Rafiq Tağı, born Rafig Nazir oglu Taghiyev (5 August 1950, Khoshchobanly, Masally District, Azerbaijan — 23 November 2011, Baku, Azerbaijan) was an Azerbaijani short story writer and a journalist who worked for Sanat newspaper until police arrested him and Sanat editor Samir Sadagatoglu for "Europe and Us", an article that was deemed to be critical of Islam and the Islamic prophet Muhammad.
His membership at the Writers' Union of Azerbaijan of which he had been a member for 16 years was revoked after he wrote a critical essay analysing social and political views of the renowned Soviet-era Azerbaijani poet Samad Vurghun.
[2] Another article entitled Europe and Us published in 2006 in the newspaper Sanat provoked protests in Azerbaijan and Iran, as well as a fatwa pronouncing the death penalty from Grand Ayatollah Fazel Lankarani.
[6] In an interview held just one day prior to his death, Rafiq Tağı stated the attack could be an act of retaliation for the article Iran and the Inevitability of Globalization he had published on 10 November 2011 and in which he criticised Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for "discrediting Islam.
Investigative journalist and Tağı's fellow columnist Khadija Ismayilova blames the assassination on radical Islamists who are working closely with Iran's secret intelligence.
"[12] In this case, the dissident jurist, Mohsen Kadivar, engaged in a heated moral and legal debate over the legitimacy of the Fatwa with the son of the recently deceased Ayatollah.