title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: Cassette copies of his lectures fiercely denouncing the Shah as (for example) "the Jewish agent, the American serpent whose head must be smashed with a stone", became common items in the markets of Iran, helping to demythologize the power and dignity of the Shah and his reign. Aware of the importance of broadening his base, Khomeini reached out to Islamic reformist and secular enemies of the Shah, despite his long-term ideological incompatibility with them.


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: After the 1977 death of Ali Shariati (an Islamic reformist and political revolutionary author/academic/philosopher who greatly assisted the Islamic revival among young educated Iranians), Khomeini became the most influential leader of the opposition to the Shah. Adding to his mystique was the circulation among Iranians in the 1970s of an old Shia saying attributed to the Imam Musa al-Kadhem. Prior to his death in 799, al-Kadhem was said to have prophesied that "A man will come out from Qom and he will summon people to the right path". In late 1978, a rumour swept the country that Khomeini's face could be seen in the full moon. Millions of people were said to have seen it and the event was celebrated in thousands of mosques. He was perceived by many Iranians as the spiritual as well as political leader of the revolt. Additionally, the episode with Khomeini's face in the moon showed that in late 1978 he was increasingly regarded as a messianic figure in Iran.


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: As protests grew, so did his profile and importance. Although several thousand kilometers away from Iran in Paris, Khomeini set the course of the revolution, urging Iranians not to compromise and ordering work stoppages against the regime. During the last few months of his exile, Khomeini received a constant stream of reporters, supporters, and notables, eager to hear the spiritual leader of the revolution.


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: While in exile, Khomeini developed what historian Ervand Abrahamian described as a "populist clerical version of Shii Islam". Khomeini modified previous Shii interpretations of Islam in a number of ways that included aggressive approaches to espousing the general interests of the mostazafin, forcefully arguing that the clergy's sacred duty was to take over the state so that it could implement shari'a, and exhorting followers to protest.


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: Despite their ideological differences, Khomeini also allied with the People's Mujahedin of Iran during the early 1970s and started funding their armed operations against the Shah.


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: According to the BBC, Khomeini's contact with the US "is part of a trove of newly declassified US government documents—diplomatic cables, policy memos, meeting records". The documents suggest that the Carter administration helped Khomeini return to Iran by preventing the Iranian army from launching a military coup, and that Khomeini told an American in France to convey a message to Washington that "There should be no fear about oil. It is not true that we wouldn't sell to the US."


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: According to a 1980 CIA study, "in November 1963 Ayatollah Khomeini sent a message to the United States Government through [Tehran University professor] Haj Mirza Khalil Kamarei", where he expressed "that he was not opposed to American interests in Iran", "on the contrary, he thought the American presence was necessary as a counterbalance to Soviet and possibly British influence".


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei denied the report, and described the documents as "fabricated". Other Iranian politicians including Ebrahim Yazdi (Khomeini's spokesman and adviser at the time of the revolution) have questioned the BBC's documents. The Guardian wrote that it "did not have access to the newly declassified documents and was not able to independently verify them," however it did confirm Khomeini's contact with the Kennedy administration and support for US interest in Iran particularly oil through a CIA analysis report titled "Islam in Iran".


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: According to the BBC, "these document show that in his long quest for power, he [Khomeini] was tactically flexible; he played the moderate even pro-American card to take control but once change had come he put in place an anti-America legacy that would last for decades."


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: Khomeini was not allowed to return to Iran during the Shah's reign (as he had been in exile). On 16 January 1979, the Shah left the country for medical treatment (ostensibly "on vacation"), never to return. Two weeks later, on Thursday, 1 February 1979, Khomeini returned in triumph to Iran, welcomed by a joyous crowd estimated (by the BBC) to be of up to five million people. On his chartered Air France flight back to Tehran, he was accompanied by 120 journalists, including three women. One of the journalists, Peter Jennings, asked: "Ayatollah, would you be so kind as to tell us how you feel about being back in Iran?" Khomeini answered via his aide Sadegh Ghotbzadeh: ""Hichi"" (Nothing). This statement—much discussed at the time and since—was considered by some reflective of his mystical beliefs and non-attachment to ego. Others considered it a warning to Iranians who hoped he would be a "mainstream nationalist leader" that they were in for disappointment. To others, it was a reflection of an unfeeling leader incapable or unconcerned with understanding the thoughts, beliefs, or the needs of the Iranian populace.


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: Khomeini adamantly opposed the provisional government of Shapour Bakhtiar, promising "I shall kick their teeth in. I appoint the government." On 11 February (Bahman 22), Khomeini appointed his own competing interim prime minister, Mehdi Bazargan, demanding, "since I have appointed him, he must be obeyed." It was "God's government," he warned, disobedience against him or Bazargan was considered a "revolt against God."


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: During his time as a student and teacher, Khomeini had developed an "unorthodox personal philosophy" that drew from an obscure interpretation of Shia Islam which proposed that all power should derive from "a divinely appointed religious leader." Khomeini had first promised Iranians a new era where freedom of expression and the nation’s oil wealth would be used for the benefit of the Iranian people, but once in Tehran, he implemented a radical Islamic agenda that went at odds with the desire of most of the Iranian public. Khomeini told Revolutionary Council that the new government would be "a government based on the Sharia", and that opposing this new government would mean also opposing the Sharia of Islam, and that "Revolt against God’s government is a revolt against God, and revolt against God is Blasphemy".


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: As Khomeini's movement gained momentum, soldiers began to defect to his side and Khomeini declared ill fortune on troops who did not surrender. On 11 February, as revolt spread and armories were taken over, the military declared neutrality and the Bakhtiar regime collapsed. On 30 and 31 March 1979, a referendum to replace the monarchy with an Islamic Republic passed with 98% voting in favour of the replacement, with the question: "should the monarchy be abolished in favour of an Islamic Government?"


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: While in Paris, Khomeini had "promised a democratic political system" for Iran, but once in power, he advocated for the creation of theocracy based on the "Velayat-e faqih". This led to the purge or replacement of many secular politicians in Iran, with Khomeini and his close associates taking the following steps: Establishing Islamic Revolutionary courts; replacing the previous military and police force; placing Iran's top theologians and Islamic intellectuals in charge of writing a theocratic constitutions, with a central role for "Velayat-e faqih"; creating the Islamic Republic Party (IRP) through Khomeini's "Motjaheds" with the aim of establishing a theocratic government and tearing down any secular opposition ("as Khomeini's competitors in the religious hierarchy"); replacing all secular laws with Islamic laws; neutralising or punishing top theologians that had conflicting ideas with Khomeini including Mohammad Kazem Shariatmadari, Hassan Tabatabaei Qomi, and Hossein Ali Montazeri.


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: Opposition groups claimed that Khomeini's provisional constitution for the Islamic Republic did not first include the post of supreme Islamic clerical ruler. The Islamic government was defined by Khomeini in his book "" (Islamic Government: Governance of the Jurist) which was published while Khomeini was in exile in 1970, smuggled into Iran, and distributed to Khomeini's supporters. This book included Khomeini's notion of "wilayat al-faqih" (Governance of the Jurist) as well as the reasoning and in his view, the necessity of it in running an Islamic state.


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: Khomeini and his supporters worked to suppress some former allies and rewrote the proposed constitution. Some newspapers were closed, and those protesting the closings were attacked. Opposition groups such as the National Democratic Front and Muslim People's Republican Party were attacked and finally banned. Through popular support, Khomeini supporters gained an overwhelming majority of the seats in the Assembly of Experts which revised the proposed constitution. The newly proposed constitution included an Islamic jurist Supreme Leader of the country, and a Council of Guardians to veto un-Islamic legislation and screen candidates for office, disqualifying those found un-Islamic.


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: In November 1979, the new constitution of the Islamic Republic was adopted by national referendum. Khomeini himself became instituted as the Supreme Leader (Guardian Jurist), and officially became known as the "Leader of the Revolution." On 4 February 1980, Abolhassan Banisadr was elected as the first president of Iran. Critics complain that Khomeini had gone back on his word to advise, rather than rule the country.


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: On 22 October 1979, the United States admitted the exiled and ailing Shah into the country for cancer treatment. In Iran, there was an immediate outcry, with both Khomeini and leftist groups demanding the Shah's return to Iran for trial and execution.


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: On 4 November, a group of Iranian college students calling themselves the Muslim Student Followers of the Imam's Line, took control of the American Embassy in Tehran, holding 52 embassy staff hostage for 444 days – an event known as the Iran hostage crisis. In the United States, the hostage-taking was seen as a flagrant violation of international law and aroused intense anger and anti-Iranian sentiments.


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: In Iran, the takeover was immensely popular and earned the support of Khomeini under the slogan "America can't do a damn thing against us." The seizure of the embassy of a country he called the "Great Satan" helped to advance the cause of theocratic government and outflank politicians and groups who emphasized stability and normalized relations with other countries. Khomeini is reported to have told his president: "This action has many benefits ... this has united our people. Our opponents do not dare act against us. We can put the constitution to the people's vote without difficulty, and carry out presidential and parliamentary elections." The new constitution was successfully passed by referendum a month after the hostage crisis began.


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: The crisis had the effect of splitting of the opposition into two groups – radicals supporting the hostage taking, and the moderates opposing it. On 23 February 1980, Khomeini proclaimed Iran's Majlis would decide the fate of the American embassy hostages, and demanded that the United States hand over the Shah for trial in Iran for crimes against the nation. Although the Shah died a few months later, during the summer, the crisis continued. In Iran, supporters of Khomeini named the embassy a "Den of Espionage", publicizing details regarding armaments, espionage equipment and many volumes of official and classified documents which they found there.


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: Khomeini believed in Muslim unity and solidarity and the export of his revolution throughout the world. He believed Shia and (the significantly more numerous) Sunni Muslims should be "united and stand firmly against Western and arrogant powers."


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: "Establishing the Islamic state world-wide belong to the great goals of the revolution." He declared the birth week of Muhammad (the week between 12th to 17th of Rabi' al-awwal) as the "Unity week". Then he declared the last Friday of Ramadan as Quds Day in 1981.


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: Shortly after assuming power, Khomeini began calling for Islamic revolutions across the Muslim world, including Iran's Arab neighbor Iraq, the one large state besides Iran with a Shia majority population. At the same time Saddam Hussein, Iraq's secular Arab nationalist Ba'athist leader, was eager to take advantage of Iran's weakened military and (what he assumed was) revolutionary chaos, and in particular to occupy Iran's adjacent oil-rich province of Khuzestan, and to undermine Iranian Islamic revolutionary attempts to incite the Shi'a majority of his country.


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: In September 1980, Iraq launched a full-scale invasion of Iran, beginning the Iran–Iraq War (September 1980 – August 1988). A combination of fierce resistance by Iranians and military incompetence by Iraqi forces soon stalled the Iraqi advance and, despite Saddam's internationally condemned use of poison gas, Iran had by early 1982 regained almost all of the territory lost to the invasion. The invasion rallied Iranians behind the new regime, enhancing Khomeini's stature and allowing him to consolidate and stabilize his leadership. After this reversal, Khomeini refused an Iraqi offer of a truce, instead demanding reparations and the toppling of Saddam Hussein from power. In 1982, there was an attempted military coup against Khomeini. The Iran–Iraq War ended in 1988, with 320,000–720,000 Iranian soldiers and militia killed.


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: Although Iran's population and economy were three times the size of Iraq's, the latter was aided by neighboring Persian Gulf Arab states, as well as the Soviet Bloc and Western countries. The Persian Gulf Arabs and the West wanted to be sure the Islamic revolution did not spread across the Persian Gulf, while the Soviet Union was concerned about the potential threat posed to its rule in central Asia to the north. However, Iran had large amounts of ammunition provided by the United States of America during the Shah's era and the United States illegally smuggled arms to Iran during the 1980s despite Khomeini's anti-Western policy (see Iran–Contra affair).


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: During war Iranians used human wave attacks (people walking to certain death including child soldiers) on Iraq, with his promise that they would automatically go to paradise—al Janna— if they died in battle, and his pursuit of victory in the Iran–Iraq War that ultimately proved futile. By March 1984, two million of Iran's most educated citizens had left the country This included an estimated one and a half million that had fled Iran, victims of political executions, and the hundreds of thousands of "martyrs" from Khomeini's bloody "human wave " attacks on Iraq.


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: In July 1988, Khomeini, in his words, "drank the cup of poison" and accepted a truce mediated by the United Nations. Despite the high cost of the war – 450,000 to 950,000 Iranian casualties and US$300 billion – Khomeini insisted that extending the war into Iraq in an attempt to overthrow Saddam had not been a mistake. In a "Letter to Clergy" he wrote: "... we do not repent, nor are we sorry for even a single moment for our performance during the war. Have we forgotten that we fought to fulfill our religious duty and that the result is a marginal issue?"


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: In an interview with Gareth Porter, Mohsen Rafighdoost, the eight-year war time minister of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, disclosed how Khomeini had opposed his proposal for beginning work on both nuclear and chemical weapons by a fatwa which had never been made public in details of when and how it was issued.


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: In early 1989, Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for the assassination of Salman Rushdie, an India-born British author. Rushdie's book, "The Satanic Verses", published in 1988, was alleged to commit blasphemy against Islam and Khomeini's juristic ruling (fatwā) prescribed Rushdie's assassination by any Muslim. The fatwā required not only Rushdie's execution, but also the execution of "all those involved in the publication" of the book.


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: Khomeini's fatwā was condemned across the Western world by governments on the grounds that it violated the universal human rights of free speech and freedom of religion. The fatwā has also been attacked for violating the rules of fiqh by not allowing the accused an opportunity to defend himself, and because "even the most rigorous and extreme of the classical jurist only require a Muslim to kill anyone who insults the Prophet in his hearing and in his presence."


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: Though Rushdie publicly regretted "the distress that publication has occasioned to sincere followers of Islam", the fatwa was not revoked.


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: The fatwa was followed by a number of deaths, including the lethal stabbing of Hitoshi Igarashi, the Japanese translator of the book, in 1991. Rushdie himself and two other translators of the book survived murder attempts, the last – in Rushdie's case – in August 2022. The controversy, and subsequent unrest associated with the fatwa has been linked to surges in sales for Rushdie's work.


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: In a speech on 1 February 1979 delivered to a huge crowd after returning to Iran from exile, Khomeini made a variety of promises to Iranians for his coming Islamic regime: a popularly elected government that would represent the people of Iran and with which the clergy would not interfere. He promised that "no one should remain homeless in this country," and that Iranians would have free telephone, heating, electricity, bus services and free oil at their doorstep.


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: Under Khomeini's rule, Sharia (Islamic law) was introduced, with the Islamic dress code enforced for both men and women by Islamic Revolutionary Guards and other Islamic groups. Women were required to cover their hair, and men were forbidden to wear shorts. Alcoholic drinks, most Western movies, and the practice of men and women swimming or sunbathing together were banned. The Iranian educational curriculum was Islamized at all levels with the Islamic Cultural Revolution; the "Committee for Islamization of Universities" carried this out thoroughly. The broadcasting of any music other than martial or religious on Iranian radio and television was banned by Khomeini in July 1979. The ban lasted 10 years (approximately the rest of his life).


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: According to Janet Afari, "the newly established regime of Ayatollah Khomeini moved quickly to repress feminists, ethnic and religious minorities, liberals, and leftists – all in the name of Islam."


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: Khomeini took on extensive and proactive support of the female populace during the ouster of Shah and his subsequent homecoming, advocating for mainstreaming of women into all spheres of life and even hypothesizing about a woman head of state. However, once he returned, his stances on women's rights exhibited drastic changes. Khomeini revoked Iran's 1967 divorce law, considering any divorce granted under this law to be invalid. Nevertheless, Khomeini supported women's right to divorce as allowed by Islamic law. Khomeini reaffirmed the traditional position of rape in Islamic law in which rape by a spouse was not equivalent to rape or zina, declaring "a woman must surrender to her husband for any pleasure".


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: A mere three weeks after assuming power, under the pretext of reversing the Shah's affinity for westernization and backed by a vocal conservative section of Iranian society, he revoked the divorce law. Under Khomeini the minimum age of marriage was lowered to 15 for boys and 13 for girls; nevertheless, the average age of women at marriage continued to increase.


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: Laws were passed that encouraged polygamy, made it impossible for women to divorce men, and treated adultery as the highest form of criminal offense. Women were compelled to wear veils and the image of Western women was carefully reconstructed as a symbol of impiety. Morality and modesty were perceived as fundamental womanly traits that needed state protection, and concepts of individual gender rights were relegated to women's social rights as ordained in Islam. Fatima was widely presented as the ideal emulatable woman.


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: At the same time, amidst the religious orthodoxy, there was an active effort to rehabilitate women into employment. Female participation in healthcare, education and the workforce increased drastically during his regime.


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: Reception among women of his regime has been mixed. Whilst a section were dismayed at the increasing Islamisation and concurrent degradation of women's rights, others did notice more opportunities and mainstreaming of relatively religiously conservative women.


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: Shortly after his accession as supreme leader in February 1979, Khomeini imposed capital punishment on homosexuals. Between February and March, sixteen Iranians were executed due to offenses related to sexual violations. Khomeini also created the "Revolutionary Tribunals". According to historian Ervand Abrahamian, Khomeini encouraged the clerical courts to continue implementing their version of the Shari'a. As part of the campaign to "cleanse" the society, these courts executed over 100 drug addicts, prostitutes, homosexuals, rapists, and adulterers on the charge of "sowing corruption on earth." According to author Arno Schmitt, "Khomeini asserted that 'homosexuals' had to be exterminated because they were parasites and corruptors of the nation by spreading the 'stain of wickedness.'" In 1979, he had declared that the execution of homosexuals (as well as prostitutes and adulterers) was reasonable in a moral civilization in the same sense as cutting off decayed skin.


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: Being transgender, however, was designated by Khomeini as a sickness that was able to be cured through gender-affirming surgery. Since the mid-1980s, the Iranian government has legalized the practice of sex reassignment surgery (under medical approval) and the modification of pertinent legal documents to reflect the reassigned gender. In 1983, Khomeini passed a fatwa allowing gender reassignment operations as a cure for "diagnosed transsexuals", allowing for the basis of this practice becoming legal.


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: Khomeini is said to have stressed "the spiritual over the material". Six months after his first speech he expressed exasperation with complaints about the sharp drop in Iran's standard of living, saying that: "I cannot believe that the purpose of all these sacrifices was to have less expensive melons." On another occasion emphasizing the importance of martyrdom over material prosperity, he said: "Could anyone wish his child to be martyred to obtain a good house? This is not the issue. The issue is another world." He also reportedly answered a question about his economic policies by declaring that 'economics is for donkeys'. This disinterest in economic policy is said to be "one factor explaining the inchoate performance of the Iranian economy since the revolution." Other factors include the long war with Iraq, the cost of which led to government debt and inflation, eroding personal incomes, and unprecedented unemployment, ideological disagreement over the economy, and "international pressure and isolation" such as US sanctions following the hostage crisis.


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: Due to the Iran–Iraq War, poverty is said to have risen by nearly 45% during the first 6 years of Khomeini's rule. Emigration from Iran also developed, reportedly for the first time in the country's history. Since the revolution and war with Iraq, an estimated "two to four million entrepreneurs, professionals, technicians, and skilled craftspeople (and their capital)" have emigrated to other countries.


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: In a talk at the Fayzieah School in Qom on 30 August 1979, Khomeini warned pro-imperialist opponents: "Those who are trying to bring corruption and destruction to our country in the name of democracy will be oppressed. They are worse than Bani-Ghorizeh Jews, and they must be hanged. We will oppress them by God's order and God's call to prayer."


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: However, in 1983, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) helped him by providing a list of Soviet KGB agents and collaborators operating in Iran to Khomeini, who then executed up to 200 suspects and closed down the Communist Tudeh Party of Iran.


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: The Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and his family left Iran and escaped harm, but hundreds of former members of the overthrown monarchy and military met their ends in firing squads, with exiled critics complaining of "secrecy, vagueness of the charges, the absence of defense lawyers or juries", or the opportunity of the accused "to defend themselves." In later years these were followed in larger numbers by the erstwhile revolutionary allies of Khomeini's movement—Marxists and socialists, mostly university students—who opposed the theocratic regime. From 1980 to 1981, the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran and other opposition groups (including leftist and moderate groups) rallied against the takeover of the Islamic Republic Party through large demonstrations. Acting on the orders of Khomeini, the Islamic Republic responded by shooting demonstrators, including children. The 1981 Hafte Tir bombing escalated the conflict, leading to increasing arrests, torture, and executions of thousands of Iranians. Targets also included "innocent, non political civilians, such as members of the Baha’i religious minority, and others deemed problematic by the IRP." The number of those executed between 1981 and 1985's "reign of terror" is reported to be between 8,000 and 10,000.


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: In the 1988 executions of Iranian political prisoners, following the People's Mujahedin of Iran unsuccessful operation Forough-e Javidan against the Islamic Republic, Khomeini issued an order to judicial officials to judge every Iranian political prisoner (mostly but not all Mujahedin) and kill those judged to be apostates from Islam ("mortad") or "waging war on God" ("moharebeh"). Almost all of those interrogated were killed, around 30,000 of them. Because of the large number, prisoners were loaded into forklift trucks in groups of six and hanged from cranes in half-hour intervals.


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: Zoroastrians, Jews, and Christians are officially recognized and protected by the government. Shortly after Khomeini's return from exile in 1979, he issued a fatwa ordering that Jews and other minorities (except those of the Baháʼí Faith) be treated well. In power, Khomeini distinguished between Zionism as a secular political party that employs Jewish symbols and ideals and Judaism as the religion of Moses.


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: Senior government posts were reserved for Muslims. Schools set up by Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians had to be run by Muslim principals. Conversion to Islam was encouraged by entitling converts to inherit the entire share of their parents (or even uncle's) estate if their siblings (or cousins) remain non-Muslim. Iran's non-Muslim population has decreased. For example, the Jewish population in Iran dropped from 80,000 to 30,000. The Zoroastrian population has also decreased, due to suffering from renewed persecution and the revived legal contrasts between a Muslim and Zoroastrian, which mirrors the laws that Zoroastrians experienced under earlier Islamic regimes. The view that Zoroastrians are "najis" ("unclean") has also been renewed.


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: Four of the 270 seats in parliament were reserved for each three non-Muslim minority religions, under the Islamic constitution that Khomeini oversaw. Khomeini also called for unity between Sunni and Shi'a Muslims. Sunni Muslims make up 9% of the entire Muslim population in Iran.


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: One non-Muslim group treated differently were the 300,000 members of the Baháʼí Faith. Starting in late 1979 the new government systematically targeted the leadership of the Baháʼí community by focusing on the Baháʼí National Spiritual Assembly (NSA) and Local Spiritual Assemblies (LSAs); prominent members of NSAs and LSAs were often detained and even executed. "Some 200 of whom have been executed and the rest forced to convert or subjected to the most horrendous disabilities."


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: Like most conservative Muslims, Khomeini believed Baháʼí to be apostates. He claimed they were a political rather than a religious movement,


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: After the Shah left Iran in 1979, a Kurdish delegation traveled to Qom to present the Kurds' demands to Khomeini. Their demands included language rights and the provision for a degree of political autonomy. Khomeini responded that such demands were unacceptable since it involved the division of the Iranian nation. In a speech during the same year, Khomeini hinted that the new government's attitutes were to curb contrasts instead of accepting them. Khomeini is quoted saying: "Sometimes the word minorities is used to refer to people such as Kurds, Lurs, Turks, Persians, Baluchis, and such. These people should not be called minorities because this term assumes there is a difference between these brothers." The following months saw numerous clashes between Kurdish militia groups and the Revolutionary Guards. The referendum on the Islamic Republic was massively boycotted in Kurdistan, where it was thought 85 to 90% of voters abstained. Khomeini ordered additional attacks later on in the year, and by September most of Iranian Kurdistan was under direct martial law.


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: Khomeini's health declined several years prior to his death. After spending eleven days in Jamaran hospital, Ruhollah Khomeini died on 3 June 1989 after suffering five heart attacks in just ten days, at the age of 86 just before midnight. He was succeeded as Supreme Leader by Ali Khamenei. Large numbers of Iranians took to the streets to publicly mourn his death and in the scorching summer heat, fire trucks sprayed water on the crowds to cool them. At least 10 mourners were trampled to death, more than 400 were badly hurt and several thousand more were treated for injuries sustained in the ensuing pandemonium.


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: According to Iran's official estimates, 10.2 million people lined the route to Tehran's Behesht-e Zahra cemetery on 11 June 1989, for the funeral of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Western agencies estimated that 2 million paid their respects as the body lay in state.


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: Figures about Khomeini's initial funeral attendance which took place on 4 June range around 2.5–3.5 million people. Early the following day, Khomeini's corpse was flown in by helicopter for burial at the Behesht-e Zahra. Iranian officials postponed Khomeini's first funeral after a huge mob stormed the funeral procession, destroying Khomeini's wooden coffin in order to get a last glimpse of his body or touch of his coffin. In some cases, armed soldiers were compelled to fire warning shots in the air to restrain the crowds. At one point, Khomeini's body fell to the ground, as the crowd ripped off pieces of the death shroud, trying to keep them as if they were holy relics. According to journalist James Buchan:


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: The second funeral was held under much tighter security five hours later. This time, Khomeini's casket was made of steel, and in accordance with Islamic tradition, the casket was only to carry the body to the burial site. In 1995, his son Ahmad was buried next to him. Khomeini's grave is now housed within a larger mausoleum complex.


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: Grand Ayatollah Hussein-Ali Montazeri, a former student of Khomeini and a major figure of the Revolution, was chosen by Khomeini to be his successor as Supreme Leader and approved as such by the Assembly of Experts in November 1985. The principle of "velayat-e faqih" and the Islamic constitution called for the Supreme Leader to be a "marja" (a grand ayatollah), and of the dozen or so grand ayatollahs living in 1981 only Montazeri qualified as a potential Leader (this was either because only he accepted totally Khomeini's concept of rule by Islamic jurists, or, as at least one other source stated, because only Montazeri had the "political credentials" Khomeini found suitable for his successor). The execution of Mehdi Hashemi in September 1987 on charges of counterrevolutionary activities was a blow to Ayatollah Montazeri, who knew Hashemi since their childhood. In 1989 Montazeri began to call for liberalization, freedom for political parties. Following the execution of thousands of political prisoners by the Islamic government, Montazeri told Khomeini: "Your prisons are far worse than those of the Shah and his SAVAK." After a letter of his complaints was leaked to Europe and broadcast on the BBC, a furious Khomeini ousted him in March 1989 from his position as official successor. His portraits were removed from offices and mosques.


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: To deal with the disqualification of the only suitable "marja", Khomeini called for an 'Assembly for Revising the Constitution' to be convened. An amendment was made to Iran's constitution removing the requirement that the Supreme Leader be a Marja and this allowed Ali Khamenei, the new favoured jurist who had suitable revolutionary credentials but lacked scholarly ones and who was not a Grand Ayatollah, to be designated as successor. Ayatollah Khamenei was elected Supreme Leader by the Assembly of Experts on 4 June 1989. Grand Ayatollah Hossein Montazeri continued his criticism of the regime and in 1997 was put under house arrest for questioning what he regarded to be an unaccountable rule exercised by the supreme leader.


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: The anniversary of Khomeini's death is a public holiday. To commemorate Khomeini, people visit his mausoleum placed on Behesht-e Zahra to hear sermons and practice prayers on his death day.


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: According to at least one scholar, politics in the Islamic Republic of Iran "are largely defined by attempts to claim Khomeini's legacy" and that "staying faithful to his ideology has been the litmus test for all political activity" there. Throughout his many writings and speeches, Khomeini's views on governance evolved. Originally declaring rule by monarchs or others permissible so long as sharia law was followed Khomeini later adamantly opposed monarchy, arguing that only rule by a leading Islamic jurist (a marja') would ensure Sharia was properly followed (velâyat-e faqih), before finally insisting the ruling jurist need not be a leading one and Sharia rule could be overruled by that jurist if necessary to serve the interests of Islam and the "divine government" of the Islamic state.


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: Khomeini's concept of (ولایت فقیه, "velayat-e faqih") as Islamic government did not win the support of the leading Iranian Shi'i clergy of the time. Towards the 1979 Revolution, many clerics gradually became disillusioned with the rule of the Shah, although none came around to supporting Khomeini's vision of a theocratic Islamic Republic.


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: The Egyptian Jihadist ideologue Sayyid Qutb was an important source of influence to Khomeini and the 1979 Iranian Revolution. In 1984, the Islamic Republic of Iran under Khomeini honoured Qutb's "martyrdom" by issuing an iconic postage stamp showing him behind bars. Qutb's works were translated by Iranian Islamists into Persian and enjoyed remarkable popularity both before and after the revolution. Prominent figures such as current Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and his brother Muhammad Ali Khamenei, Aḥmad Aram, Hadi Khosroshahi, etc. translated Qutb's works into Persian.


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: There is much debate to as whether Khomeini's ideas are or are not compatible with democracy and whether he intended the Islamic Republic to be a democratic republic. According to the state-run "Aftab News", both ultraconservative (Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi) and reformist opponents of the regime (Akbar Ganji and Abdolkarim Soroush) believe he did not, while regime officials and supporters like Ali Khamenei, Mohammad Khatami and Mortaza Motahhari believe Khomeini intended the Islamic republic to be democratic and that it is so. Khomeini himself also made statements at different times indicating both support and opposition to democracy.


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: One scholar, Shaul Bakhash, explains this disagreement as coming from Khomeini's belief that the huge turnout of Iranians in anti-Shah demonstrations during the revolution constituted a 'referendum' in favor of an Islamic republic. Khomeini also wrote that since Muslims must support a government based on Islamic law, Sharia-based government will always have more popular support in Muslim countries than any government based on elected representatives.


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: Khomeini offered himself as a "champion of Islamic revival" and unity, emphasizing issues Muslims agreed upon – the fight against Zionism and imperialism – and downplaying Shia issues that would divide Shia from Sunni.


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: Khomeini strongly opposed close relations with either Eastern or Western Bloc nations, believing the Islamic world should be its own bloc, or rather converge into a single unified power. He viewed Western culture as being inherently decadent and a corrupting influence upon the youth. The Islamic Republic banned or discouraged popular Western fashions, music, cinema, and literature. In the Western world it is said "his glowering visage became the virtual face of Islam in Western popular culture" and "inculcated fear and distrust towards Islam," making the word 'Ayatollah' "a synonym for a dangerous madman ... in popular parlance." This has particularly been the case in the United States where some Iranians complained that even at universities they felt the need to hide their Iranian identity for fear of physical attack. There Khomeini and the Islamic Republic are remembered for the American embassy hostage taking and accused of sponsoring hostage-taking and terrorist attacks, and which continues to apply economic sanctions against Iran.


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: Before taking power Khomeini expressed support for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. "We would like to act according to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We would like to be free. We would like independence." However once in power Khomeini took a firm line against dissent, warning opponents of theocracy for example: "I repeat for the last time: abstain from holding meetings, from blathering, from publishing protests. Otherwise I will break your teeth."


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: Many of Khomeini's political and religious ideas were considered to be progressive and reformist by leftist intellectuals and activists prior to the Revolution. However, once in power his ideas often clashed with those of modernist or secular Iranian intellectuals. This conflict came to a head during the writing of the Islamic constitution when many newspapers were closed by the government. Khomeini angrily told the intellectuals:


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: Yes, we are reactionaries, and you are enlightened intellectuals: You intellectuals do not want us to go back 1400 years. You, who want freedom, freedom for everything, the freedom of parties, you who want all the freedoms, you intellectuals: freedom that will corrupt our youth, freedom that will pave the way for the oppressor, freedom that will drag our nation to the bottom.


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: In contrast to his alienation from Iranian intellectuals, and "in an utter departure from all other Islamist movements," Khomeini embraced international revolution and Third World solidarity, giving it "precedence over Muslim fraternity." From the time Khomeini's supporters gained control of the media until his death, the Iranian media "devoted extensive coverage to non-Muslim revolutionary movements (from the Sandinistas to the African National Congress and the Irish Republican Army) and downplayed the role of the Islamic movements considered conservative, such as the Afghan mujahidin."


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: Khomeini's legacy to the economy of the Islamic Republic has been expressions of concern for the "mustazafin" (a Quranic term for the oppressed or deprived), but not always results that aided them. During the 1990s the "mustazafin" and disabled war veterans rioted on several occasions, protesting the demolition of their shantytowns and rising food prices, etc. Khomeini's disdain for the science of economics ("economics is for donkeys") is said to have been "mirrored" by the populist redistribution policies of former president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who allegedly wears "his contempt for economic orthodoxy as a badge of honour", and has overseen sluggish growth and rising inflation and unemployment.


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: In 1963, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini wrote a book in which he stated that there is no religious restriction on corrective surgery for transgender individuals. At the time Khomeini was an anti-Shah revolutionary and his fatwas did not carry any weight with the Imperial government, which did not have any specific policies regarding transsexual individuals.


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: However, after 1979, his fatwa "formed the basis for a national policy" and perhaps in part because of a penal code that "allows for the execution of homosexuals", as of 2005 Iran "permits and partly finances seven times as many gender reassignment operations as the entire European Union".


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: Khomeini was also known for his aloofness and austere demeanor. He is said to have had "variously inspired admiration, awe, and fear from those around him." His practice of moving "through the halls of the madresehs never smiling at anybody or anything; his practice of ignoring his audience while he taught, contributed to his charisma."


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: Khomeini adhered to traditional beliefs of Islamic hygienical jurisprudence holding that things like urine, excrement, blood, wine, and also non-Muslims were some of eleven ritualistically "impure" things that physical contact with which while wet required ritual washing or Ghusl before prayer or salat. He is reported to have refused to eat or drink in a restaurant unless he knew for sure the waiter was a Muslim.


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: According to Baqer Moin, as part of Khomeini's personality cult, he "had been transformed into a semi-divine figure. He was no longer a grand ayatollah and deputy of the Imam, one who represents the Hidden Imam, but simply 'The Imam'." Khomeini's personality cult fills a central position in foreign- and domestically targeted Iranian publications. The methods used to create his personality cult have been compared to those used by such figures as Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong and Fidel Castro.


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: An eight-century Hadith attributed to the Imam Musa al-Kazim that said "A man will come out from Qom and he will summon people to the right path. There will rally to him people resembling pieces of iron, not to be shaken by violent winds, unsparing and relying on God" was repeated in Iran as a tribute to Khomeini. However, in Lebanon, this saying was also attributed to Musa al-Sadr.


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: Khomeini was the first and only Iranian cleric to be addressed as "Imam", a title hitherto reserved in Iran for the twelve infallible leaders of the early Shi'a. He was also associated with the "Mahdi" or 12th Imam of Shia belief in a number of ways. One of his titles was "Na'eb-e Imam" (Deputy to the Twelfth Imam). His enemies were often attacked as "taghut" and "Mofsed-e-filarz", religious terms used for enemies of the Twelfth Imam. Many of the officials of the overthrown Shah's government executed by Revolutionary Courts were convicted of "fighting against the Twelfth Imam". When a deputy in the majlis asked Khomeini directly if he was the 'promised Mahdi', Khomeini did not answer, "astutely" neither confirming nor denying the title.


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: As the revolution gained momentum, even some non-supporters exhibited awe, called him "magnificently clear-minded, single-minded and unswerving." His image was as "absolute, wise, and indispensable leader of the nation"


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: The Imam, it was generally believed, had shown by his uncanny sweep to power, that he knew how to act in ways which others could not begin to understand. His timing was extraordinary, and his insight into the motivation of others, those around him as well as his enemies, could not be explained as ordinary knowledge. This emergent belief in Khomeini as a divinely guided figure was carefully fostered by the clerics who supported him and spoke up for him in front of the people.


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: Even many secularists who firmly disapproved of his policies were said to feel the power of his "messianic" appeal. Comparing him to a father figure who retains the enduring loyalty even of children he disapproves of, journalist Afshin Molavi writes that defenses of Khomeini are "heard in the most unlikely settings":


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: Another journalist tells the story of listening to bitter criticism of the regime by an Iranian who tells her of his wish for his son to leave the country and who "repeatedly" makes the point "that life had been better" under the Shah. When his complaint is interrupted by news that "the Imam" – over 85 years old at the time – might be dying, the critic becomes "ashen faced" and speechless, pronouncing "this is terrible for my country."


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: An example of Khomeini's charisma is the effect a half-hour-long, 1982 speech on the Quran by him had on a Muslim scholar from South Africa, Sheikh Ahmad Deedat:


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: In 1929, Khomeini married Khadijeh Saqafi, the daughter of a cleric in Tehran. Some sources claim that Khomeini married Saqafi when she was ten years old, while others claim she was fifteen years old. By all accounts their marriage was harmonious and happy. She died in 2009. They had seven children, though only five survived infancy. His daughters all married into either merchant or clerical families, and both his sons entered into religious life. Mostafa, the elder son, died in 1977 while in exile in Najaf, Iraq with his father and was rumored by supporters of his father to have been murdered by SAVAK. Ahmad Khomeini, who died in 1995 at the age of 50, was also rumoured to be a victim of foul play, but at the hands of the regime. Perhaps his "most prominent daughter", Zahra Mostafavi, is a professor at the University of Tehran, and still alive.


title: Ruhollah Khomeini

text: Khomeini was a prolific writer and speaker (200 of his books are online) who authored commentaries on the Qur'an, on Islamic jurisprudence, the roots of Islamic law, and Islamic traditions. He also released books about philosophy, gnosticism, poetry, literature, government and politics.


title: Grease (film)

text: Grease is a 1978 American musical romantic comedy film based on the 1971 musical of the same name by Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey. Written by Bronte Woodard (adaptation by Allan Carr) and directed by Randal Kleiser in his theatrical feature film debut, the film depicts the lives of greaser Danny Zuko and Australian transfer student Sandy Olsson, who develop an attraction for each other during a summer romance. The film stars John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John as Danny and Sandy.


title: Grease (film)

text: Released on June 16, 1978, "Grease" was successful both critically and commercially, becoming the highest-grossing musical film ever at the time. Its ended 1978 as the second-best-selling album of the year in the United States, behind the soundtrack of the 1977 blockbuster "Saturday Night Fever" (which also starred Travolta) and earned an Oscar nomination for "Hopelessly Devoted to You" at the 51st Academy Awards. In 2020, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".


title: Grease (film)

text: Launching the franchise of the same name, a sequel, "Grease 2", was released in 1982, starring Maxwell Caulfield and Michelle Pfeiffer as a newer class of greasers. Few of the original cast members reprised their roles. As of 2020, a Paramount+ series, "Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies", based on "Grease", and a prequel, titled "Summer Lovin", are in production.


title: Grease (film)

text: In the summer of 1958, local boy Danny Zuko and vacationing Australian Sandy Olsson meet at the beach and fall in love. When the summer comes to an end, Sandy frets that they may never meet again, but Danny tells her that their love is "only the beginning".


title: Grease (film)

text: At the start of the seniors' term at Rydell High School, Danny resumes his role as leader of the T-Birds greaser gang consisting of Doody, Sonny, Putzie, and his best friend Kenickie. Sandy's parents remain in America and enroll Sandy at Rydell where she meets greaser girl clique the Pink Ladies consisting of Frenchy, Marty, Jan and leader Rizzo.


title: Grease (film)

text: Danny and Sandy recount their brief romance to their respective groups, Sandy recalling a romantic summer and Danny implying a more physical experience. When Sandy finally says Danny's name, Rizzo arranges a surprise reunion at a pep rally where Sandy meets Tom, a jock, and Kenickie unveils his new used car, Greased Lightnin', which he plans on street racing after a restoration. Caught between his feelings and his bad-boy reputation, Danny snubs Sandy in front of his gang and she becomes upset.


title: Grease (film)

text: At a Pink Ladies pajama party, Sandy falls ill from drinking, trying a cigarette, and having her ears pierced by Frenchy, while Rizzo, after mocking Sandy's wholesome and chaste personality, departs for sex with Kenickie in his car, during which their condom breaks; they are disturbed by Leo, leader of the rival gang, the Scorpions, and his girlfriend Cha-Cha. After the slumber party comes to an end, Sandy realizes she still loves Danny after all.


title: Grease (film)

text: The next day, Danny apologizes to Sandy for having brushed her off the night earlier and, with Coach Calhoun's help, becomes a runner and successfully wins her back from Tom, but their friends crash their date, and Kenickie and Rizzo break up after an argument. After a disastrous beauty class leaves Frenchy with candy-pink hair, she reluctantly decides to return to Rydell to complete her high-school education.


title: Grease (film)

text: During the school dance, broadcast live on "National Bandstand" and hosted by DJ Vince Fontaine, Rizzo and Kenickie spite each other by bringing Leo and Cha-Cha as their dates. In a chaotic hand jive, Danny and Sandy dance well, but just before the winners are announced, Sonny pulls Sandy away and Cha-Cha cuts in to win with Danny, as Sandy storms out. Danny tries to make it up to Sandy by taking her to a drive-in theater but she flees in horror after he attempts to have sex with her. Rizzo fears she is pregnant after missing a period and confides in Marty, who tells Sonny, who inadvertently spreads the rumor to the apparent father Kenickie, though Rizzo denies it to him.


title: Grease (film)

text: On race day, Kenickie is concussed by his own car door, so Danny takes the wheel, winning the race after Leo spins out. Sandy, watching from afar and delighted with Danny's victory, concludes she still loves him and enlists Frenchy's help in changing her attitude and looks to impress him.


title: Grease (film)

text: On the last day of school, Rizzo finds she is not pregnant and reunites with Kenickie. Danny and Sandy each find they have changed for each other: Danny has become a letterman, and Sandy a greaser girl. The two depart in the Greased Lightnin' car, which takes flight.


title: Grease (film)

text: Director Randal Kleiser took numerous liberties with the original source material, most notably moving the setting from an urban Chicago setting (based on William Howard Taft High School), as the original musical had been, to a more suburban locale, reflecting his own teenage years at Radnor High School in the suburbs of Philadelphia. He had little control over the musical aspects of the film; his choice of theme song, a composition by Charles Fox and Paul Williams, was overruled when Robert Stigwood and Allan Carr commissioned a song from Stigwood's client Barry Gibb at the last minute, which displeased Kleiser.


title: Grease (film)

text: John Travolta had previously worked with Stigwood on "Saturday Night Fever", recorded the top-10 hit "Let Her In" in 1976, and had previously appeared as Doody in a touring production of the stage version of "Grease". He made a number of casting recommendations that Stigwood ultimately accepted, including suggesting Kleiser (who had never directed a theatrical feature before this but had directed Travolta in the 1976 telefilm "The Boy in the Plastic Bubble") as director, and Olivia Newton-John, then known almost exclusively as a multiple Grammy winning pop and country singer, as Sandy. Newton-John had done little acting before this film, with only two film credits (1965's "Funny Things Happen Down Under" and the little-seen 1970 film "Toomorrow", which predated her singing breakthrough) to her name up to that time. Before accepting the role, Newton-John requested a screen test for "Grease" to avoid another career setback. The screen test was done with the drive-in movie scene. Newton-John, who was born in England and spent most of her childhood in Australia, was unable to perform with a convincing American accent, and thus her character was rewritten to be Australian. Before Newton-John was hired, Allan Carr was considering numerous names such as Carrie Fisher, Ann-Margret, Deborah Raffin, Susan Dey and Marie Osmond for the lead role. Osmond almost took the role before she realized the extent to which the character transformed into a rebel and turned it down to star in "Goin' Coconuts" instead. Newton-John agreed to a reduced asking price in exchange for star billing. In a case of life imitating art, Newton-John's own musical career would undergo a transformation similar to that of the Sandy Olsson character; her next album after "Grease", the provocatively titled "Totally Hot", featured a much more sexual and pop-oriented approach, with Newton-John appearing on the album cover in similar all-leather attire and teased hair.


title: Grease (film)

text: Lucie Arnaz auditioned for the part of Rizzo, but a talent client of Carr, Stockard Channing, was cast, several years after her last major film role and debut in "The Fortune". At 33 she was the oldest cast member to play a high school student, and Kleiser made her and the other actors playing students take a "crow’s feet test" to see whether they could pass for younger in close-ups. Softer focus was used on some of the older actors' faces. Channing lobbied heavily to keep the climactic song "There Are Worse Things I Could Do" in the score over Carr's objections.


title: Grease (film)

text: Henry Winkler turned down the role of Danny Zuko for fear of being typecast as a greaser, having been playing the similar bad-boy greaser Arthur Fonzarelli on "Happy Days" since 1974. Winkler would later regret the decision.


title: Grease (film)

text: Elvis Presley was considered for the role of The Teen Angel but died before production. Marie Osmond's brother and duet partner Donny Osmond was another potential Teen Angel before Avalon was cast, as was Frankie Valli, who had been given the choice of either singing the theme or appearing as the Teen Angel (he chose the former).


title: Grease (film)

text: Jeff Conaway, like Travolta, had previously appeared in the stage version of "Grease"; he had played Danny Zuko during the show's run on Broadway. He did not get to perform Kenickie's featured number "Greased Lightnin'" due to Travolta's influence and desire to have that song for himself. Jamie Donnelly reprised her role as Jan from the Broadway show, the only cast member to do so; as her hair had begun to gray by this point, she had to dye her hair to resemble her stage character. Kelly Ward had previously appeared as a similar sarcastic supporting character in "The Boy in the Plastic Bubble" with Travolta under Kleiser; he was cast as Putzie, a mostly new character.


title: Grease (film)

text: Lorenzo Lamas was a last-minute replacement for Steven Ford, who developed stage fright shortly before filming and backed out, and Mark Fidrych, who ran into conflicts with his full-time career as a baseball player. His role contained no spoken dialogue and required Lamas to bleach his hair to avoid looking like one of the T-Birds.


title: Grease (film)

text: Adult film star Harry Reems was originally signed to play Coach Calhoun; however, executives at Paramount nixed the idea, concerned that his reputation as a porn star would hinder box office returns in the Southern United States, and producers cast Sid Caesar instead. Caesar was one of several veterans of 1950s television (Eve Arden, Frankie Avalon, Joan Blondell, Edd Byrnes, Alice Ghostley, Dody Goodman) to be cast in supporting roles; Paul Lynde was considered for the role Arden ultimately filled. Coincidentally, Frankie Avalon and Randal Kleiser had both appeared in 1966's "Fireball 500", the latter as an extra.


title: Grease (film)

text: The opening beach scene was shot at Malibu's Leo Carrillo State Beach, making explicit reference to "From Here to Eternity". The exterior Rydell scenes, including the front parking lot scenes, the auto shop, the “Summer Nights” bleachers number, Rizzo's “There Are Worse Things I Can Do” number, the basketball, baseball, and track segments, and the interior of the gymnastics gym, were shot at Venice High School in Venice, California, during the summer of 1977. The Rydell interiors, including the high school dance, were filmed at Huntington Park High School. The sleepover was shot at a private house in East Hollywood. The Paramount Pictures studio lot was the location of the scenes that involve Frosty Palace and the musical numbers "Greased Lightning" and "Beauty School Dropout". The drive-in movie scenes were shot at the Burbank Pickwick Drive-In (it was closed and torn down in 1989 and a shopping center took its place). The race was filmed at the Los Angeles River, between the First and Seventh Street Bridges, where many other films have been shot. The final scene where the carnival took place used John Marshall High School. Furthermore, owing to budget cuts, a short scene was filmed at Hazard Park in Los Angeles.


title: Grease (film)

text: Scenes inside the Frosty Palace contain obvious blurring of various Coca-Cola signs. Prior to the film's release, producer Allan Carr had made a product placement deal with Coca-Cola's main competitor Pepsi (for example, a Pepsi logo can be seen in the animated opening sequence animated by John David Wilson at Fine Arts Films). When Carr saw the footage of the scene with Coca-Cola products and signage, he ordered director Randal Kleiser to either reshoot the scene with Pepsi products or remove the Coca-Cola logos from the scene. As reshoots were deemed too expensive and time-consuming, optical mattes were used to cover up or blur out the Coca-Cola references. The 'blurring' covered up trademarked menu signage and a large wall poster, but a red cooler with the logo could not be sufficiently altered so was left unchanged. According to Kleiser, "We just had to hope that Pepsi wouldn't complain. They didn't."


title: Grease (film)

text: Due to an editing error, a closing scene in which Danny and Sandy kiss was removed from the finished print and lost before its theatrical release. The scene was preserved only in black-and-white; Kleiser attempted to have the existing footage colorized and restored to the film for the film's re-release in 1998 but was dissatisfied with the results. The scene is included as an extra on the 40th anniversary home video release, and Kleiser hopes to make another attempt at colorizing the footage that is effective enough for the footage to be inserted into the film as he originally intended by the time the film's 50th anniversary comes in 2028.


title: Grease (film)

text: "Grease" was originally released in the United States on June 16, 1978, and was an immediate box-office success. In its opening weekend, the film grossed $8,941,717 in 862 theaters in the United States and Canada, ranking at number 2 (behind "Jaws 2") at the box office for the weekend and with the all-time opening weekend records. Despite losing the opening weekend, it topped the box office the following weekend with a gross of $7,867,000 and set a record gross in its first 19 days, with $40,272,000. After 66 days, it had grossed $100 million to become Paramount's second-highest-grossing film, behind "The Godfather", and ended its initial run with a gross of $132,472,560, which made it the highest-grossing film in 1978.


title: Grease (film)

text: In the United States and globally, it became the highest-grossing musical ever at the time, eclipsing the 13-year-old record held by "The Sound of Music," with a worldwide gross of $341 million.


title: Grease (film)

text: In the United Kingdom, it opened with a record $2.2 million in its first eight days. It went on to become the highest-grossing film in the UK, with a gross of £14.7 million.


title: Grease (film)

text: It was re-released May 18, 1979, in 1,248 theatres in the United States and Canada (except for the New York City area, where it opened a week later), Paramount's biggest ever saturation release at the time, grossing $4.5 million in its opening weekend. The film played for four weeks and was then paired with the PG-rated version of "Saturday Night Fever" in late June. During the reissue, it overtook "The Godfather" as Paramount Pictures' highest-grossing film. It was re-released in March 1998 for its 20th anniversary, where it grossed a further $28 million in the United States and Canada.


title: Grease (film)

text: It remained the highest-grossing live-action musical until 2012 when it was overtaken by "Les Misérables", and it remained the US champion until 2017 when it was surpassed by "Beauty and the Beast". Discounting inflation, "Grease" is now the seventh-highest-grossing live-action musical worldwide.


title: Grease (film)

text: A further re-issue for its 40th anniversary in 2018 grossed $1 million. To date, "Grease" has grossed $189,969,103 domestically and $206.2 million internationally, totaling $396 million worldwide. Another re-issue took place in select AMC Theatres locations in August 2022 to honor Olivia Newton-John following her death earlier that month, with $1 per sold ticket and the proceeds going to breast cancer research, through a donation by AMC Cares. Similarly, in the UK, selected Merlin Cinemas venues also reissued the film during August, but partnered with Macmillan Cancer Support, with a contribution of £1 per ticket sold.


title: Grease (film)

text: "Grease" received mostly positive reviews from film critics and is considered by many as one of the best films of 1978.


title: Grease (film)

text: "The New York Times" Vincent Canby, on its initial release in June 1978, called the film "terrific fun", describing it as a "contemporary fantasy about a 1950s teen-age musical—a larger, funnier, wittier and more imaginative-than-Hollywood movie with a life that is all its own"; Canby pointed out that the film was "somewhat in the manner of "Close Encounters of the Third Kind", which recalls the science-fiction films of the '50s in a manner more elegant and more benign than anything that was ever made then, "Grease" is a multimillion-dollar evocation of the B-picture quickies that Sam Katzman used to turn out in the '50s ("Don't Knock the Rock", 1956) and that American International carried to the sea in the 1960s ("Beach Party", 1963)." Gene Siskel gave the film three stars out of four, calling it "exciting only when John Travolta is on the screen" but still recommending it to viewers, adding, "Four of its musical numbers are genuine showstoppers that should bring applause." "Variety" praised the "zesty choreography and very excellent new plus revived music", and thought Travolta and Newton-John "play together quite well." Charles Champlin of the "Los Angeles Times" was negative, writing, "I didn't see "Grease" onstage, but on the testimony of this strident, cluttered, uninvolving and unattractive movie, it is the '50s—maybe the last innocent decade allowed to us—played back through a grotesquely distorting '70s consciousness." Gary Arnold of "The Washington Post" also panned the film, writing, "Despite the obvious attempts to recall bits from Stanley Donen musicals or Elvis Presley musicals or Frankie-and-Annette musicals, the spirit is closer to the New Tastelessness exemplified by Ken Russell, minus Russell's slick visual style ... I've never seen an uglier large-scale musical." David Ansen of "Newsweek" wrote, "Too often, "Grease" is simply mediocre, full of broad high-school humor, flat dramatic scenes and lethargic pacing. Fortunately, there's nothing flat about John Travolta ... Travolta can't dominate this movie as he did "Fever," but when he's on screen you can't watch anyone else."


title: Grease (film)

text: Retrospective reviews have generally been positive. In a 1998 review, Roger Ebert gave the film 3 out of 4 stars, calling it "an average musical, pleasant and upbeat and plastic." He found John Travolta's Elvis Presley–inspired performance to be the highlight, but felt that "Grease" "sees the material as silly camp." In 2018, Peter Bradshaw from "The Guardian" gave it 5 out of 5 stars, saying "It's still a sugar-rush of a film."


title: Grease (film)

text: "Grease" was voted the best musical ever on Channel 4's 100 greatest musicals in 2004. On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds a 76% approval rating based on 75 reviews, with an average rating of 7.00/10. The website's critical consensus reads, ""Grease" is a pleasing, energetic musical with infectiously catchy songs and an ode to young love that never gets old." On Metacritic, it holds a score of 70 out of 100 based on 15 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".


title: Grease (film)

text: "Grease" was released in the US on VHS by Paramount Home Video in 1979, 1982, 1989, 1992 and 1994; the last VHS release was on June 23, 1998, and was titled the "20th Anniversary Edition" following a theatrical re-release that March.


title: Grease (film)

text: On September 24, 2002, it was released on DVD for the first time. On September 19, 2006, it was re-released on DVD as the "Rockin' Rydell Edition", which came with a black Rydell High T-Bird jacket cover, a white Rydell "R" letterman's sweater cover, or the Target-exclusive Pink Ladies cover. It was released on Blu-ray Disc on May 5, 2009.


title: Grease (film)

text: On March 12, 2013, "Grease" and "Grease 2" were packaged together in a double feature DVD set from Warner Home Video.


title: Grease (film)

text: In connection with the film's 40th anniversary, Paramount released "Grease" on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray, Blu-ray and DVD on April 24, 2018.


title: Grease (film)

text: "Grease 2" (1982) stars Maxwell Caulfield and Michelle Pfeiffer. While several of the Rydell High staff characters reprise their roles, the sequel focused on the latest class of graduating seniors, hence most of the principals from "Grease" did not appear. Patricia Birch, the original film's choreographer, directed the sequel. The original musical's cocreator Jim Jacobs, who was not involved in the making of "Grease 2", has disowned the film.


title: Grease (film)

text: On July 8, 2010, a sing-along version of "Grease" was released to selected theaters around the U.S. A trailer was released in May 2010, with cigarettes digitally removed from certain scenes, implying heavy editing; however, Paramount confirmed these changes were done only for the film's advertising, and the rating for the film itself changed from its original PG to that of PG-13 (as that rating had not been introduced until 1984) for "sexual content including references, teen smoking and drinking, and language." The film was shown for two weekends only; additional cities lobbied by fans from the Paramount official website started a week later and screened for one weekend.


title: Grease (film)

text: On May 15, 2020, it was announced that CBS, a subsidiary of ViacomCBS, which also owns Paramount, would air this version of the film on June 7, 2020, which was to be the date of the 74th Tony Awards, which was postponed indefinitely due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.


title: Grease (film)

text: In March 2019, it was announced that a prequel, called "Summer Lovin"', was in development from Paramount Players. The project would be a joint-production collaboration with Temple Hill Productions and Picturestart. John August signed on to serve as screenwriter.


title: Grease (film)

text: The ended 1978 as the second-best-selling album of the year in the United States, exceeded only by another soundtrack album, from the film "Saturday Night Fever", which also starred Travolta. The song "Hopelessly Devoted to You" was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Music – Original Song. The song "You're the One That I Want" was released as a single prior to the film's release and became an immediate chart-topper, despite not being in the stage show or having been seen in the film at that time. Additionally, the dance number to "You're the One That I Want" was nominated for TV Land's award for "Movie Dance Sequence You Reenacted in Your Living Room" in 2008. In the United Kingdom, the two Travolta/Newton-John duets, "You're the One That I Want" and "Summer Nights", were both number one hits and were still among the 30 best-selling singles of all time (at Nos. 5 and 28, respectively). The film's title song was also a number-one hit single for Frankie Valli.


title: Grease (film)

text: The song "Look at Me, I'm Sandra Dee" refers to Sal Mineo in the original stage version. Mineo was stabbed to death a year before filming, so the line was changed to refer to Elvis Presley instead. The references to Troy Donohue, Doris Day, Rock Hudson and Annette Funicello are from the original stage version. Coincidentally, this scene as well as the scene before and the scene after it were filmed on August 16, 1977, the date of Presley's death.


title: Grease (film)

text: Some of the songs were not present in the film; songs that appear in the film but not in the soundtrack are "La Bamba" by Ritchie Valens, "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On" by Jerry Lee Lewis, "Alma Mater", "Alma Mater Parody", and "Rydell Fight Song". "Alone at a Drive-in Movie (Instrumental)", "Mooning", and "Freddy My Love" are not present in the film, although all three are listed in the end credits in addition to being on the soundtrack. (Both "Mooning" and "Rock'n'Roll Party Queen", the latter of which was played in the film as background music, were written in the musical for a character named Roger that was written out of the film, replaced by the non-singing Putzie. In general, all of the songs in the musical that were performed by characters other than Danny, Rizzo, Sandy, Johnny Casino, or the Teen Angel were either taken out of the film or given to other characters, including Marty Maraschino's number "Freddy My Love", Kenickie's "Greased Lightnin'", and Doody's "Those Magic Changes".) Two songs from the musical, "Shakin' at the High School Hop" and "All Choked Up", were left off both the film and the soundtrack.


title: Grease (film)

text: On August 17, 2009, a television series inspired by the film premiered in Venezuela. The series was produced and directed by Vladimir Perez. The show explores and expands on the characters and story from the film.


title: Grease (film)

text: On January 31, 2016, Fox aired a of the musical, using components from both the 1978 film and the original Broadway show. Starring Julianne Hough, Aaron Tveit, and Vanessa Hudgens, the adaptation received positive reviews, especially for Hudgens, and ten Emmy nominations.


title: Grease (film)

text: On October 15, 2019, it was announced that a based on "Grease", titled "Grease: Rydell High", was given a straight-to-series order by HBO Max. Annabel Oakes is set to write the pilot episode and act as executive producer for the series. In 2020, the series' title was changed to "Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies" and will premiere on Paramount+. Filming began in January 2022, and the series' cast was announced at the end of the month.


title: Aaron Swartz

text: Aaron Hillel Swartz (November 8, 1986 – January 11, 2013) was an American computer programmer, entrepreneur, writer, political organizer, and Internet hacktivist. A prolific programmer, Swartz helped develop the web feed format RSS, the technical architecture for Creative Commons–an organization dedicated to creating copyright licenses, the website framework web.py, and Markdown, a lightweight markup language format. Swartz was involved in the development of the social news aggregation website Reddit until his departure from the company in 2007. He is often credited as a martyr and a prodigy, and his work focused on civic awareness and activism.


title: Aaron Swartz

text: After Reddit was sold to Condé Nast Publications in 2006, Swartz became more involved in activism, helping launch the Progressive Change Campaign Committee in 2009. In 2010, he became a research fellow at Harvard University's Safra Research Lab on Institutional Corruption, directed by Lawrence Lessig. He founded the online group Demand Progress, known for its campaign against the Stop Online Piracy Act.


title: Aaron Swartz

text: On January 6, 2011, Swartz was arrested by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) police on state breaking-and-entering charges, after connecting a computer to the MIT network in an unmarked and unlocked closet, and setting it to download academic journal articles systematically from JSTOR using a guest user account issued to him by MIT. Federal prosecutors, led by Carmen Ortiz, later charged him with two counts of wire fraud and eleven violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, carrying a cumulative maximum penalty of $1 million in fines, 35 years in prison, asset forfeiture, restitution, and supervised release. Swartz declined a plea bargain under which he would have served six months in federal prison. Two days after the prosecution rejected a counter-offer by Swartz, he was found dead in his Brooklyn apartment. In 2013, Swartz was inducted posthumously into the Internet Hall of Fame.


title: Aaron Swartz

text: Aaron Swartz was born in Highland Park, north of Chicago, into a Jewish family. He was the eldest child of Susan and Robert Swartz and brother to Noah and Ben Swartz. He was an atheist. His father founded the software firm Mark Williams Company. At an early age, Swartz immersed himself in the study of computers, programming, the Internet, and Internet culture. He attended North Shore Country Day School, a small private school near Chicago, until 9th grade, when he left high school and enrolled in courses at Lake Forest College.


title: Aaron Swartz

text: In 1999, at age 12, he created the website The Info Network, a user-generated encyclopedia. The site won the ArsDigita Prize, given to young people who create "useful, educational, and collaborative" noncommercial websites and led to early recognition of Swartz's nascent talent in coding. At age 14, he became a member of the working group that authored the RSS 1.0 web syndication specification. A year later, he became involved in the Creative Commons organization. In 2005, he enrolled at Stanford University but left the school after his first year.


title: Aaron Swartz

text: During Swartz's first year at Stanford, he applied to Y Combinator's first Summer Founders Program, proposing to work on a startup called Infogami, a flexible content management system designed to create rich and visually interesting websites or a form of wiki for structured data. After working on it with co-founder Simon Carstensen over the summer of 2005, Swartz opted not to return to Stanford, choosing instead to continue to develop and seek funding for Infogami.


title: Aaron Swartz

text: As part of his work on Infogami, Swartz created the web.py web application framework because he was unhappy with other available systems in the Python programming language. In early fall of 2005, he worked with his fellow co-founders of another nascent Y-Combinator firm, Reddit, to rewrite its Lisp codebase using Python and web.py. Although Infogami's platform was abandoned after Not a Bug was acquired, Infogami's software was used to support the Internet Archive's Open Library project and the web.py web framework was used as basis for many other projects by Swartz and many others.


title: Aaron Swartz

text: When Infogami failed to find further funding, Y-Combinator organizers suggested Infogami merge with Reddit, which it did in November 2005, creating a new firm, Not a Bug, devoted to promoting both products. As a result, Swartz was given the title of co-founder of Reddit. Although both projects initially struggled, Reddit made large gains in popularity in 2005–2006.


title: Aaron Swartz

text: In October 2006, based largely on Reddit's success, Not a Bug was acquired by Condé Nast Publications, owner of "Wired" magazine. Swartz moved with his company to San Francisco to continue to work on Reddit for "Wired". He found corporate office life uncongenial and ultimately was asked to resign from the company. In September 2007, he joined Infogami co-founder Simon Carstensen to launch a new firm, Jottit, in another attempt to create a markdown-driven content management system in Python.


title: Aaron Swartz

text: In 2008, Swartz founded Watchdog.net, "the good government site with teeth," to aggregate and visualize data about politicians. That year, he wrote a widely circulated "Guerilla Open Access Manifesto". On December 27, 2010, he filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to learn about the treatment of Chelsea Manning, alleged source for WikiLeaks.


title: Aaron Swartz

text: In 2008, Swartz downloaded about 2.7 million federal court documents stored in the PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic Records) database managed by the Administrative Office of the United States Courts.


title: Aaron Swartz

text: The "Huffington Post" characterized his actions this way: "Swartz downloaded public court documents from the PACER system in an effort to make them available outside of the expensive service. The move drew the attention of the FBI, which ultimately decided not to press charges as the documents were, in fact, public."


title: Aaron Swartz

text: PACER was charging 8 cents per page for information that Carl Malamud, who founded the nonprofit group Public.Resource.Org, contended should be free, because federal documents are not covered by copyright. The fees were "plowed back to the courts to finance technology, but the system [ran] a budget surplus of some $150 million, according to court reports," reported "The New York Times". PACER used technology that was "designed in the bygone days of screechy telephone modems ... putting the nation's legal system behind a wall of cash and kludge." Malamud appealed to fellow activists, urging them to visit one of 17 libraries conducting a free trial of the PACER system, download court documents, and send them to him for public distribution.


title: Aaron Swartz

text: After reading Malamud's call for action, Swartz used a Perl computer script running on Amazon cloud servers to download the documents, using credentials belonging to a Sacramento library. From September 4 to 20, 2008, it accessed documents and uploaded them to a cloud computing service. He released the documents to Malamud's organization.


title: Aaron Swartz

text: On September 29, 2008, the GPO suspended the free trial, "pending an evaluation" of the program. Swartz's actions were subsequently investigated by the FBI. The case was closed after two months with no charges filed. Swartz learned the details of the investigation after filing a FOIA request with the FBI, and described their response as the "usual mess of confusions that shows the FBI's lack of sense of humor." PACER still charges per page, but customers using Firefox have the option of saving the documents for free public access with a plug-in called RECAP.


title: Aaron Swartz

text: At a 2013 memorial for Swartz, Malamud recalled their work with PACER. They brought millions of U.S. District Court records out from behind PACER's "pay wall", he said, and found them full of privacy violations, including medical records and the names of minor children and confidential informants.


title: Aaron Swartz

text: A more detailed account of his collaboration with Swartz on the PACER project appears in an essay on Malamud's website.


title: Aaron Swartz

text: Writing in "Ars Technica", Timothy Lee, who later made use of the documents obtained by Swartz as a co-creator of RECAP, offered some insight into discrepancies in reports on how much data Swartz downloaded: "In a back-of-the-envelope calculation a few days before the offsite crawl was shut down, Swartz guessed he got around 25 percent of the documents in PACER. "The New York Times" similarly reported Swartz had downloaded "an estimated 20 percent of the entire database". Based on the facts that Swartz downloaded 2.7 million documents while PACER, at the time, contained 500 million, Lee concluded that Swartz downloaded less than 1% of the database.


title: Aaron Swartz

text: In 2009, wanting to learn about effective activism, Swartz helped launch the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. He wrote in his blog: "I spend my days experimenting with new ways to get progressive policies enacted and progressive politicians elected." He led the first activism event of his career with the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, delivering thousands of "Honor Kennedy" petition signatures to Massachusetts legislators, asking them to fulfill former Senator Ted Kennedy's last wish by appointing a senator to vote for healthcare reform.


title: Aaron Swartz

text: In 2010, Swartz co-founded Demand Progress, a political advocacy group that organizes people online to "take action by contacting Congress and other leaders, funding pressure tactics, and spreading the word" about civil liberties, government reform, and other issues.


title: Aaron Swartz

text: During academic year 2010–11, Swartz conducted research studies on political corruption as a Lab Fellow in Harvard University's Edmond J. Safra Research Lab on Institutional Corruption.


title: Aaron Swartz

text: Author Cory Doctorow, in his novel "Homeland", "drew on advice from Swartz in setting out how his protagonist could use the information now available about voters to create a grass-roots anti-establishment political campaign." In an afterword to the novel, Swartz wrote: "These political hacktivist tools can be used by anyone motivated and talented enough... Now it's up to you to change the system. ... Let me know if I can help."


title: Aaron Swartz

text: Swartz was involved in the campaign to prevent passage of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which sought to combat Internet copyright violations but was criticized on the basis that it would make it easier for the U.S. government to shut down web sites accused of violating copyright and would place intolerable burdens on Internet providers. After the bill's defeat, Swartz was the keynote speaker at the F2C:Freedom to Connect 2012 event in Washington, D.C., on May 21, 2012. In his speech, "How We Stopped SOPA", he said:


title: Aaron Swartz

text: He added, "We won this fight because everyone made themselves the hero of their own story. Everyone took it as their job to save this crucial freedom." He was referring to a series of protests against the bill by numerous websites, described by the Electronic Frontier Foundation as the biggest protest in Internet history, with over 115,000 sites posting their opposition. Swartz also spoke on the topic at an event organized by ThoughtWorks.


title: Aaron Swartz

text: Swartz participated in Wikipedia since August 2003 under the username AaronSw. In 2006, he ran unsuccessfully for the Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Trustees.


title: Aaron Swartz

text: In 2006, Swartz wrote an analysis of how Wikipedia articles are written, and concluded that the bulk of its content came from tens of thousands of occasional contributors, or "outsiders," each of whom made few other contributions to the site, while a core group of 500 to 1,000 regular editors tended to correct spelling and other formatting errors. He said: "The formatters aid the contributors, not the other way around." His conclusions, based on the analysis of edit histories of several randomly selected articles, contradicted the opinion of Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, who believed the core group of regular editors provided most of the content while thousands of others contributed to formatting issues. Swartz came to his conclusions by counting the number of characters editors added to particular articles, while Wales counted the total number of edits.


title: Aaron Swartz

text: According to state and federal authorities, Swartz used JSTOR, a digital repository, to download a large number of academic journal articles through MIT's computer network over the course of a few weeks in late 2010 and early 2011. Visitors to MIT's "open campus" were authorized to access JSTOR through its network; Swartz, as a research fellow at Harvard University, also had a JSTOR account.


title: Aaron Swartz

text: On September 25, 2010, the IP address 18.55.6.215, part of the MIT network, began sending hundreds of PDF download requests per minute to the JSTOR website, enough to slow the site's performance. This prompted a block of the IP address. In the morning, another IP address, also from within the MIT network, began sending more PDF download requests, resulting in a temporary block on the firewall level of all MIT computers in the entire 18.0.0.0/8 range. A JSTOR employee emailed MIT on September 29, 2010:


title: Aaron Swartz

text: According to authorities, Swartz downloaded the documents through a laptop connected to a networking switch in a controlled-access wiring closet at MIT. The closet's door was kept unlocked, according to press reports. When it was discovered, a video camera was placed in the room to record Swartz; his computer was left untouched. Recording was stopped once Swartz was identified; but rather than pursue a civil lawsuit against him, JSTOR reached a settlement with him in June 2011 where he surrendered the downloaded data.


title: Aaron Swartz

text: On July 30, 2013, JSTOR released 300 partially redacted documents used as incriminating evidence against Swartz, originally sent to the United States Attorney's Office in response to subpoenas in the case "United States v. Aaron Swartz".


title: Aaron Swartz

text: On the night of January 6, 2011, Swartz was arrested near the Harvard campus by MIT Police and a Secret Service agent, and arraigned in Cambridge District Court on two state charges of breaking and entering with intent to commit a felony.


title: Aaron Swartz

text: On July 11, 2011, he was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of wire fraud, computer fraud, unlawfully obtaining information from a protected computer, and recklessly damaging a protected computer.


title: Aaron Swartz

text: On November 17, 2011, Swartz was indicted by a Middlesex County Superior Court grand jury on state charges of breaking and entering with intent, grand larceny, and unauthorized access to a computer network. On December 16, 2011, state prosecutors filed a notice that they were dropping the two original charges, and the charges listed in the November 17, 2011 indictment were dropped on March 8, 2012. According to a spokesperson for the Middlesex County prosecutor, this was done to avoid impeding a federal prosecution headed by Stephen P. Heymann, supported by evidence provided by Secret Service agent Michael S. Pickett.


title: Aaron Swartz

text: On September 12, 2012, federal prosecutors filed a superseding indictment adding nine more felony counts, increasing Swartz's maximum criminal exposure to 50 years of imprisonment and $1 million in fines. During plea negotiations with Swartz's attorneys, the prosecutors offered to recommend a sentence of six months in a low-security prison if Swartz pled guilty to 13 federal crimes. Swartz and his lead attorney rejected the deal, opting instead for a trial where prosecutors would be forced to justify their pursuit of him.


title: Aaron Swartz

text: The federal prosecution involved what was characterized by numerous critics (such as former Nixon White House counsel John Dean) as an "overcharging" 13-count indictment and "overzealous", "Nixonian" prosecution for alleged computer crimes, brought by then U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts Carmen Ortiz.


title: Aaron Swartz

text: Swartz died by suicide on January 11, 2013. After his death, federal prosecutors dropped the charges. On December 4, 2013, due to a Freedom of Information Act suit by the investigations editor of "Wired" magazine, several documents related to the case were released by the Secret Service, including a video of Swartz entering the MIT network closet.


title: Aaron Swartz

text: On the evening of January 11, 2013, Swartz's girlfriend, Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman, found him dead in his Brooklyn apartment. A spokeswoman for New York's Medical Examiner reported that he had hanged himself. No suicide note was found. Swartz's family and his partner created a memorial website on which they issued a statement, saying: "He used his prodigious skills as a programmer and technologist not to enrich himself but to make the Internet and the world a fairer, better place."


title: Aaron Swartz

text: Days before Swartz's funeral, Lawrence Lessig eulogized his friend and sometime-client in an essay, "Prosecutor as Bully." He decried the disproportionality of Swartz's prosecution and said, "The question this government needs to answer is why it was so necessary that Aaron Swartz be labeled a 'felon'. For in the 18 months of negotiations, that was what he was not willing to accept." Cory Doctorow wrote, "Aaron had an unbeatable combination of political insight, technical skill, and intelligence about people and issues. I think he could have revolutionized American (and worldwide) politics. His legacy may still yet do so."


title: Aaron Swartz

text: Swartz's funeral services were held on January 15, 2013, at Central Avenue Synagogue in Highland Park, Illinois. Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the World Wide Web, delivered a eulogy. The same day, "The Wall Street Journal" published a story based in part on an interview with Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman. She told the "Journal" that Swartz lacked the money to pay for a trial and "it was too hard for him to ... make that part of his life go public" by asking for help. He was also distressed, she said, because two of his friends had just been subpoenaed and because he no longer believed that MIT would try to stop the prosecution.


title: Aaron Swartz

text: Several memorials followed soon afterward. On January 19, hundreds attended a memorial at the Cooper Union, speakers at which included Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman, open source advocate Doc Searls, Creative Commons' Glenn Otis Brown, journalist Quinn Norton, Roy Singham of ThoughtWorks, and David Segal of Demand Progress. On January 24, there was a memorial at the Internet Archive headquarters in San Francisco (video) with speakers including Stinebrickner-Kauffman, Alex Stamos, Brewster Kahle, Peter Eckersley, and Carl Malamud. On February 4, a memorial was held in the Cannon House Office Building on Capitol Hill; speakers at this memorial included Senator Ron Wyden and Representatives Darrell Issa, Alan Grayson, and Jared Polis, and other lawmakers in attendance included Senator Elizabeth Warren and Representatives Zoe Lofgren and Jan Schakowsky. A memorial also took place on March 12 at the MIT Media Lab.


title: Aaron Swartz

text: Swartz's family recommended GiveWell for donations in his memory, an organization that Swartz admired, had collaborated with and was the sole beneficiary of his will.


title: Aaron Swartz

text: Carmen M. Ortiz, then US Attorney for the District of Massachusetts, "As a parent and a sister, I can only imagine the pain felt by the family and friends of Aaron Swartz, […] I must, however, make clear that this office's conduct was appropriate in bringing and handling this case."


title: Aaron Swartz

text: On January 12, 2013, Swartz's family and partner issued a statement criticizing the prosecutors and MIT. Speaking at his son's funeral on January 15, Robert Swartz said, "Aaron was killed by the government, and MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."


title: Aaron Swartz

text: Tom Dolan, husband of U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts Carmen Ortiz, whose office prosecuted Swartz's case, replied with criticism of the Swartz family: "Truly incredible that in their own son's obit they blame others for his death and make no mention of the 6-month offer." This comment triggered some criticism; "Esquire" writer Charlie Pierce replied, "the glibness with which her husband and her defenders toss off a 'mere' six months in federal prison, low-security or not, is a further indication that something is seriously out of whack with the way our prosecutors think these days."


title: Aaron Swartz

text: MIT maintains an open-campus policy along with an "open network." Two days after Swartz's death, MIT President L. Rafael Reif commissioned professor Hal Abelson to lead an analysis of MIT's options and decisions relating to Swartz's "legal struggles." To help guide the fact-finding stage of the review, MIT created a website where community members could suggest questions and issues for the review to address.


title: Aaron Swartz

text: Swartz's attorneys requested that all pretrial discovery documents be made public, a move which MIT opposed. Swartz allies have criticized MIT for its opposition to releasing the evidence without redactions. On July 26, 2013, the Abelson panel submitted a 182-page report to MIT president, L. Rafael Reif, who authorized its public release on July 30. The panel reported that MIT had not supported charges against Swartz and cleared the institution of wrongdoing. However, its report also noted that despite MIT's advocacy for open access culture at the institutional level and beyond, the university never extended that support to Swartz. The report revealed, for example, that while MIT considered the possibility of issuing a public statement about its position on the case, such a statement never materialized.


title: Aaron Swartz

text: "The Huffington Post" reported that "Ortiz has faced significant backlash for pursuing the case against Swartz, including a petition to the White House to have her fired." Other news outlets reported similarly.


title: Aaron Swartz

text: Reuters news agency called Swartz "an online icon" who "help[ed] to make a virtual mountain of information freely available to the public, including an estimated 19 million pages of federal court documents." The Associated Press (AP) reported that Swartz's case "highlights society's uncertain, evolving view of how to treat people who break into computer systems and share data not to enrich themselves, but to make it available to others," and that JSTOR's lawyer, former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Mary Jo White, had asked the lead prosecutor to drop the charges.


title: Aaron Swartz

text: As discussed by editor Hrag Vartanian in "Hyperallergic", Brooklyn, New York muralist BAMN ("By Any Means Necessary") created a mural of Swartz. "Swartz was an amazing human being who fought tirelessly for our right to a free and open Internet," the artist explained. "He was much more than just the 'Reddit guy'."


title: Aaron Swartz

text: Speaking on April 17, 2013, Yuval Noah Harari described Swartz as "the first martyr of the Freedom of Information movement". However, according to Harari, Swartz's stance did not illustrate the belief in the freedom of persons or speech, but stemmed from the increasing belief among the young generation that above anything else, information should be free.


title: Aaron Swartz

text: Aaron Swartz's legacy has been reported as strengthening the open access to scholarship movement. In Illinois, his home state, Swartz's influence led state university faculties to adopt policies in favor of open access.