Navab Safavi

Sayyid Navvab Safavi (born Mojtaba Mir-Lohi) (1924 – 1955) was a cleric responsible for founding of the Fada'iyan-e Islam group and with them the assassination of several leading Iranians, primarily politicians who supported the government of the Shah.

Born in Ghaniabad, Tehran into a well-known religious family in 1924, he received his primary education in Tehran and left school after eighth grade when his father died. His father, Seyyed Javad Mir-Lohi, was a cleric who was put in jail many years for having slapped Reza Shah's Minister of Justice, Ali Akbar Davar, in the face, and thus the young Navvab was raised by his maternal uncle, Seyyed Mahmood Navvab Safavi, whose name he eventually adopted. It's said that "the family name was changed to Navvab Safavi (deputies of the Safavids) to identify with the famous Shi'ite dynasty of the Safavids, who in the sixteenth century made Shi'ism the state religion of Iran." Growing up during this period of militant secularization, after briefly (for few months) working in Abadan's petroleum installations in Khuzestan province, for the British-owned Iranian Oil Company, he decided, in 1943, to pursue religious studies at Najaf. He is said to have been known for his striking looks and his "mesmerizing" speaking ability, and compared his own charisma and magnetism over the masses to that of Hassan-i Sabbah, the leader of the Assassins.

Safavi founded the Fada'iyan-e Islam organization in 1945, and began recruiting like-minded individuals. Like the Muslim Brotherhood, a group he was in deep connection with and even met Sayyid Qutb later in 1953, 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.

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