KHOMEINI TURNED SHIITE ISLAM INTO AN AUTHORITARIAN STATE

"... Throughout much of its history, the Shi’ite clergy have abstained from direct intervention in political life... Shi’ites await the promised return of the missing Twelfth Imam to rule a world of perfect peace and justice, but until that time no political authority is seen as fully legitimate.

"... as a religious radical... (Ayatollah) Khomeini... turned one thousand years of Shi’ite thought and practice on its head with the creation of his Islamic republic... a revolution carried out in the name of both Islam and democracy has been badly tarnished, perhaps forever...

"Khomeini... (made the) Islamic political system – revolutionary maslahat – the “most important of God’s ordinances”... so, he effectively cost the Islamic republic any claim on special religious or moral legitimacy and turned it into just another authoritarian state...

"Today, the damage Khomeini inflicted on the Shi’ite religious institution is on full display, as the system he left behind on his death in 1989 lurches from internal crisis to internal crisis... the Islamic republic seems headed – not today but eventually – for the dustbin of history."

http://www.juancole.com/2009/07/lyons-spectre-of-khomeini-as-religious.html