Two Primary Goals of Ayatollah Khomeini

Gamban 2

Amanda Gamban

English 1A

Professor Knapps

24 February 2013

Censorship of the Arts Narrative: Two Primary Goals of Ayatollah Khomeini 

            Ayatollah Khomeini was born in 1900 and through out his life he has had a major influence on the Iranian people. He was an Islamic religious scholar and later on became the Islamic religious leader for life. How he got there was a years of turmoil and repression the government had for him at the time. The Shah, which was the leader of Iran was trying to reform his country into a more western society. Ayatollah Khomeini didn’t believe in the new pro-western movement, his beliefs against the Shah had him exiled from Iran. Even with Khomeini out of Iran his followers were growing and becoming stronger, by throwing riots and protests. The Iranian revolution had turned the Shah’s pro-western movement into the Islamic Republic of Iran with the leader being Khomeini.

            Breaking ties with the West only made the Islamic Republic stronger as a Muslim country but, weakened the Iranian people’s freedom of beliefs and rights. After the revolution the country was divided by liberal and conservative beliefs. Khomeini had sided with the conservatives because of his vision to reform the country back to a true Islamic country. His two goals were derived from a conservative point of view. “The first was the destruction of the alien and dependent (mostly western) value system that the Pahlavi regime and its “Western masters” had forced on the Iranian people"( Ruholla Khomeini). His second goal was to restore the country in to an authentic Islamic culture, “ …that would recapture the dignity of Iran as a Muslim country” (Siavoshi). Through his eyes his goals were for the best the country of Iran from a conservative standpoint, but his new plan would only make things harder for the new generation of Iranian people.