Fadayan-e Islam

Fadayan-e Islam (also Feda'iyan-e Islam or in English "Fedayeen of Islam" or "Devotees of Islam") was an Iranian Islamic fundamentalist or Islamic terrorist secret society founded in 1946, by "a charismatic" 22 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. 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.

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. 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.

History

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). 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.

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. Other notable people killed by the group include Abdul-Hussein Hazhir — a former premier and at the time of his murder — and Court Minister, and the Education and Culture Minister Ahmad Zangeneh, both killed in 1949. Shortly after in 1950 (or 1951), they gunned down the Prime Minister Haj-Ali Razmara, in retaliation for his advise against nationalizing the oil industry. They are also reported to have "narrowly failed" in an attempt on the life of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

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, to the further consternation of Iranian secularists. Although the Fadayan strongly supported the nationalization of Iran's oil industry, they turned against the leader of the nationalization movement, Mohammad Mossadeq, because of his refusal to implement the sharia law and appoint strict Islamists to high positions. They are reported to have made an assassination attempt against him and wounded Hosayn Fatemi, his foreign minister.

Crackdown and after

In 1955, Navab Safavi and "other members of the Fedayeen of Islam, including Emami," were finally executed. The group continued on, however, according to author Baqer Moin, turning to Ayatollah Khomeini for a new spiritual leader, and reportedly being "reconstructed" by Khomeini disciple and later controversial "hanging judge," Sadegh Khalkhali. 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.

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." This put them at odds with Khomeini's more wily, pragmatic approach of using secularists and modernists as allies, and then parting "ways with them at a time of his own choosing." Many of its members went on to serve in the Islamic Republic regime.

See also

• Navab Safavi
• Terrorism in Iran

Notes

Works cited

Further reading

• Taheri, Amir, The Spirit of Allah, Bethesda, Md. : Adler & Adler, (1985)
• Moin, Baqer, Khomeini : life of the Ayatollah, New York : St. Martin's Press, (2000)