Ayatollah Khamenei, the Leader of the Islamic Revolution, spoke to a large number of pilgrims at Imam Khomeini's (r.a.) shrine on the demise anniversary of the late Imam. Speaking at the ceremony, His Eminence referred to the distortion of Imam's (r.a.) personality as a grave danger, stressing: "We usually use the term "distortion" for texts and documents, but can personalities be distorted as well? Yes, they can be distorted. Distorting personalities means that the main elements and constituents of a personality - such as the personality of that great person - remain unknown or that they are defined in a wrong, deviant and superficial way. All these things are related to distortion of personalities. If a personality who is a role model, Imam and leader and whose behavior and words are instructive for future generations is distorted, this will inflict a great loss."
The Leader of the Islamic Revolution pointed to two great tasks that were carried out by Imam (r.a.): "One was the destruction of a structure which was based on a cruel and unreasonable hereditary monarchy. The second great task that our magnanimous Imam (r.a.) carried out was to create a government on the basis of Islam which was unprecedented in the history of our country and the history of Islam after the early Islamic era."
Ayatollah Khamenei stated that Imam's (r.a.) intellectual system enjoyed all the characteristics of an intellectual, social and political school of thought, adding: "First, it is based on a monotheistic worldview. All his activities and all his thought processes were based on monotheism which is the main infrastructure for all Islamic thoughts. Another characteristic of this intellectual system - which has turned it into a school of thought in the real sense of the word - is that it was up-to-date."