
1959 births
Al-Moussawi family
Iranian dissidents
Iranian secularists
Iranian Shia clerics
Living people
Ruhollah Khomeini