Musa al-Sadr

On 2021, Muqtada al-Sadr, the cousin of Musa al-Sadr and leader of the Sadrist Movement in Iraq, announced that a committee has been formed to investigate the fate of Musa al-Sadr.

According to Iranian General Mansour Qadar, the head of Syrian security, Rifaat al-Assad, told the Iranian ambassador to Syria that Gaddafi planned to kill al-Sadr. On 27 August 2008, Gaddafi was indicted by the government of Lebanon for al-Sadr's disappearance. Following the fall of the Gaddafi regime, Lebanon and Iran appealed to the Libyan rebels to investigate the fate of Musa al-Sadr.

Al-Sadr's son claimed that he remains secretly in jail in Libya but did not provide proof. Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri claimed that the Libyan regime, and particularly the Libyan leader, was responsible for the disappearance of Imam Musa al-Sadr, as London-based Asharq Al-Awsat, a Saudi-run pan-Arab daily, reported on 27 August 2006.

Unity of the Islamic Schools of Thought According to Imam Musa Sadr includes a biography and an English adaptation of one of his books, Imam Musa Sadr: surush-e wahdat, Majma’ Jahani-ye Taqrib-e Madhahib-e Islami, 2004.

On 25 August 1978, Sadr and two companions cheikh Mohamad Yaacoub and Abaass Bader el dine departed for Libya to meet with government officials at the invitation of Muammar Gaddafi. The three were last seen on 31 August. They were never heard from again. Many theories exist around the circumstances of Sadr's disappearance, none of which have been proven. His whereabouts remain unknown to this day.

On 25 August 1978, al-Sadr and two companions, Sheikh Muhammad Yaacoub and journalist Abbas Badreddine, departed for Libya to meet with government officials at the invitation of Muammar Gaddafi. The three were last seen on 31 August. They were never heard from again.

Imam Musa al-Sadr is still regarded as an important political and spiritual leader by the Shia Lebanese community. His status only grew after his disappearance in August 1978, and today his legacy is revered by both Amal and Hezbollah followers. In the eyes of many, he became a martyr and a "vanished imam." A tribute to his continuing popularity is that it is popular in parts of Lebanon to mimic his Persian accent. The Amal Party remains an important Shia organization in Lebanon and looks to al-Sadr as its founder.

However, in 1976, he withdrew his support after the Syrian invasion against Palestinian and leftist militias. He also actively cooperated with Mostafa Chamran, Sadegh Ghotbzadeh, and other Iranian Islamist activists during the civil war. Sadr and Chamran had an important role in the Islamic Revolution of Iran. They were involved in protests against the Shah out of Iran. According to Amal deputy, Ali Kharis, "Musa Sadr and Chamran were the backbone of the Iranian revolution and how one can not speak of the Iranian revolution without mentioning these two people."

For the next four years, Sadr engaged the leadership of Syrian ‘Alawīs in an attempt to unify their political power with that of the Twelver Shia. Although controversial, recognition of the ‘Alawī as Shi'a coreligionists came in July 1973 when he and the ‘Alawī religious leadership successfully appointed an ‘Alawī as an official mufti to the Twelver community.

In 1969, Imam Musa was appointed the first head of the Supreme Islamic Shia Council (SISC) in Lebanon, (Arabic: المجلس الإسلامي الشيعي الأعلى) an entity meant to give the Shia more say in government.

In 1967, Imam al-Sadr traveled to West Africa to get acquainted with the Lebanese community and inspect its affairs and worked to link them to their homeland. He also met with Ivorian President Félix Houphouët-Boigny and Senegalese President Léopold Sédar Senghor and provided symbolic assistance to orphans in Senegal. Senghor praised the Imam's gesture, pointing out that he is following his activities with great interest, which had a great influence in spreading the feeling of love and faith among the citizens.

He revived the Jami'at al-Birr wal-Ihsan charity, founded by S. Salih b. Muhammad Sharafeddin and gathered money for The Social Institute (al-Mu'assasa al-Ijtima'iyya), an orphanage in Tyre. In 1963, Sadr established a sewing school and nursery named The Girls' Home (Bayt al-Fatat). The same year, he established The Institute of Islamic Studies (Ma'had al-Dirasat al-Islamiyya). In 1964, Sadr started Burj al-Shimali Technical Institute, whose funding was provided by Shi'a benefactors, bank loans, and the Lebanese Ministry of Education. In 1974, he founded, with Hussein el-Husseini, the Movement of the Disinherited (Arabic: حركة المحرومين) to press for better economic and social conditions for the Shia. They established a number of schools and medical clinics throughout southern Lebanon, many of which are still in operation today. Sadr attempted to prevent the descent into violence that eventually led to the Lebanese Civil War by beginning a fast in a mosque in Beirut. There he was visited by Lebanese from all factions – both Muslim and Christian. Yasser Arafat and Syrian Foreign Minister Abd al-Halim Khaddam, also visited him. Formation of a national unity cabinet resulted from the meeting and Sadr's attempt to establish peace was a temporary success.

Musa Sadr also took part in devising a new scheme for Hawza called the "Preliminary plan for reforming the Hawza" (Persian: طرح مقدّماتی اصلاح حوزه, romanized: ţarḩe moqaddamātīye eşlāḩe ḩowzeh), which was then withdrawn, in cooperation with Mohammad Beheshti. In 1959, Sadr founded a private high school which provided an alternative to the state educational system for "observant parents".

He left Najaf for Tyre in late 1959, as the "emissary" of Ayatollah Broujerdi and Ayatollah Hakim. At the request of some clerics, he later made several trips to Iran delivering several lectures such as "Islam is a Religion of Life" and "The World is Ready to Accept the Call of Islam." The latter included presenting his experiences in Lebanon and emphasizing the need to work "towards the betterment of Muslims."

Born in the Chaharmardan neighborhood of Qom, Iran, he underwent both seminary and secular studies in Iran. He belongs to the Sadr family from Jabal Amel in Lebanon, a branch of the Musawi family tracing to Musa Ibn Jaafar, the seventh Shia Imam and ultimately to the Islamic prophet Muhammad through his daughter Fatima. Therefore, Musa al-Sadr is often styled with the honorific title Sayyid. He left Qom for Najaf to study theology and returned to Iran after the 1958 Iraqi coup d'état.

After the 1958 Iraqi coup d'état and the overthrow of the monarchy in Iraq, Sadr returned to Iran. There, he accepted the request of Ali Davani, who was sent by Ayatollah Shariatmadari, and became an editor of Darsha'i az maktab-e Eslam, also known as Maktab-e Eslam, a journal published by the Hawza of Qom and endorsed by Ayatollah Broujerdi. He began contributing with the third issue, focusing on Islamic economics, "a novel subject at the time". His articles in this field were then published as a book. He soon became the journal's "de facto editor-in-chief". He left the journal in December 1959 along with some of its original founders.

Musa al-Sadr declined Ayatollah Broujerdi's request to go to Italy as his representative and instead left Qom for Najaf. There Ayatollah Muhsin al-Hakim urged him to accept an invitation from their relative Sayed Jafar Sharafeddin to become the leading Shi'a figure in the Southern Lebanese port city of Tyre, succeeding Jafar's father Abdul Hussein Sharif Al Din, who had died in 1957.

Following the death of his father in 1953, he left Qom for Najaf to study theology under Ayatollah Muhsin al-Hakim and Abul Qasim Khui. There he had teachers such as: Ayatollah Hakim, Shaykh Morteza al Yasin, Ayatollah Abulqasim Khu'i, Shaykh Hossein Hilli, Shaykh Sadra Badkubahi, and others, some of whom became Marja after Ayatollah Borujerdi's death. Musa al-Sadr became a mujtahid in Najaf. In 1955 he traveled to Lebanon where he met Abd al-Hossein Sharafeddin. He had met him previously in 1936 when his family had hosted Abd al-Husayn in Iran. The same year he left Iran and returned to Najaf and, in the autumn of 1956, he married the daughter of Ayatollah Azizollah Khalili.

He attended Hayat Elementary School in Qom where he attended seminary classes informally; he started his official seminary education in 1941. His teachers considered him a "quick learner and remarkably knowledgeable for his young age". After a while he started teaching other students "lower-level" courses. This coincided with the "liberalizing of Iranian politics", the political climate of his time was secular, so that most religious scholars "felt politically and socially marginalized".

Musa Sadr al-Din al-Sadr (Arabic: موسى صدر الدين الصدر‎‎; 4 June 1928 – disappeared 31 August 1978) was an Iranian-born Lebanese scholar and political leader who founded the Amal Movement.

Musa al-Sadr was born in the Cheharmardan neighborhood of Qom, Iran, on 4 June 1928.

His great-great-grandfather S. Salih b. Muhammad Sharafeddin, a high-ranking cleric, was born in Shhour, a village near Tyre, Lebanon. Following a frantic turn of events related to an anti-Ottoman uprising, he left for Najaf. Sharafeddin's son, Sadreddin, left Najaf for Isfahan, which was then the most important centre of religious learning in Iran. He returned to Najaf shortly before his death in 1847. The youngest of his five sons, Ismail (as-Sadr), was born in Isfahan, in Qajar-ruled Iran, and eventually became a leading mujtahid.