Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

358 • KHOMEINI, RUHALLAH MUSAWI ALSatanic Verses. Khomeini died on 3 June 1989, having presided formore than a decade over the development of an Islamic revolutionarysociety within Iran but without witnessing the creation of any sisterIslamic republic outside of Iran’s borders. Khomeini was buriednear Behesht-i Zahra cemetery, south of Tehran, where an enormousImamzadeh, a combined mausoleum and religious edifice, was builtover his grave, becoming in effect a combined revolutionary memorialand pilgrimage site.Khomeini’s own position on terrorism was highly ambivalent. Inhis Kashf al Asrar and Vilayat-i Faqih, he appeared to endorse thetraditional Shi’ite view that only defensive warfare, rather than jihadproper, is permitted in the absence of the apostolic Twelfth Imam.In questions 2826–2834 of his jurisprudential handbook Risalih-iTaudhih al Masa’il (Treatise on the Clarification of Problematic Issues),Khomeini derives the right of defensive warfare and resistanceto unjust rulers not from the Koranic injunctions regarding jihad butrather from the Koranic command in Surah Āl-i’Imran (3), verse103, to “enjoin the good and prohibit the bad.” On 8 August 1984,while criticizing a Radio Tehran commentary that had praised themining of the Red Sea, Khomeini declared the hijacking of shipsand airplanes, the seizing of passengers as hostages, and the bombingof public places in which innocents might be killed or maimedas being “against the sentiments of world opinion, against Islam, andagainst common sense.” However, this declaration was followed byHezbollah’s hijacking of Trans World Airlines (TWA) Flight 847 on14 June 1985 and by the al Da’wa group’s hijacking of Kuwaiti AirwaysFlight 422 on 5 April 1988, in which both groups of hijackerswere under Iranian sponsorship.On 7 January 1988, however, Khomeini publicly adopted theposition that the Islamic Republic, for reasons of state, was permittednot only to act against the decrees of the Koran but even tocompel Muslim believers to do so, a position that would permit theIslamic Republic or its sponsored groups to engage in any terroristactions they deemed to be necessary. The religious scrupulosityreflected in Khomeini’s earlier writings and speeches may havesimply crumbled under the pressures of running a nation-state andconducting a war. To the end of his life Khomeini never renouncedthe Islamic Republic’s right to use terrorism. That Khomeini’s successoras Rahbar-i Inqilab, or Supreme Religious Leader, Ayatollah