Musa as-Sadr

Musa as-Sadr

Sayyid Mūsā as-Sadr ( Arabic موسى الصدر, DMG Mūsā aṣ-Ṣadr Persian موسى صدر, DMG Mūsā-e Sader ; * May 15, 1928 in Qom / Iran ; † 1978 ?) Was a Lebanese philosopher of Iranian origin , prominent Shiite leader in Lebanon and founder of the Amal movement . Musa as-Sadr is the uncle of Sadegh Tabatabai and is considered to be one of the favorite students of Ayatollah Khomeini during his exile in Iraq from 1965 to 1978. He was the cousin of Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir as-Sadr , who was executed by Saddam Hussein. His niece is married to Mohammad Chatami , the former president of Iran. Sadr disappeared in Libya in 1978 under hitherto unexplained circumstances .

Life

After Musa al-Sadr attended elementary school in his hometown, he moved to Tehran , where he obtained the degree of scholar ( faqih ) . He then returned to Qom to teach Islam in various religious institutes. He published a magazine called "School of Islam" (maktabi islam) .

Activities in Lebanon

Musa as-Sadr (left) with Egypt's President Nasser in the 1960s

In 1957 Mūsā as-Sadr visited Lebanon, the homeland of his ancestors, for the first time. During his visit, he made a very positive impression on the Lebanese Shiites, including his relative Saiyid ʿAbd al-Husain Sharaf ad-Dīn, the Shiite religious leader in Tire . After Sharaf ad-Dīn's death that same year, he was invited to become the leading religious authority of the Shiites of Tire. At first he turned down the invitation, but after his mentor Muhsind al-Hakīm urged him to accept it, he moved to Tire in 1960.

Musa as-Sadr was highly respected by all spiritual and political camps, but especially by the Christians because of his openness to them. In 1960 he founded the “Social Movement” together with the Catholic Archbishop Grégoire Haddad , took part in an Islamic-Christian dialogue in 1962 and gave a speech in a church of the Capuchin Order during the Easter celebrations . He learned many languages ​​and was a well known intellectual . Musa as-Sadr played an extremely important role in Lebanese politics. After the Lebanese parliament passed a law to create a High Islamic Shiite Council (SISC) in 1967, Mūsā as-Sadr was elected its chairman in 1969 for a term of six years and therefore received the honorary title of Imam by the population .

In his capacity as Chairman of the SISC he appointed in July 1973, Alawites to the Mufti of the Twelver Shiites for Tripoli and northern Lebanon. A group of Alawi sheikhs from Syria, whose head of state Hafiz al-Assad belonged to this religious community, was present. As-Sadr and the Mufti he appointed named the Alawis explicitly as Muslims in the following speeches, thus giving them religious recognition, which was important for the Assad family .

Sadr's activities gained national attention when he drew attention to the danger of an attack by Israel against southern Lebanon, the majority of which were Shiites. However, to prevent this struggle from leading to further divisions, in 1971 he set up a committee that included all southern Lebanese spiritual leaders (both Muslims and Christians ) in order to conduct political and social activities more effectively.

During his time in Lebanon, Mūsā as-Sadr began to be interested in the conditions of life in general, especially in the social area, of the poor population , in addition to religious topics . Sadr founded many social institutions , vocational schools , hospitals, and centers to combat illiteracy . On March 17, 1974, Arbaʿīn Day, at a meeting in Baalbek attended by about 75,000 people, he announced the founding of the "Movement of the Disenfranchised" ( ḥarakat al-maḥrūmīn ), whose slogan was “continuous struggle until none There are more disenfranchised in Lebanon ”. At the beginning of 1975 he was re-elected for another term of office that would have lasted until he was 65 (until May 15, 1993).

Founding of the Amal movement

After the beginning of the Lebanese civil war , Mūsā as-Sadr announced the existence of a Shiite militia at a press conference on July 6, 1975. This is not directed against Lebanese compatriots or as a mobilization of the Shiites for the civil war, but intended as a means of self-defense of the residents of the southern border villages of Lebanon against Israeli attacks. The militia was given the name Afwāǧ al-Muqāwama al-Lubnānīya ("Battalions of the Lebanese Resistance") and was subsequently known by its acronym AMAL (Arabic for "hope").

Disappear

Musa al-Sadr disappeared while traveling through Libya in late August 1978 and was never seen again. He was on the way with two companions to a meeting with President Muammar al-Gaddafi . Sadr had a secret meeting with an envoy from Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi . The meeting was supposed to take place in Germany between September 5 and 7, 1978 , but Sadr did not appear. On September 11, 1978, the news was broadcast on Lebanese radio that "Sadr had been kidnapped in the Libyan capital Tripoli". The Lebanese President Elias Sarkis sent investigators to Tripoli, Rome and Paris, where Sadr's wife and her children had fled from the civil war. Interpol issued a search notice. Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi sent Ali Kani, Sadr's childhood friend, to Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt to find out more about Sadr's whereabouts. Egyptian President Sadat told Kani that Muammar al-Gaddafi had Sadr murdered. This information from his secret service had been confirmed to him by the head of the British secret service MI6. Allegedly, Sadr's body was thrown into the Mediterranean Sea by helicopter in a box sealed with concrete.

The Libyan government denied all allegations of involvement in Sadr's death. Gaddafi's deputy, Abd al-Salam Jallud , said during a visit to Tehran in April 1979 that Musa al-Sadr had disappeared in Italy.

At the request of Sadegh Tabatabai, the German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher asked the head of the Libyan foreign secret service Belgassem about Musa as Sadr's whereabouts on November 5, 1980. Belgassem reported on an investigation he initiated. Musa al-Sadr left Libya on August 31, 1978; he is said to have arrived at the airport in Rome with two companions and then disappeared. The German ambassador in Rome, Arnold, reported on November 28, 1980 that the Italian authorities had already come to the conclusion in 1978 that there was no evidence of the arrival of Musa al-Sadr in Rome. A "Musa as-Sadr" had checked in at the Holiday Inn at Parco dei Medici, but he was "small in stature, had a huge beard and had confused lowercase and uppercase letters in the Latin handwriting". Sadr, however, spoke very good English and French, was 1.90 and had a trimmed beard. Rather, the Italian government is assuming Libyan perpetrators: “For years, Musa al-Sadr had received support from Libya for the Shiites in Lebanon. The Shiite ethnic group had sided with the Maronites in the Lebanese civil war ... On the part of the Libyan financiers, however, this behavior of the Shiites was viewed as a betrayal of the Muslim cause. "

In 1979 the Iranian President Abolhassan Banisadr contacted the leader of the PLO Yasser Arafat to clarify the whereabouts of Sadr. Arafat told Banisadr of a conversation with Gaddafi in which he had portrayed Sadr's death as a misunderstanding. Sadr got very upset at the meeting with him, Gaddafi, got up and left the room. Gaddafi ordered his security officers to stop and calm Sadr. His security officers misunderstood this order and believed they should kill Sadr. Sadr's death was a terrible misunderstanding, Arafat said.

In the spring of 1979 the CIA learned from Palestinian sources that Gaddafi Ayatollah had called Mohammad Beheschti to ask what he should do with "his guest". Beheschti said that Sadr was a threat to Khomeini. As a result, Sadr and his two companions were shot and buried in the desert.

In August 2011, Sadr's family, the Iranian parliament, and the Amal and Hezbollah leaderships officially requested the Libyan rebels to investigate al-Sadr's whereabouts.

Ahmed Ramadan , who pretended to be Gaddafi's confidante, claimed that Musa al-Sadr was killed after talking to Gaddafi. A flight to Italy would never have taken place and would have been invented as disinformation. In contrast, the Libyan daily al-Liwaa reported , citing sources from the national transitional council , that Sadr had only died in custody in 1998. His body was only buried shortly before the collapse of the Gaddafi regime in a mass grave near Tripoli. As of October 2012, efforts to clarify al-Sadr's whereabouts had not had a resounding success; the DNA test of an alleged corpse was negative.

In 2013, the newly elected Iranian President Hassan Rouhani announced that he would reopen the investigation into Sadr's whereabouts. Due to the civil war in Libya, this did not happen. In the literature it is believed that one would have “felt the tremors from Najaf to Qom ” had the followers of Sadr learned that their “beloved missing Imam” had allied themselves with the Shah against Khomeini and that the founder of the Islamic Republic was one Accomplice in murder and complicit in Sadr's death.

Hannibal al-Gaddafi , a son of Muammar Gaddafi, was abducted from Syria to Lebanon on December 11, 2015, in order to extort an explanation of Sadr's whereabouts. He was released shortly thereafter, but a few days later a judge issued an arrest warrant on charges that Hannibal Gaddafi, whose wife is Lebanese and who was 3 years old when Sadr disappeared, withheld information about the Sadr case. Since then he has been in custody in Beirut (as of January 2019).

literature

• Fouad Ajami: The vanished Imam: Musa al Sadr and the Shia of Lebanon . Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 1986.
• Majed Halawi: A Lebanon Defied: Musa al-Sadr and the Shi'a Community. Westview Press, Boulder, CO, 1992.
• Esther Meininghaus: Mūsā as-Sadr - Shiite cleric or Lebanese realpolitician? The political awakening of the Shiites in Islam. EB-Verlag, Hamburg 2008. (Bonn Islamic Studies Booklets, Booklet 7)
• Augustus Richard Norton: "Ṣadr, Mūsā al-" in John L. Esposito (ed.): The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Islamic World. 6 Vols. Oxford 2009. Vol. V, pp. 10b-15a.
• Andreas Rieck: The Shiites and the struggle for Lebanon: political chronicle 1958-1988. Deutsches Orient-Institut Hamburg, Hamburg, 1989. pp. 83–159.

Web links

Commons : Musa as-Sadr  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Official website (Persian)

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b} Tim Geiger, Amit Das Gupta, Tim Szatkowski: Files on the Foreign Policy of the Federal Republic of Germany 1980 Vol. II: July 1 to December 31, 1980. R. Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich 2011, p. 1420.
2. ^ Norton: "Ṣadr, Mūsā al-". 2009, p. 11a.
3. ^ Norton: "Ṣadr, Mūsā al-". 2009, p. 13a.
4. ↑ Syria's Alawis and Shi'ism , Martin Kramer, in: Shi'ism, Resistance, and Revolution, ed. Martin Kramer (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1987), pp. 237-54
5. ^ Norton: "Ṣadr, Mūsā al-". 2009, p. 13b.
6. ↑ Rieck: The Shiites and the struggle for Lebanon . 1989, p. 210.
7. ↑ ^{a b} zeitenspiegel.de
8. ↑ Andrew S. Cooper: The Fall of Heaven. Henry Holt, New York 2016, p. 410f.
9. ↑ Andrew S. Cooper: The Fall of Heaven. Henry Holt, New York 2016, p. 416.
10. ↑ Andrew S. Cooper: The Fall of Heaven. Henry Holt, New York 2016, p. 424.
11. ↑ Andrew S. Cooper: The Fall of Heaven. Henry Holt, New York 2016, p. 492.
12. ↑ bbc.co.uk
13. ↑ derstandard.at
14. ↑ dailystar.com.lb
15. ↑ muslimnews.co.uk ( Memento of the original from October 27, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
16. ↑ Andrew S. Cooper: The Fall of Heaven. Henry Holt, New York 2016, p. 492.
17. ↑ Hannibal al-Gaddafi: Kidnapped to solve a riddle
18. ↑ Gaddafi son Hannibal free again
19. ↑ Lebanon issues arrest warrant for Hannibal al-Gaddafi
20. ↑ As rival states jostle for power in Libya, the fate of one Gaddafi son hangs delicately in the balance , Kim Sengupta, The Independent, January 31, 2019