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" or literally "Self-Sacrificers of Islam") is a Shia fundamentalist group in Iran with a strong activist political and terrorist orientation. The group was founded in 1946, and registered as a political party in 1989. It was founded by a theology student nicknamed 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.
Society of Fadayeen Islam جمعیت فدائیان اسلام | |
|---|---|
| General Secretary | Mohammad-Mehdi Abdekhodaei |
| Founder | Navab Safavi |
| Founded | 1946 |
| Legalised | 2 July 1989 |
| Headquarters | Qom and Tehran |
| Newspaper | Manshoor-e-Baradari |
| Membership (1949) | <100 |
| Ideology | Political Islam Islamic fundamentalism Islamic revivalism Guardianship of the Islamic Jurist |
| Religion | Shia Islam |
| Slogan | Persian: اسلام برتر از همه چیز است و هیچ چیز برتر از اسلام نیست "Islam is above anything and nothing is above Islam" |
| Website | |
| www | |
The group executed a series of successful killings (author Ahmad Kasravi, court minister (and former prime minister) Abdolhossein Hazhir, the Prime Minister Haj Ali Razmara, the former education minister Abdul Hamid Zangeneh) and attempted killings (the Shah of Iran, foreign minister Hossein Fatemi) and succeeded in freeing of some of its assassins from punishment with the help of the group's powerful clerical supporters. Eventually the group was suppressed and Safavi was executed by the Iranian government in the mid-1950s. The group survived as supporters of the Ayatollah Khomeini and the Iranian Revolution.