Taqi Yazdi

Muhammad Taqi Misbah Yazdi Giwachi (Persian: محمدتقی مصباح یزدی گیوه‌چی, romanized: Muḥammad Taqī Miṣbāḥ Yazdī Gīwachī; 31 January 1935 – 1 January 2021) was an Iranian Shia scholar, political theorist and philosopher who served as the spiritual leader of the Front of Islamic Revolution Stability.

He was a member of the Assembly of Experts, the body responsible for choosing the Supreme Leader, where he headed a minority faction. He had been called 'the most conservative' and the most 'powerful' clerical oligarch in Iran's leading center of religious learning, the city of Qom. Many of his students have gone on to "occupy sensitive administrative and security posts" in the Islamic Republic, serving as "guardians" of (his version of) Islamic government.

From 1952 to 1960, in the holy city of Qom, he participated in the courses taught by Ruhollah Khomeini and Muhammad Husayn Tabataba'i; and, for approximately fifteen years, he was a student of Mohammad-Taqi Bahjat Foumani.

Mesbah Yazdi advocated Islamic philosophy and in particular Mulla Sadra's transcendent school of philosophy (Hikmat-e Muta`aliya). He believed that Iranians were moving away from religion and the values of Islamic revolution; and opposed western-style freedom and democratic governance, promoted by the Iranian reform movement.