The Spirit of Allah: Khomeini and the Islamic Revolution [Hardcover]

Amir Taheri (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Khomeini was a little-known figure to most Iranians even as he took power in that country's 1979 revolution. In this detailed, balanced study, Taheri, former editor of the Iranian daily Kayhan and now resident in Europe, traces the rise of this "quintessential" mullah, who began life in an oasis-village religious family, pursued an eccentric, lone-wolf career, and emerged in the 1960s as a strong critic of the Shah and othersforeigners, Jewswho were considered enemies of Islam. While he was being written off as a political force, during his 16-year exile Khomeini actually strengthened his network of support in Iran, creating an illusion of moderation for his radical cultural revolution. Taheri is especially good on the complex social forces that set the stage for Khomeini's Islamic state and made him the "only credible alternative" to the Shah. Photos not seen by PW. February 10
Copyright 1985 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Americans have become familiar with Ayatollah Khomeini through the media; yet understanding a figure so remote from American politics and culture is difficult. Taheri, a leading Iranian newspaper editor until 1979, sheds light on the complex forces of the revolution that overthrew the Shah and brought Khomeini to power in a unique 20th-century movement that replaced a modern government with theocratic rule. Taheri analyzes the forces of this religious upheaval, the widespread confusion that Khomeini directed first against the Shah and then against the other revolutionary parties. His detailed review of Khomeini's early life demonstrates the continuing influence of rural and religious values that resisted the currents of modernization. This readable book balances the focus on the man with an understanding of the political forces he unleased. Valuable for both specialists and general readers. Elizabeth R. Hayford, President, Associated Colls. of the Midwest, Chicago
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 349 pages
• Publisher: Adler & Adler Pub; First Edition. states edition (February 1986)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 091756104X
• ISBN-13: 978-0917561047
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #166,673 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Amir Taheri was born in Ahvaz, southwest Iran, and educated in Tehran London and Paris. He joined Kayhan International, Tehran's English daily newspaper in 1968 as an opera critic and then cultural correspondent. A year later he was appointed Diplomatic Correspondent and in 1971 became the paper's Political Editor.
In 1972 he was appointed Executive Editor-in-Chief of the Persian language daily Kayhan, Iran's largest newspaper, a post he held until the Islamic Revolution in 1979.
Since then he has edited a number of newspapers and magazines in France and Britain and contributed to many leading publications in Europe, the United States and the Middle East. His columns are published by many newspapers across the globe.
In four decades of journalism, Taheri has interviewed many of the world's political leaders and cultural and artistic icons. He has also published 11 books on Islam, Iran, the Soviet Union, and the Middle East.
Taheri was a member of the Executive Board of the Institute for International Political and Economic Studies (IIPES)for four years during which he helped organise a number of seminars on the Persian Gulf and Iran's political developments.
Taheri was a member of the Executive Board of the International Press Institute (IPI) for eight years and a campiagner for press freedom across the globe. He also served on the Executive Board of the Reporters sans Frontieres for three years. He has been a Senior Fellow at the National Committee for American Foreign Policy (NCAFP) since 2002 and Director of its Middle East Project.
Over the past two decades Taheri has emerged as a leading participant in the debate taking place within the world of Islam. A frequent traveler to Muslim countries, Taheri has lectured in many universities, research institutes and political and cultural clubs, offering his ideas for reforming Islam and helping it come to terms with modernity.
Since 1982, Taheri has lived in Paris and London, with frequent and at times lengthy visits to the Middle East.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Khomeini : Saint or Monster?, September 23, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Spirit of Allah: Khomeini and the Islamic Revolution (Hardcover)

Ruhollah Khomeini was a mullah born in a poverty-stricken village in the Iranian uplands in the last century. Nothing in his childhood or youth would have indicated that one day he would play a major international role, hold America hostage and fire the first shots in what Samuel Huntington has described as " the war of civilisations." Millions of Americans watched their diplomats held hostage and blindfolded in Tehran and daily threatened with execution. The American television public also became familiar with the dour-faced image of Khomeini, the radical mullah who incited mobs of Iranian fanatics to fever pitch. But few Americans understood why Khomeini was able to practice the medieval policy of holding hostages in the final decades of the Twentieth Century.Or what made him tick? This biography, first published over a decade ago and later re-edited, is the best account I have seen of Khomeini's life and politics. Written in an easy flowing and yet very powerful narrative prose, this biography is consistently fair to Khomeini, letting him tell us his side of the story, without being complacent when it comes to exposing and denouncing the crimes he and his regimes committed against the people of Iran and other peoples. There are moments in this fascinating biography that Khomeini comes almost close to sainthood: for example when he speaks out for the downtrodden against a despotic Shah. But there are other moments when we see the ayatollah as a real-life monster : for example when he visits the bullet-strewn corpses of six military officers who have been shot by his henchmen without trial. The ayatollah caresses his white beard and thanks Allah for alllowing him to witness " This beautiful scene." ( sic.) The writer, basing himself mostly on interviews and other primary sources, brings us the film of Khomeini's life in a way that is both instructive and entertaining. We see young Khomeini courting his bride-to-be and preparing for his wedding with all the gaucherie of a village youth. We see him locked in theological disputes with the religious grandees of his days. We see him sit himself down at an audience with the Shah, thus breaking the protocol which insisted that " commoners" should stand while His Imperial Majesty received them. Then we see Khomeini ordering the assassination of intellectuals with a nod of his turbaned head or putting his seal to a " fatwa" for the despatch of thousands of adolescents to the killing fields of the Iran-Iraq war. As an additional bonus the books offers translations of two of Khomeini's poems. ( Yes, he was a poet, too!) A careful reading of the poems reveals the late ayatollah as a jumble of contradictions, a restless soul which , operating at the extremes, could be both saintly and monstrous. One of the best political books I have read in years. A READER IN KUWAIT

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Art of Biography, March 29, 2003

By 

andrea keame (Dubai, UAE) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Spirit of Allah: Khomeini and the Islamic Revolution (Hardcover)

This book is one of the best examples of the art of biography that I have come across in years.
The writer knows his subject deeply and is also gifted with a flowing prose that is easy to follow.
We learn of the ayatollah's sad childhood, when he was known as "badqadam" ( ill-omened) because his father had been killed in a brawl shortly after his birth.
Khomeini tried to pattern his life on that of Islam's Prophet Mohammad, who had also been an orphan.
Like Mohammad he was forced into exile.
And like Mohammad he returned home in triumph to found a new state.
But unlike Mohammad, who had shown mercy to his worst enemies, Khomeini decided to take revenge, often against innocent individuals whose only crime had been their position within the Iranian administration.
Khomeini seized power in an Iran that, though certainly not free and prosperous by WSestern standards, was the freest and mostpropserous of all Muslim countries. But when he died 10 years later, Iran was one of the poorest and most oppressed nations. By one estimate over 1.2 million Iranians died during Khomeini's reign, including those who fell in the eight-year long war against Iraq.
Khomeini is also the father of modern Islamic terrorirsm that later reached its worst manifestations in the Palestinian suicide-bombers and the Saudi- Egyptian Al Qaeda group.
This book is an absolute must by all those who wish to understand radical Islam and the threat that it poses, in diddferent forms, to the civilized world.
A.Keame, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars THE MONSTER WHO BECAME TIME MAGAZINE'S MAN OF THE YEAR, April 2, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: The Spirit of Allah: Khomeini and the Islamic Revolution (Hardcover)

In 1979 Time Magazine put Ruhollah Khomeini on its cover as " Man of the Year".
The Shah had left Iran, a broken man and was being chased out of the United States, where he was being treated for cancer. President Jimmy Carter was trying to curry favor with Khomeini, an obscure mullah who had suddenly become master of Iran.
Carter even wrote a letter to Khomeini- " from one man of faith to another man of faith"!
Carter's National Security Council was putting out papers that proposed " strong support" for Khomeini and urged the multiplication of his model in other Islamic countries.
A CIA memorandum had described Khomeini as " a kind of philosopher king", more interested in " society's moral well-being than in the exercise of power."
American Iranologists, including Professor Richard Cottam, were praising Khomeini to the skies as " the Gandhi of Islam".
In hindsight it is a pity that Amir Taheri's fascinating biography of the ayatollah was not available at that time so that the people of Iran, and the world outside, would know exactly who they were dealing with. But, if I understand from the autor's background, he , too, was not familiar with the ayatollah's life until after the revolution.
This book shows the art of biography at its best.
It is based on extensive research, including first-hand interviews and documents.
But what is specially interesting is Taheri's cool analysis of political Islam and its practical consequences.
The author writes with the ease and detachment of a novelist but takes meticulous care to back every assertion with evidence and authority.
The portrait of Khomeini as a child and a young man is of special interest insofar as its reveals the bleakness of life in a small Iranian town in the early years of the last century.
Of all the books written about the ayatollah and his revolution, this is by far the best. A pleasure to read and an object lesson in the strange twists and turns of history.

Khomeini was certainly a monster, and not a saint as his followers suggest. Sadly, the US realised that a bit too late.

A READER IN LONDON