Seyyed Mojtaba Navvab Safavi

 

Soheila Einollahzadeh

 

Seyyed Mojtaba Mirlowhi known as Navvab Safavi was born in a religious family on Khaniabad Street of Tehran. His mother’s lineage went back to the Safavids and his father to the famous Isfahani Seyyeds of Mirlowhi. He was the leader of Fadaian e Eslam society. Following his elementary education he entered the German industrial school and simultaneously studied the religious textbooks. Subsequent to the departure of Reza Khan from Iran, he was employed in the Anglo Iranian oil company and fought for the causes of the Iranian workers who were suffering the discrimination between domestic and foreign laborers.

 

He left the company and went to Najaf and made friendly relationship with Allame Amini. He read the writings of Ahmad Kasravi in Najaf and as some Shiite religious authorities considered Kasravi as apostate, he returned to Iran and following some fruitless talks with Kasravi, he decided to kill him. Publishing a declaration he announced the foundation of Jamiyyat e fadaian e Eslam. He killed Kasravi with the cooperation of some members of the group. And then he left Tehran for Najaf secretly.

 

Navvab Safavi was affiliated to Ayatollah Kashani at the early days of the nationalization of oil industry, and insisted on asking the Ayatollah to make some religious reforms and have Dr. Mossaddeq to regard them. Basically, Ayatollah had no objection to the reforms but believed that radicalism was not expedient. Little by little his distance with the Ayatollah became more and more.

 

Fadaian e Eslam made great efforts to attract the attention of Iranians to the causes of the Palestinians. AbdolHossein Hazhir, and lieutenant general Razmara were among the figures assassinated by this group. Subsequent to the group’s opposition to Dr. Mossaddeq and Ayatollah Kashani, Navvab and many of his comrades were detained in the spring 1951 and passed in prison to early 1953.

 

Invited by one of Ekhvan ol moslemin’s leaders, Seyyed Qotb, he left for Jerusalem to attend the Islamic Congress of Qods. He made a strong speech and invited all Moslems to unite together to liberate Palestine.

 

The last attempt made by the Fadaian e Eslam was on Hossein Ala’s life that was to go to Iraq and attend the Baghdad treaty conference. However, this was not successful. The government succeeded to arrest all of the leaders and activists of this group and eventually he was executed in Jan. 17^th, 1956.