Hojjatieh

Hojjatieh (in Persian: انجمن حجتیه ) — also called Hojjatieh Society — is a semi-clandestine traditionalist Shia organization founded in Iran in 1953 (in Tehran) by Shaikh Mahmoud Halabi (a Tehrani mullah from Mashhad; 1900–1998) with permission of Ayatollah Seyyed Hossein Borujerdi. The organization was founded on the premise that the most immediate threat to Islam was the Bahá'í religion, which they viewed as a heresy that must be eliminated. The group also opposes both Sunniism and the Khomeinist concept of Velayat-e Faqih. An earlier organization was founded by Halabi, the Anjoman-e Imám-e Zaman (called Anjoman-e Zedd-e Bahá'í privately) which later was renamed to the Anjoman-e Hojjatieh Mahdavieh (called Hojjatieh for short) after the Iranian Revolution. In March to June 1955, the Ramadan period that year, a widespread systematic program was undertaken cooperatively by the government and the clergy. During the period they destroyed the national Bahá'í Center in Tehran, confiscated properties and made it illegal for a time to be Bahá'í (punishable by 2 to 10 year prison term.) Founder of SAVAK, Teymur Bakhtiar, took a pick-axe to a Bahá'í building himself at the time.