The group was part of a “growing nationalist mobilization against foreign domination” in the Middle East after World War II, and has been said to presage more famous Islamist terrorist groups.Its membership is said to have been made up of youth employed in “the lower echelons of the Tehran bazaar.” Its program went beyond generalities about following the sharia to demand prohibitions of alcohol, tobacco, opium, films, gambling, wearing of foreign clothing, the enforcement of amputation of hands of thieves, and the veiling of women, and an elimination from school curriculum of all non-Muslim subjects such as music.
In the memoirs of Shaaban Jafari, we read about him: For example, Seyyed Hossein and Seyyed Ali Emami, who killed Ahmed Kasravi, as I heard then, came to Kashani’s house and left. But it was not by the order of Ayatollah Kashani that the Justice and Sayyid Hossein killed themselves and Sayyid Ali, his secretary [Hadadpour]. For a while at our place, on Bozarjamhari Street, they were selling cloth and Marcheh. Seyyed Hossein was a very beautiful child, with blonde hair and so on.
