Born into a devout family of merchants, Mehdi Bazargan (1907-1995) was a French-trained engineer, a lay Islamic scholar, and a long-time pro-democracy activist. A deputy prime minister when the nationalists came briefly to power in the early 1950s, Bazargan also participated with Ayatollah Mahmud Taleqani and others in a reform movement in the early 1960s aimed at democratizing the Shi'i clerical establishment. Bazargan was imprisoned several times during the 1960s and 1970s for his nonviolent opposition to the Shah through groups such as the Liberation Movement of Iran, which he cofounded in 1961, and the Iranian Human Rights Association, which he cofounded in 1977. When the Shah was forced out of Iran in 1979, Khomeyni appointed Bazargan as provisional prime minister, but he resigned within a year, complaining that radical clerics were undermining his government. He continued to serve in the Iranian parliament for several years, harassed by his radical opponents, then lived in a sort of political limbo until his death in early 1995, a barely tolerated symbol of opposition to the radical Islamic government.