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.