Khomeini's Ghost: The Iranian Revolution and the Rise of Militant Islam
By Con Coughlin
3.5/5
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About this ebook
From the bestselling author of Saddam comes the definitive biography of Ayatollah Khomeini's Islamic revolution and how his fundamentalist legacy has forever influenced the course of Iran's relationship with the West.
In February 1979, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returned to Tehran after nearly fifteen years in exile and received a hero's welcome. Just as the new world order sought to purge the communist ideologies of the Cold War, the religious doctrine of Islamic fundamentalism emerged to pose an even greater threat to post–Iron Curtain stability—and Khomeini would mastermind it into a revolution.
Khomeini's Ghost is the account of how an impoverished young student from a remote area of southern Iran became the leader of one of the most dramatic upheavals of the modern age, and how his radical Islamic philosophy now lies at the heart of the modern-day conflict between Iran and the West. Con Coughlin draws on a wide variety of Iranian sources, including religious figures who knew and worked with Khomeini both in exile and in power.
Both compelling and timely, Khomeini's Ghost is essential reading for anyone wishing to understand what lies at the center of many of the world's most intractable conflicts.
Con Coughlin
Con Coughlin, one of Britain's leading journalists, is the executive foreign editor of the Daily Telegraph and a world-renowned expert on the Middle East. He is the critically acclaimed author of the New York Times bestseller Saddam: His Rise and Fall. He appears regularly on television and radio in the United States, and has been a frequent political commentator on CNN, NBC, and MSNBC. He has also written for the Wall Street Journal and the Atlantic Monthly. He lives in London, England.
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Reviews for Khomeini's Ghost
9 ratings1 review
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The title is a bit misleading. The coverage isn't as broad as it implies. It's a workmanlike biography of Khomeini. Very much a journalist's account. It isn't like Steve Coll's books, which draw on loads of interviews with intimates and give you a sense of place (for example, Riyadh in the 1930s when bin Laden's peasant father arrived there) . Probably most of it is public record. It's a good capsule political history of Iran in the the 20th century: how the business class (bazaaris) and the religious establishment were historical allies in the face of corrupt kings, how the last shah's father originally had their support. The chain of events through WW1, British occupation, the Anglo-American oil company issue, etc.A la Ataturk, Shah pere instituted very sudden and radical attempts at "modernization"--banning the wearing of the hijab, etc. Some of the feudal-style clerical class had vast landholdings threatened by reforms, so they're not so sympathetic.His son, the last Shah, was actually more of a compromiser with the imams, at least for a time. Tho I've read quite a few books on Iran, this book gave me more of a sense of the positive contributions of his White Revolution.But then we circle back to Khomeini. You don't get much sense of the range of anti-Shah forces. Forget the communists, what does "liberal" or "moderate" mean here? Why did they rally around Khomeini? What did they expect he would do after victory? You won't learn much about the terror unleashed by Khomeini on all these erstwhile allies along with Shah forces. Nor on the Iran-Iraq war.Finally, I was hoping to get more info about the links between militant Iranian Islam and the rise of militancy in the rest of the world in the past 30-40 years. True, we see how Iran spawned Hizbollah and contributed to the war in Lebanon but I was hoping for the connections to Malaysia and Indonesia. Could be more on Afghanistan, but it's good on why Iran doesn't care for the Taliban or Saudi Arabia's Wahabiis--and thus has quietly supported US troops movements there. Still, I'm shocked to see the 2010 date; it feels a lot older.