This was Iran under the Shah —Washington’s puppet and its most loyal guardian in West Asia. No voice of dissent could rise; the prisons brimmed with students, clerics and other people—crushed under the weight of torture; and poverty burdened the shoulders of the masses; while the Shah poured billions into extravagant arms deals that served only American interests. The dream of freedom and political independence was bartered away—for the latest in American weaponry. From this darkness rose a brave and popular scholar: Seyyed Ruhollah Khomeini. He lived the austere life of a seminary teacher, yet his words carried the voltage of an earthquake. Speaking first from the pulpits of Qom—and later, in exile, from Najaf and Paris—he named what many only whispered: "a nation that cannot choose its own destiny is not valued", and "a faith gagged by tyranny is an open wound". He demanded nothing less than: independence, liberty, and an Islamic Republic rooted in the people’s will. Millions heard the call Bazaar merchants shuttered their shops, men and women, old and young, took to the streets and stood against the bullets of the Shah's executioners, thousands were killed, tens of thousands jailed, yet the crowds only swelled.   In February 1979 the throne toppled, and the Iranian people, under the spiritual and revolutionary leadership of Imam Khomeini, made their voices heard by the world. Imam Khomeini’s vision resonated beyond Iran with ideas derived from Islam and the Quran, wherever a people was bent beneath apartheid or occupation—whether in Palestine, South Africa, Latin America, or the West.   Today, decades after his passing, Imam Khomeini remains an eternal school of thought, a compass for defending justice, and a force in the clenched fist of anyone who refuses to bow to domination. History recorded him as a teacher who enlightened people to believe that they themselves are the miracle. The story he left us is unfinished. It marches in the chants of demonstrators seeking freedom for Palestine, in laboratories that turn sanctions into self-reliance, in the insistence that the weak have a right to stand upright.   As long as injustice casts a shadow, the voice that once echoed through Tehran’s crisp winter sky will be heard again, saying “Stand firm, Fear only God, and know that dignity is not granted; it is taken!” And this path. Still unfolds.