Fada'iyan-e Islam

Fadā'iyān-e Islam (Persian: فدائیان اسلام, also spelled as Fadayan-e Islam or in English "Fedayeen of Islam" or "Devotees of Islam"), was an Iranian Islamic fundamentalist secret society founded in 1946, by a 21 year-old theology student named Navvab Safavi. Safavi sought to purify Islam in Iran by ridding it of `corrupting individuals` by means of carefully planned assassinations of certain leading intellectual and political figures.^[1] After a series of successful killings and the freeing of some of its assassins from punishment with the help of the group's powerful clerical supporters, the group was suppressed and Safavi executed by the Iranian government in the mid-1950s. The group survived as supporters of the Ayatollah Khomeini and the Islamic Revolution of Iran.

Navab Safavi, leader of the group Fadayan-e Islam

Background

The group was part of a "growing nationalist mobilization against foreign domination" in the Middle East after World War II, and has been said to presage more famous Islamist terrorist groups. ^[2] Its membership is said to have been made up of youth employed in "the lower echelons of the Tehran bazaar." Its program went beyond generalities about following the sharia to demand prohibitions of alcohol, tobacco, opium, films, gambling, wearing of foreign clothing, the enforcement of amputation of hands of thieves, and the veiling of women, and an elimination from school curriculum of all non-Muslim subjects such as music.^[3]

History

Rise

Its first assassination was of a nationalist, anti-clerical, Iranian author named Ahmad Kasravi, who was shot and killed in 1946. Kasravi is said to have been the target of Ayatollah Khomeini's demand in his first book, Kashf al Asrar (Key to the Secrets), that "all those who criticized Islam" are mahdur ad-damm, (meaning that their blood must be shed by the faithful).^[1] Secularist Iranian author Amir Taheri argues that Khomeini was closely associated with Navab Safavi and his ideas, and that Khomeini's assertion "amounted to a virtual death sentence on Kasravi."^[4]

Hussein Emami, the assassin and a founding member of the Fadayan, was promptly arrested and sentenced to death for the crime. The Iranian intelligentsia united in calling for an example to be made of him. Emami, however, was spared the gallows. According to Taheri, he roused religious defenders and used his prestige as a seyyed, or descendent of the Prophet Muhammad, to demanded he be tried by a religious court. Khomeini and many of the Shia clergy pressure the Shah to give Emami a pardon, taking advantage of the Shah's political difficulties — such as the occupation of Azerbaijan province by Soviet troops — at that time. Khomeini himself asked the Shah for the pardon.^[5]

In 1949 the group killed Court Minister (and former prime minister) Abdul-Hussein Hazhir. On March 16, 1951^[5], they gunned down the Prime Minister, General) Haj-Ali Razmara, in retaliation for his advice against nationalizing the oil industry.^[6] Three weeks later the Education and Culture Minister Ahmad Zangeneh was assassinated by the group. Prime Minister Razmara's assassination was said to have moved Iran "further away from a spirit of compromise and moderation in relation to the oil problem" and "so frightened the ruling classes that concession after concession was made to nationalist demands in an attempt to pacify the intensely aroused public indignation."^[7] The Fada'iyan are also reported to have "narrowly failed" in an attempt on the life of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.^[8]

In addition to Emami, Khalil Tahamsebi, the assassin of Razmara, was also pardoned. Ayatollah Abol-Ghasem Kashani, a powerful member of parliament and a supporter of the Fadayan, "arranged for a special Act to be passed quashing the death sentence on Khalil Tahamsebi and declaring him [Tahamsebi] to be a soldier of Islam,"^[9] to the further consternation of Iranian secularists.

Although the Fadayan strongly supported the nationalization of Iran's foreign-owned oil industry, they turned against the leader of the nationalization movement, Mohammad Mossadeq, when he became prime minister because of his refusal to implement the sharia law and appoint strict Islamists to high positions.^[10] The danger from the Fada'iyan "was one of the primary factors accounting for Mosaddeq's decision to move the prime minister's office to his own residence."^[11] Another assassination attempt on February 15, 1952 (25 Bahman 1330) badly wounded Hossein Fatemi, "Mosaddeq's dynamic and capable aide" and foreign minister, left Fatemi "badly wounded and effectively disabled for almost eight months." This was planned by the group's second in command, Abolhossein Vahedi, and executed by a teenage member of the group.^[11]

Crackdown

In 1955, Navab Safavi and "other members of the Fedayeen of Islam, including Emami," were finally executed.^[12] The group continued on, however, according to author Baqer Moin, turning to Ayatollah Khomeini for a new spiritual leader, ^[13] and reportedly being "reconstructed" by Khomeini disciple and later controversial "hanging judge," Sadegh Khalkhali.^[14] It is thought to have executed the assassination of Iranian Prime Minister Hassan Ali Mansour in 1965. Mansour is reported to have been "tried" by a secret Islamic court made up of Khomeini followers Morteza Motahhari and Ayatollah Mohammad Beheshti and sentenced to death "on a charge of `warring on Allah` as symbolized by the decision" to send Khomeini into exile. The three perpetrators of the "sentence" - Mohammad Bokara'i, Morteza Niknezhad and Reza Saffar-Harandi - "were arrested and charged as accomplices," but the story of the trial and sentence was not revealed until after the revolution. ^[15]

Revolution and Islamic Republic

During the 1979 Iranian Revolution, Fadayan members served as foot soldiers for Khomeini and formed part of the fundamentalist wing of the revolutionary base, pressuring Khomeini to implement rule of Islam immediately. They called for a "wholesale introduction of Islamic legal and social codes including a ban on music, alcohol, the cinema, usury, women working outside the home and compulsory veiling." Many of its members went on to serve in the Islamic Republic regime.

In late 1998, after concern was raised about a series of killings of Iranian dissidents, (known as the Chain Murders), a statement was issued in Tehran by a previously unknown group with a name similar to Fadayaan-e Islam, taking credit for at least some of the killings. The statement by a group calling itself "pure Mohammadan Islam devotees of Mostafa Navvab," (Fadayaan-e Islam-e Naab-e Mohammadi-ye Mostafa Navvab), said in part:

"Now than domestic politicians, through negligence and leniency, and under slogan of rule of law, support the masked poisonous vipers of the aliens, and brand the decisive approaches of the Islamic system, judiciary and responsible press and advocates of the revolution as monopolistic and extremist spread of violence and threats to the freedom, the brave and zealous children of the Iranian Muslim nation took action and by revolutionary execution of dirty and sold-out elements who were behind nationalistic movements and other poisonous moves in universities, took the second practical step in defending the great achievements of the Islamic Revolution ... The revolutionary execution of Dariush Forouhar, Parvaneh Eskandari, Mohammad Mokhtari and Mohammad Jafar Pouyandeh is a warning to all mercenary writers and their counter-value supporters who are cherishing the idea of spreading corruption and promiscuity in the country and bringing back foreign domination over Iran..."^[16]

It is not certain what the connection of the group was to the murders.

See also

• Navab Safavi
• Terrorism in Iran
• Chain Murders of Iran

Notes

Works cited

1. ^ ^{a b} Taheri, The Spirit of Allah, (1985), p.98
2. ^ Fundamentalist Islam at Large: The Drive for Power by Martin Kramer, Middle East Quarterly, June 1996
3. ^ Abrahamian, Ervand Iran between Two Revolutions, Princeton University Press, 1982, p.259
4. ^ Taheri, The Spirit of Allah, (1985), p.101
5. ^ ^{a b} Taheri, The Spirit of Allah, (1985), p.107-8
6. ^ Iran MOSSADEQ AND OIL NATIONALIZATION
7. ^ Zabih, Sepehr, The Mossadegh Era : Roots of the Iranian Revolution, Lake View Press, 1982, p.25-6
8. ^ Molavi, The Soul of Iran, (2005), p.323
9. ^ Taheri, The Spirit of Allah, (1985), p.109
10. ^ Abrahamian, Ervand, A History of Modern Iran, Cambridge University Press, 2008, p.116
11. ^ ^{a b} Mohammad Mosaddeq and the 1953 Coup in Iran, Edited by Mark j. Gasiorowski and Malcolm Byrne, Syracuse University Press, 2004, p.66
12. ^ Taheri, The Spirit of Allah, (1985), p.115
13. ^ Moin, Khomeini (2000), p.224
14. ^ Taheri, Amir, Spirit of Allah : Khomeini and the Islamic Revolution , Adler and Adler c1985, p.187
15. ^ Taheri, The Spirit of Allah, (1985), p.156
16. ^ A Review of Serial Murders by Nahid Mousavi translated from Zanan [Women]; Social & Cultural Magazine (Monthly) Dec. 1999, No. 58