Radi Allah anhu
Warning: the things which you're about to read and discover may bring you to one terrifying realization: it is probable that everything you've ever read about Khomeini and Iran was written by people who didn't bother to read what the Imam himself actually wrote about the revolution he led.
No man in history has been ever so systematically slandered than this man.
Your typical Western reader will approach Khomeini with one standard -- an exclusive comfort to political theories which are only concerned with questions of sovereignty, exception, and checks + balances on abuses of power. Hence, such a reader will automatically interpret Khomeini's Islamic Platonism as, in essence, extremely dangerous.
No doubt, the Islamic Revolution has since marked its failure within his era -- but there is a lot to be optimistic about.
Khomeini was very egalitarian; within the political, social, and even economic facets of his nation. At every turn, he tried to reject sectarianism and willfully attempted to include Sunnites, Jews, and Christians in his revolutionary plan.
He was also incredibly democratic. The ulama were not in place because they were some kind of dynasty -- established through hierarchy (such as the House of Saud) -- but rather through prestige, merit, respect, and taqwa. And subsequently, the need for "checks and balances" diminished with such a trustworthy cabinet.
Khomeini wrote about relinquishing the Shah from a scholarly point of view; the Shah was incompetent and, quite frankly, very foolish. Khomeini sought to battle opposites with opposites, and in doing so, he sought to enlarge the role of intellectualism in society.
You'd be shocked at how rich Khomeini's ideals were. How it lacked the moral bankruptcy that ever so marks the politics of the Ba'ath (Iraq) and the Wahabbis (Saudi Arabia).
"Everything," Khomeini writes, "is in the name of Allah."
