Career
Safavi founded the Fadayan-e Islam organization in 1945, and began recruiting like-minded individuals. Like the Ikhwan (Muslim Brotherhood), Navvab-Safavi believed that Islamic society needed to be purified. To do this he organized carefully planned assassinations to rid Islam of "corrupting individuals," often prime ministers of Iran's government.
He is said to be "the man who introduced Ayatollah Khomeini to the Muslim Brotherhood and their ideas," who "spent long hours together" with Khomeini in discussion, and visited him in Qom on a number of occasions during 1943 and 1944.
He and his organization were responsible for the assassinations, or attempted assassinations of politicians Abdolhosein Hazhir, Hossein Ala (he survived the attempt), Prime Minister Haj Ali Razmara, historian Ahmad Kasravi, and Major General Teymur Bakhtiar.
Safavi and his group were closely associated with Ayatollah Abol-Ghasem Kashani and supported but were not members of Mohammed Mosaddeq's National Front. Safavi worked with Kashani, helping organize bazaar strikes against Premier Ahmad Qavam, public meetings in support of Palestinian Arabs, and a violent demonstration in 1948 against Premier Abdolhossein Hazhir. When the Shah appointed National Front leader Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh to the post of prime minister, Safavi expected his objectives would be furthered. He demanded the government drive the British out, and that it release "with honor and respect" the assassin of Razmara. When that didn't happen, Safavi announced "We have broken away irrevocably from Kashani's National Front. They promised to set up an Islamic country according to the precepts of the Koran. Instead they have imprisoned our brothers." He later warned, "There are others who must be pushed down the incline to hell."
However relations between Kashani and Safavi, not to mention Mosaddeq, became "strained." On 10 May 1951, Navvab Safavi declared: 'I invite Musadizz, other members of the National Front and Ayatollah Kashani, to an ethical trial,`
Read more about this topic: Navvab Safavi
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