The triggering event of the Iranian Revolution was the arrest, banishment and slandering of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Ruhollah Khomeini was arrested in 1963 for speaking against the Shah’s reduction of religious estates and emancipation of women. Many anti government riots broke out from his arrest. On the 4th of Nov. 1964, he was forcibly exiled from Iran and he moved to the Shiite holy city Al-Najaf, Iraq and continued to call for the Shah to relinquish his power. In 1978, the Tehran newspaper Eṭṭelāʿāt called Khomeini a British spy which resulted in thousands of religious students and Iranian youth protesting against the Shah bribing the newspaper to say such a thing.