Word: khomeini
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...unclear whether "the title that applies to all Shia leaders" is "ayatollah" or "imam," but both are incorrect. In fact, "imam" has extreme, messianic connotations among Shia Muslims, and it raised more than a few eyebrows a few years ago when Khomeini's followers began to call him by that nomenclature...
...mistakes regarding Khomeini are representative of American media blunders on all of Islam, according to a 1981 book by Columbia Professor Edward W. Said, Covering Islam Said documents numerous misunderstandings and mistakes, from faculty pronunciations to biased reporting. It might be argued that the media cover everything badly not just Islam. And Said's one of moral outrage is open to ridicule and doubt...
Familiarity with the area doesn't appear to help. Even Iranians writing for an American audience--that is, people who should know better--vacillate between the image of Khomeini the totalitarian dictator and Khomeini the buffoon...
Mansur Farhang and John Hosein Metavelli, in an article last August in The Progressive, manage to have their cake and eat it too. On the one hand, they wrote. Khomeini "began to build a vast network of coercion and patronage to secure his rule." On the other hand, they described anarchy in the streets and a failure of exported Islamic revolution abroad...
Meanwhile, opposition groups, most of them based in Paris, have contributed to the confusion. The Mojahedeen, an Islamic leftist organization blames everything from prison torture to military strategy on Khomeini himself (Actually, not to release him from all blame a strong argument could be made that much is done in Iran in the name of Khomeini, but without his knowledge...