Majid Sharif-Vaghefi

Majid Sharif-Vaghefi was a member of the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK) who was murdered in May 1975 by the Marxist faction led by Taghi Shahram. His killing was the most infamous act in the violent internal purge that accompanied the ideological shift of the MEK's Marxist wing — a purge that transformed the MEK's Marxist faction into the Peykar Organization. Sharif-Vaghefi was targeted because he remained committed to the MEK's Islamic ideology and refused to accept the Marxist faction's ideological conversion. His murder alongside fellow MEK member Morteza Samadiyeh-Labbaf became a symbol of the brutal internecine violence within the Iranian left of the 1970s and is central to understanding the MEK/Peykar split.