A Religious Scholar
Ayatollah Khomeini's life after childhood went through three distinct phases. The first phase, from 1908 to 1962, was marked mainly by training, teaching, and writing in the field of Islamic studies. At the age of six he began to study the Koran, Islam's holy book, and also elementary Persian. Subsequently he was taught Islamic jurisprudence by his older brother, Morteza Pasandideh, who was also an ayatollah in the holy city of Qom in Iran. He completed his studies in Islamic law, ethics, and spiritual philosophy under the supervision of Ayatollah Abdul Karim Haeri-ye Yazdi, first in Arak, a town near Khomein, and later in Qom, where he also got married and had two sons and three daughters. His older son, Hajj Mustafa, died (allegedly killed by the Shah's security agents), but the younger one, Ahmad, was relatively active in revolutionary politics in Tehran.
Although during this scholarly phase of his life Khomeini was not politically active, the nature of his studies, teachings, and writings revealed that he firmly believed from the beginning in political activism by clerics. Three factors support this suggestion. First, his interest in Islamic studies surpassed the bounds of traditional subjects of Islamic law (Sharia), jurisprudence (Figh), and principles (Usul) and the like.
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