SADR – Hybrid Learning

SADR, MUHAMMAD BAQIR AL

Batoota — Sat, 22 Jul 2017 14:10:09 +0000

SADR, MUHAMMAD BAQIR AL- (March 1, 1935 – April 9, 1980), innovative and influential Iraqi Islamic thinker and political leader. “An important figure not only in Iraq but in the life of the Shi’i world, and indeed in the Muslim world as a whole” (Albert Hourani), Muhammad Bagir al-Sadr was both a prominent scholar of Islamic law and its contemporary applications and a political leader whose writ transcended his native country to reach Iran and the rest of the Middle East.
Thought. Muhammad Bagir al-Sadr’s production is probably the most varied for a Muslim author of the twentieth century. Sadr wrote books on philosophy, Qur’anic interpretation, logic, education, constitutional law, economics, interest-free banking, as well as more traditional works of usul al -fiqh (principles of Islamic jurisprudence), compilations of devotional rites, commentaries on prayers, and historical investigations into early Sunni-Shi’! controversies.
As an innovative thinker on the issue of the desired shape and structure of a contemporary Muslim society, his most important work, which established his fame early on in his career, is a book on Islamic economics, which was published in two volumes in 1959-1961. This book, Iqtisddund (Our Economics), probably remains the most scholarly twentieth-century study of Islamic economics as an alternative ideological system to capitalism and communism.
Methodologically, in Iqtisaduna, Sadr acknowledges that there is no scientific discipline in Islam which can be identified as economics and that the main elements in the approach to an Islamic economy must be derived from what he calls “the legal superstructure.” The resultant process leads to the well-known operation of ijtihad, which is understood by Sadr in its wider definition as an intellectual endeavor into the law and jurisprudence of classical Islam and is consequently acknowledged as an exercise which is prone to human error. For Sadr, “Islamic economics is not a science” and will only stand as an original and serious discipline after a long process of legal discovery. Only after this research can one speak of an original Islamic discipline of economics, in which the moral imperative derived from the law is clear but in which, also, there is a difficult and patient scholarly investigation into the riches of the classical fiqh (jurisprudence) tradition.
From a substantive point of view, Sadr introduces in Iqtisddund a detailed critique of Marxist socialism and Western capitalism before proceeding with the presentation of his alternative system. Because of the particular strength of communist ideology in Iraq at the time Iqtisddund was composed, the book is devoted primarily to refuting various brands of Marxist socialism. Against capitalism, Sadr’s arguments rest on the usual criticism of the hollowness of the concept of liberty when applied to unequal parties in economic exchange. Against socialism, Sadr develops a long-winded and informed argument demonstrating the fallacies of Marxist periodization of history, its overemphasis on the class struggle, and its unrealistic prescriptions against the basic (and natural) instincts of economic self-interest in mankind. Then, Islamic economics as a discipline is introduced by a series of principles, mostly of a methodological nature, which the author follows with a dirigiste (i.e., involving extensive state intervention) and generally egalitarian reading of the concept of property in a predominantly agricultural context.
Without going into the intricacies of his theory of landed property, Sadr’s thesis can be presented as a call for the state’s systematic intervention to ensure that land ownership depends as directly as possible on the actual laborer who works on it. The central concept of labor in Iqtisaduna, requires an interventionist and welfarist operation of the ruler (called in that book waft alamr), who combines two tools to redress “the social balance”: one is the guidance of legal principles of property which connect ownership of land and means of production with labor; the other is “need,” and the state is free, according to Sadr, to fill in the discretionary area with adequate measures in order to suppress what Sadr did not shy from calling, on the eve of the Iranian Revolution two decades later, “the exploitation of man by man.”
Beyond these general principles, Sadr elaborately develops the guiding rules to property within the frame of what he calls “distribution in the phase that precedes production.” Both in this phase and in the actual productive process, the most original dimension of Igtisadund appears in the method of discovering Islamic economics. By quoting classical jurists of the -fiqh tradition, Sadr engages the field with the most serious such investigation among Muslim authors in the twentieth century, by basing it on the legal books of a millenniumold legal tradition. [See Property.]
The detour through classical law is also Sadr’s path to a lengthy treatise on Islamic banking. Here again, he is a forerunner in a field which has become, a decade after his Interest-Free Bank was published in 1969, fashionable and controversial. Islamic finance is premised on a narrow interpretation of the ban on ribd (a word which for Sadr means interest), which has led Islamic banks to create operations allowing access to their coffers by depositors, in return for the bank’s pooling these resources for investment operations that do not bear a predetermined and fixed rate of return.
The system devised by Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr needs to be appraised against the common practice of present-day Islamic institutions. If a deposit invested by an Islamic bank in a successful venture is profitable, the depositor and the bank (as entrepreneur) will share the profit according to a predetermined rate-for example, a 50-50 or 6o-4o split. But the endeavor can also be a total failure, eating up the deposit as capital. In this case, under the classical contract of muddrabah, which is also known as commenda, or partnership for profit and loss, the depositor has no recourse against the bank in normal circumstances.
Under classical Islamic law, mudarabah operates as a two-party contract, with the agent-entrepreneur endeavoring to make money entrusted to him by the owner of capital. The operations of a modern Western bank, in contradistinction, involve as a matter of course three parties: the depositors, the bank, and the borrowers. The answers of present-day Islamic banks, although based in theory on the idea of muddrabah, have to square the original two-party contract of muddrabah with three parties. They sever the tripartite relationship by fictitiously considering the operation to consist of a double contract entered into by the bank on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the depositor and the borrower as separate parties. In the first contract, the depositor would be the owner of capital, and the bank the agent-entrepreneur. In the second contract, the bank would be the owner of capital, and the borrower the agent-entrepreneur.
Sadr has a more original and elaborate scheme in his book, Interest-Free Bank: he considers that the bank is actually only a mediator to a single muddrabah contract between the pool of depositors and the pool of entrepreneurs. He goes on to elaborate on the rights and duties of each of the three parties and to provide interesting, if not altogether convincing, arithmetic formulas to assess the rate of profit and the resulting shares in the profits and losses of the three parties to the operation.
Beyond the rearrangements of contracts to avoid interest, the problem facing theoreticians and practitioners of Islamic banking can be summed up in the crucial question, can a bank refuse to tie itself down to a fixed interest rate offered to its depositors while guaranteeing the safety of these deposits? For presentday Islamic banks, the answer is generally negative. Guarantees on deposits cannot be offered, as the bank operates on the basis of a partnership for profit and loss. Sadr, in the main, partakes of this idea, although he seems to be inclined, in a treatise written ten years after his Interest-Free Bank, to acknowledge the necessity of preserving the depositor’s capital, even if the venture it is used for is lost. [See Banks and Banking; Interest.]
A third area of innovation in Sadr’s thought is related to the concept of an Islamic state: how would the constitution of such a state be conceived in theory and practice? Here, the influence of Sadr on the Iranian Revolution was remarkable, and there is an identifiable thread from his 1979 treatise on the subject to the constitution passed in the Islamic Republic of Iran a few months later.
The thrust of Sadr’s idea appears in a two-tier separation of powers and in the Iranian Constitution: onto the traditional separation of powers between the three branches of government (executive, legislative, and judicial powers) was grafted an Islamic scheme which is derived from a combination of Shi’i features of scholarship and the representation of the Platonic figure of the philosopher-king in the form of a jurist. The guardian of the city became the classical fagih (a jurisprudent), hence the concept of wilayat al -faqih (guardianship of the jurisconsult), which Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (1902-1989) had adumbrated in his Najaf classes of 1970 and which was brought into a more-precise constilution two decades later, “the exploitation of man by man.”
Beyond these general principles, Sadr elaborately develops the guiding rules to property within the frame of what he calls “distribution in the phase that precedes production.” Both in this phase and in the actual productive process, the most original dimension of Iqtisa-duna appears in the method of discovering Islamic economics. By quoting classical jurists of the fiqh tradition, Sadr engages the field with the most serious such investigation among Muslim authors in the twentieth century, by basing it on the legal books of a millenniumold legal tradition. [See Property.]
The detour through classical law is also Sadr’s path to a lengthy treatise on Islamic banking. Here again, he is a forerunner in a field which has become, a decade after his Interest-Free Bank was published in 1969, fashionable and controversial. Islamic finance is premised on a narrow interpretation of the ban on ribs (a word which for Sadr means interest), which has led Islamic banks to create operations allowing access to their coffers by depositors, in return for the bank’s pooling these resources for investment operations that do not bear a predetermined and fixed rate of return.
The system devised by Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr needs to be appraised against the common practice of present-day Islamic institutions. If a deposit invested by an Islamic bank in a successful venture is profitable, the depositor and the bank (as entrepreneur) will share the profit according to a predetermined rate-for example, a 50-50 or 6o-4o split. But the endeavor can also be a total failure, eating up the deposit as capital. In this case, under the classical contract of muddrabah, which is also known as commenda, or partnership for profit and loss, the depositor has no recourse against the bank in normal circumstances.
Under classical Islamic law, muddrabah operates as a two-party contract, with the agent-entrepreneur endeavoring to make money entrusted to him by the owner of capital. The operations of a modern Western bank, in contradistinction, involve as a matter of course three parties: the depositors, the bank, and the borrowers. The answers of present-day Islamic banks, although based in theory on the idea of muddrabah, have to square the original two-party contract of muddrabah with three parties. They sever the tripartite relationship by fictitiously considering the operation to consist of a double contract entered into by the bank on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the depositor and the borrower as separate parties. In the first contract, the depositor would be the owner of capital, and the bank the agent-entrepreneur. In the second contract, the bank would be the owner of capital, and the borrower the agent-entrepreneur.
Sadr has a more original and elaborate scheme in his book, Interest-Free Bank: he considers that the bank is actually only a mediator to a single muddrabah contract between the pool of depositors and the pool of entrepreneurs. He goes on to elaborate on the rights and duties of each of the three parties and to provide interesting, if not altogether convincing, arithmetic formulas to assess the rate of profit and the resulting shares in the profits and losses of the three parties to the operation.
Beyond the rearrangements of contracts to avoid interest, the problem facing theoreticians and practitioners of Islamic banking can be summed up in the crucial question, can a bank refuse to tie itself down to a fixed interest rate offered to its depositors while guaranteeing the safety of these deposits? For presentday Islamic banks, the answer is generally negative. Guarantees on deposits cannot be offered, as the bank operates on the basis of a partnership for profit and loss. Sadr, in the main, partakes of this idea, although he seems to be inclined, in a treatise written ten years after his Interest-Free Bank, to acknowledge the necessity of preserving the depositor’s capital, even if the venture it is used for is lost.
A third area of innovation in Sadr’s thought is related to the concept of an Islamic state: how would the constitution of such a state be conceived in theory and practice? Here, the influence of Sadr on the Iranian Revolution was remarkable, and there is an identifiable thread from his 1979 treatise on the subject to the constitution passed in the Islamic Republic of Iran a few months later.
The thrust of Sadr’s idea appears in a two-tier separation of powers and in the Iranian Constitution: onto the traditional separation of powers between the three branches of government (executive, legislative, and judicial powers) was grafted an Islamic scheme which is derived from a combination of Shi’i features of scholarship and the representation of the Platonic figure of the philosopher-king in the form of a jurist. The guardian of the city became the classical fagih (a jurisprudent), hence the concept of wilayat al fagih (guardianship of the jurisconsult), which Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (1902-1989) had adumbrated in his Najaf classes of 1970 and which was brought into a more-precise constitutional rendering by Sadr in 1979. As for the Shi’i imprint, it was obvious in the remodeling of the elaborate marja`iyah system in modern Shi’i society, which recognizes a power of guidance at large to the most learned jurists of the tradition. These are called marja’s (lit., “reference”) represented by the top mujtahids (those who practice ijtihdd, or `ulama’ [scholars]) in the clerical system known for this reason as marja’iyah. In the Western world, the better-known word which stands for marja` is ayatollah (Ar., dyat allah).
But whether in Sadr’s system or in the Iranian Constitution, the power of the ayatollahs was brought into the Islamic state alongside more Western-type offices, such as a president and parliamentarians who are elected under universal suffrage. The Iranian system has struggled with the two-tier separation of powers since its inception, although the inevitable tug-of-war had been best described, on the eve of the revolution, by Muhammad Bagir al-Sadr.
Political Leadership. Considering the influence of his ideas in the Shi’i milieu at large, it is not surprising to see the title of Sadr in 1980 turning into the “Khomeini of Iraq.” The sobriquet came as the result of a slow assertion of his leadership, first on the scholarly level and then directly on the political scene.
Sadr, who was born in 1935, showed early signs of intellectual superiority. His father, who died when he was very young, was, like his older brother and uncles, versed in traditional legal scholarship. Sadr grew up in the southern Holy City of Najaf in an Iraqi world which was witnessing a combination of mistrust toward a system perceived as corrupt and prone to Western influence and domination and a sharp rise in radical doctrines, most remarkably Ba’thism and communism.
It is against the tidal wave of communism that the `ulama’ of Najaf, Sadr’s seniors, were most exercised when the monarchy was overturned in 1958. But it was the Bath party which proved to be their most terrible nemesis. Sadr had countered the communist appeal by trying to expound a rational Islamic system, including such arcane topics as philosophy, banking, and economics. His more-direct political appeal can be traced back to the early and mid-1960s, in small circles of militant `ulama’ who proved extremely influential across the Shi’i world in the 1980s. With the accession of the Bath party of Ahmad Hasan al-Bakr and Saddam Hussein to power in the summer of 1968, the relatively sheltered world of the schools of law and `ulama’ in Najaf came directly under attack by a massive system of absolute repression which was combined with an increased “Sunnization” of the regime in Baghdad. Then started a cycle of repression which culminated, inside Iraq in 1980, in the execution of Sadr and his sister and, outside Iraq, in an all-out war against Iran.
The development of the antagonism between Saddam Hussein’s Baghdad and Muhammad Bagir al-Sadr’s Najaf between 1968 and 1980, has yet to be fully chronicled, but the occasion of `Ashura’ (the yearly mourning day for the martyred Imam Husayn in 68o) proved often to be violent. Especially in 1974 and in 1977, and more abruptly after the accession of Khomeini to power in February 1979, the antagonism flared up in full-fledged rioting. It was reported that already during the 1977 riots, the security agents of the Ba’thist government would question those detained about their relationship with Sadr. Later, after Sadr was clearly turning into a major threat to the government, the rulers of Iraq moved directly to curb his activities and influence.
Sadr was arrested several times through the 1970s, but in June 1979, as he was reportedly getting ready to lead an Iraqi delegation to congratulate Khomeini in Tehran, he was forbidden to leave his home in Najaf. The tension continued to rise, until grenade attacks against leading Ba’thists in Baghdad led to the removal of Sadr from Najaf on the evening of 5 April 1980, He and his sister Bint al-Huda were taken to Baghdad, where it is believed that they were killed on 8 April.
In the last years of his life, Sadr had tried to take advantage of the Shi’i network to strengthen his appeal, but the organization was not sufficiently and effectively structured, and the government had been alerted by the success of the Iranian precedent. But his death marked the real beginning for the dissemination of his influence across the Middle East, in the midst of a confrontation between Tehran and Baghdad which turned into the bloodiest war in the Middle East of the twentieth century.
In Iran, both the debates on constitutional law and economics and banking saw the mark of Sadr’s reasoning. In Iraq, Pakistan, and Lebanon, the Najaf network of Sadr’s companions and students produced several leaders to whom the Shi’i community looked up. But the intellectual influence of Sadr can also be seen in other areas of the Middle East, where his thought was received despite the skepticism of a Sunni world toward Shi’i legal scholarship. In Egypt and Jordan, his books were taught in universities, and critical works were published. In Algeria, where the Islamic movement lacked an original thinker to rest its views on, Iqtisaduna’s concepts could be found in the literature of the Front Islamique du Salut (FIS).
It is, however, in Iraq that Sadr will be remembered first and foremost. For a few days after the Gulf War, in March 1991, as Najaf was freed from Ba’thist rule, Sadr’s pictures were paraded in his native city. The government of Saddam Hussein regained brutal control immediately afterward. But whatever the future of central rule in Baghdad, it is only a matter of time before Sadr gains the respect of all Iraqis for a legacy with which they may or may not agree from an ideological point of view, but which can only be acknowledged as formidable in modern Islamic thought.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works by Sadr
Iqtisaduna (1959-1961). New rev. ed. Beirut, 1398/1977. Available in English as Our Economics, 4 vols. (“Tehran, 1982-1984), but a better translation of the most important sections of the text was serialized as “The Islamic Economy, I-VII,” in the Shi’i journal Al-Sirat from 1981-1985.
Khildfat al-Insdn wa Shahadat al-Anbiya’ and Lamhah Fiqhiyah Tamhidiyah `an Mashru` Dustur al–Jumhuriyah al-Islamiyah fi Iran. Beirut, 1979. Constitutional pamphlets.
Falsafatund (1959). loth ed. Beirut, 1400/1980. Translated by Shams Inati as Our Philosophy. London, 1987.
Al-Majmu’ah al-Kdmilah li-Mu’allafat al-Sayyid Muhammad Bagir alSadr. 15 vols. Beirut, 1980-. Sadr’s collected works.
Al Bank al-La-Ribawi ft al Islam (1969). 8th ed. Beirut, 1403/1983. Sadr’s book on the structure of an interest-free bank.
Works on Sadr
Mallat, Chibli. The Renewal of Islamic Law: Muhammad Baqer asSadr, Najaf, and the Shi`i International. Cambridge, 1993
Rieck, Andreas, trans. Unsere Wirtschaft: Eine Gekiirzte Kommentierte Ubersetzung des Buches Iqtisaduna. German edition of Iqtisaduna, which includes a good introduction by Rieck.
CHIBLI MALLAT

SADR

Batoota — Sat, 22 Jul 2017 13:34:23 +0000

SADR. Originally an Arabic honorific, sadr has been used informally since at least the tenth century to denote a prominent member of the `ulama’ (community of religious scholars). It became a more institutionalized title in the late eleventh century, particularly in Islamic Central Asia and Iran. The title became hereditary in certain influential learned families, hence the survival of Sadr as a surname, particularly among Twelver Shi’i Muslims. The title, however, was not originally confined to Shi’i scholars; indeed, it seems to have first emerged in Sunni Hanafi circles, as in, for example, the Al-i Burhan family of Bukhara whose leader was first invested under the Seljuks (c .1105) with the title sadr alsudur (chief sadr)-a position with religious, fiscal, and political aspects.
Sadr as an official religious or political title occurs with significant variation according to regime and period, particularly in late medieval and early modern Iran, India, and Turkey. In early Mughal India, qadis (judges) often held the title of sadr, while the sadr alsudur, initially the chief spokesman of the `ulama’ was the chief qadi and head of the judiciary, often with extraordinary powers. The emperor Akbar’s appointment of six provincial sadrs (c.1581) was probably an attempt to curb the centralized authority of the sadr al-sudur. In Iran, the sadr, already an important religious dignitary under the fifteenth-century Timurid dynasty, was made a political appointee by the first Safavid ruler, Isma`il I (r. 1502-1524), with the double aim of ensuring legitimacy for the new regime and controlling the religious establishment. Thus the sadr’s political influence under the early Safavids was soon curtailed and his role eventually limited to supervision of the waqfs (religious endowments), with some juridical duties. The saddrah (office of sadr) was further weakened by its division into two positions around 1666 that were subordinate to the newly created divdnbagi to whose decisions the two sadrs gave religious sanction. Eventually the sadr’s role in the Safavid polity was eclipsed by that of shaykh al-Islam and the new position of the mullabashi (chief mullah).
Meanwhile, under the nineteenth-century Ottoman Tanzimat (period of reform), the two kazasker (chief judges), who had already come under the jurisdiction of the grand mufti of Istanbul, were given the titles of sadn Rumeli and sadri Anadolu, while other chief qddis were also known by the title of sadr. The title sadr was by no means limited to religious dignitaries, since the chief minister in Safavid and Qajar Iran and in Ottoman Turkey held the title of sadn azam (grand vizier).
The decline of the saddrah as an influential religious institution in Mughal India, Safavid Iran, and Ottoman Turkey, reflects the policies of Muslim rulers. Such rulers sought the legitimacy flowing from the religious establishment, they transformed the `utama’ into official functionaries deprived of economic independence and the respect and support of their less-worldly colleagues and the wider Muslim community. This might explain the eventual rise of independent and more “authentic” `ulama’ (e.g., mujtahids in Iran) capable of criticizing the rulers.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Jackson, Peter, and Laurence Lockhart, eds. The Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 6, The Timurid and Safavid Periods. Cambridge, 1986. See chapter 6 and the index.
Lambton, Ann K. S. “Mahkama: 3. Iran.” In Encyclopaedia of Islam, new ed., vol. 6, pp. I I-22. Leiden, 1960-.
Savory, Roger Mervyn. Iran under the Safavids. Cambridge, 198o. Shaw, Stanford J., and Ezel Kural Shaw. History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey. 2 vols. Cambridge, 1976-19’77.
AHMAD SHBOUL

SADR, MOSA AL

Batoota — Mon, 26 Jun 2017 16:59:55 +0000

SADR, MOSA AL- (4 June 1928 – disappeared in Libya on 31 August 1978), Iranian-born Shi’i cleric of Lebanese descent who made an indelible mark on the Lebanese political scene. Musa al-Sadr is one of the most intriguing and fascinating political personalities to have appeared in the modern Middle East.

He was an ambitious but tolerant man whose controversial career had an enormous impact on the Shi’i Muslim community of Lebanon. His admirers describe him as a man of vision, political acumen, and profound compassion, while his detractors remember him as a deceitful, manipulative political chameleon. Musa al-Sadr was a towering presence in Lebanon’s political history (literally as well as figuratively, as he was well over six feet tall). Though he disappeared in 1978, he still inspires his followers and dogs his enemies in Lebanon.
Sadr was born in Qom, Iran, in 1928, the son of Ayatollah Sadr al-Din Sadr, an important Shi’i Muslim mujtahid (a ShN jurisprudent qualified to make independent interpretations of law and theology). In Qom he attended primary and secondary school, and a Shi’i seminary, and then he went on to Tehran University, where he matriculated into the School of Political Economy and Law of Tehran University, the first mujtahid to do so. He did not intend to pursue a career as a cleric, but on the urging of his father he discarded his secular ambitions and agreed to continue an education in fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence). One year after his father’s death in 1953, he moved to Najaf, Iraq, where he studied under Ayatollahs Muhsin al-Hakim and `Abd al-Qasim Khu’i (Abol-Qasem Kho’i).
He first visited Lebanon, which was his ancestral home, in 1957. During this visit he made a very positive impression on the Lebanese Shi’ah, including his relative al-Sayyid `Abd al-Husayn Sharaf al-Din, the Shi’i religious leader of the southern Lebanese coastal city of Tyre. Following the death of Sharaf al-Din in 1957, he was invited to become the senior Shi’i religious authority in Tyre. Initially he spurned the invitation, but the urgings of his mentor Ayatollah al-Haklm proved persuasive. In 196o he moved to Tyre. In 1963 he was granted Lebanese citizenship, an early mark of his looming influence in Lebanon. Although he was a man of Qom, he understood Lebanon and the fundamental need for compromise in a land of sects, insecurity, and long memories. He emphasized ecumenicalism. His was an assertiveness laced with empathy.
One of his first significant acts was the establishment of a vocational institute in the southern town of Burj alShimali (near Tyre), where Shi`i youths could gain the training that would allow them to escape the privation which marked their community. The institute would become an important symbol of Musa al-Sadr’s leadership; it is still in operation-now bearing his nameand provides vocational training for about five hundred orphans under the supervision of Sadr’s strong-willed sister Rabab (who is married to a member of the important Sharaf al-Din family of Tyre).
A man of keen intelligence, widely noted personal charm, and enormous energy, Sadr attracted a wide array of supporters, ranging from ShM merchants making their fortunes in West Africa to petit-bourgeois youth. The Shi’i migrants to West Africa, who had fled the poverty of Lebanon to seek their fortunes, proved to be an important source of financial support for Musa al-Sadr. Many of these men had done very well, and they were attracted to a man who promised to challenge the old system that had humiliated them and denied them a political voice. If there is an Arabic equivalent of “charisma,” it is haybah-a word that describes the dignified presence and allure of this man from faraway Qom and Najaf.
Imam Mfisa-as he came to be called by his followers-set out to establish himself as the paramount leader of the Lebanese Shi’i community, noted at the time for its poverty and general underdevelopment. He helped to fill a yawning leadership void which resulted from the growing inability of the za’ims (traditional political bosses) to meet the cascading needs of their clients. From the 1960s onward, the Shi’ah had experienced rapid social change and economic disruption, and the old village-based patronage system, which presumed the underdevelopment and the apathy of the clients, was proving an anachronism.
Musa al-Sadr was able to stand above a fragmented and often victimized community and see it as a whole. Through his organizational innovations, his speeches, and his personal example, he succeeded in giving many Shi’is an inclusive communal identity. Furthermore, he reminded his followers that their deprivation was not to be fatalistically accepted, for so long as they could speak out through their religion, they could overcome their condition. He once observed, “whenever the poor involve themselves in a social revolution it is a confirmation that injustice is not predestined” (Norton, 1987, p. 40).
He shrewdly recognized that his power lay in part in his role as a custodian of religious symbols. He used the central myths of Shiism, especially the martyrdom of Imam Husayn at Karbala thirteen centuries earlier, to spur his followers. The day of martyrdom is called `Ashura’, and it was a frequent motif of Sadr. The following excerpt from one of his speeches was reported by the newspaper Al-hayah on i February 1974: “This revolution did not die in the sands of Karbala, it flowed into the life stream of the Islamic world, and passed from generation to generation, even to our day. It is a deposit placed in our hands so that we may profit from
it, that we extract from it a new source of reform, a new position, a new movement, a new revolution, to repel the darkness, to stop tyranny and to pulverize evil.”
Political Style. The record of his political alliances shows that Musa al-Sadr was-above all else-a pragmatist. It is both a tribute to his political skill and a commentary on his tactics that well-informed Lebanese should have commented that nobody knew where Imam Musa stood. According to reliable reports, Musa was friendly with both King Hussein of Jordan and President Anwar el-Sadat of Egypt, and he traveled regularly throughout the Arab world and Europe.
His followers today often characterize him as a vociferous critic of the shah of Iran, but it was only after the October War of 1973, when Iran supported Israel against the Arabs, that his relations with the shah deteriorated. In the autumn of 1973, he accused the shah of suppressing religion in Iran, denounced him for his proIsrael stance, and described him as an “imperialist stooge.” Although his Iranian citizenship was soon revoked, for more than a decade he had maintained close, even cordial, ties with the Pahlavi regime, and it seems that the shah provided financial subsidies to Imam Musa and his Iraqi cousin, the learned Muhammad Bagir alSadr.
Musa al-Sadr was a strong supporter of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini; indeed, the last article he published was a polemic in Le Monde (23 August 1978), castigating the shah and praising Khomeini. Yet, Sadr’s vision of Shiism was more moderate, more humanistic than Khomeini’s. He was a friend of `Ali Shari`ati (d. 1977), the writer who propounded a liberal, modernist Shiism and thereby inspired many opponents of the shah (including, the Mujahidi-n-i Khalq, the organization that has proved to be the staunchest opponent of the Islamic Republic regime.) Musa al-Sadr’s admiration for Shari’ati was rooted in the intellectual’s commitment to confront tyranny and injustice through the renovation of Shiism, rather than through the rejection of faith. In Iran, Shari’ati’s ideological message, with its stress on humanism, anti-imperialism, and self-reliance, appealed to the educated classes; while his emphasis on the martyrdom of Husayn as a revolutionary exemplar appealed across socioeconomic lines. Absent from Shari`ari’s writings and lectures was the vengefulness, the anger, and the intolerance that marked Iran’s post-shah rulers. Many observers suspect that al-Sadr would have moderated the course of the revolution in Iran, if he were not consumed by it. [See the biography of Shah-ad.]
Political Alliances. Like the Maronite Christians, the Shi’is are a minority in a predominantly Sunni Muslim Arab world, and for both sects Lebanon is a refuge in which sectarian identity and security can be preserved. Al-Sadr’s message to the Maronites in the period before the Lebanese civil war of 1975-1976 was a combination of muted threat and impassioned egalitarianism. In his ecumenical sermons to Christian congregations, he won many admirers among his listeners. He was said to be the first ShN mujtahid to visit the Maronite patriarch in his bastion at Bkerke. Many Maronites, not surprisingly, saw a natural ally in Imam Musa. He was a reformer, not a revolutionary, and he sought the betterment of the Shi’ah in a Lebanese context. He often noted, “For us Lebanon is one definitive homeland.” The covenant or pact of the Movement of the Deprived, which al-Sadr wrote in 1974, emphasizes that the movement “adheres to the principles of national sovereignty, the indivisibility of the motherland, and the integrity of her soil.” (See Norton, 1987, pp. 144-166, for the text of the pact.)
Musa al-Sadr recognized the insecurity of the Maronites, and he acknowledged their need to maintain their monopoly-hold on the presidency. Yet he was critical of the Maronites for their arrogant stance toward the Muslims, and particularly the Shi’is He argued that the Maronite-dominated government had neglected the south, where as many as 50 percent of the Shi’is lived, since independence, and had made the Shi’is a disinherited class in Lebanon. Quoting from the Qur’an, he often reminded his listeners that “He who sleeps while having a needy neighbor is not considered a believer.”
He was anticommunist, one suspects not only on principled grounds but because the various communist organizations were among his prime competitors for Shi’i recruits. He claimed to reject ideologies of the right and the left, noting that “we are neither of the right nor the left, but we follow the path of the just [al-sirdt almustaqim].” Yet when the two branches of the Bath party (pro-Iraqi and pro-Syrian) were making significant inroads among the Shi’is of the south and the Beirut suburbs, he appropriated their Pan-Arab slogans.
Although the movement he founded, Harakat alMahrumin (Movement of the Deprived), was aligned with the Lebanese National Movement (LNM) in the early stages of the Lebanese civil war Imam Musa found the LNM’s Druze leader, Kamal Jumblatt, irresponsible and exploitative of the Shi’is. As he once noted, the LNM was willing “to combat the Christians to the last Shi’i.” According to Karen Bakraduni, a thoughtful militia figure, al-Sadr imputed to Jumblatt the prolongation of the war.
After the 1970 defeat of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in Jordan, the bulk of the PLO fighters relocated to south Lebanon where they proceeded to supplant the legitimate authorities. For their part, some PLO officials believed that Mu sa al-Sadr was a creation of the army’s Deuxieme Bureau (the Second [or intelligence] Bureau), or the CIA. Imam Musa prophetically warned the PLO that it was not in its interests to establish a state within a state in Lebanon. After he was gone, Shi’i militiamen invoking his memory fought pitched battles with the PLO and its Lebanese allies, applauded the defeat of the fida’i at the hands of Israel in 1982, laid siege to their camps in 1985, and pledged never to permit the re-creation of the Palestinian statewithin-a-state in Lebanon.
In 1967 the Chamber of Deputies (the Lebanese parliament) passed a law establishing a Supreme Islamic Shi`i Council (SISC), which would for the first time provide a representative body for the Shi’is independent of the Sunni Muslims. The council actually came into existence in 1969, with Imam Musa as its chairman for a six-year term-a stunning confirmation of his status as the leading Shi’i cleric in the country, and certainly one of the most important political figures in the Shi’i community. The council quickly made itself heard with demands in the military, social, economic, and political realms, including: improved measures for the defense of the South, the provision of development funds, construction and improvement of schools and hospitals, and an increase in the number of Shi’is appointed to senior government positions. The SISC quickly became a locus of action for the Shi`i intelligentsia, the emerging middle class, as well as many of the traditional elites.
One year after the formation of the SISC, and following a string of bloody Israeli incursions and bombardments, Musa al-Sadr organized a general strike “to dramatize to the government the plight of the population of southern Lebanon vis-a-vis the Israeli military threat.” Shortly thereafter, the government created the Council of the South (Majlis al-Janub) which was capitalized at 30 million Lebanese pounds and was chartered to support the development of the region. Unfortunately, the Majlis al-Janub reputedly became more famous as a cockpit of corruption than as a fount of worthwhile projects.
Kamil al-As’ad, the powerful Shi’i political boss from the south, quite accurately viewed al-Sadr as a serious threat to his political power base and opposed him at almost every move. For Musa al-Sadr and his followers, al-As’ad was the epitome of all that was wrong with the za’im system. Although the creation of the Council of the South was a victory for al-Sadr, it was the formidable al-As’ad who dominated its operation.
On 17 March 1974, the arba’in-the fortieth day after `Ashura’-Musa al-Sadr was in the Bekaa (Biga’) Valley city of Baalbek at a now famous gathering. Standing before an estimated crowd of 75,000, Imam Musa declared the launching of the Harakat al-Mahrumin. He ranged over Shi`i grievances-poor schools, nonexistent public services, governmental neglect-and vowed to struggle relentlessly until the social grievances of the deprived were satisfactorily addressed by the government. He recalled that a Kufan judge had accused Imam Husayn of straying from the way of his grandfather, the Prophet, and noted that he too was now accused of abandoning his grandfather’s way. But he refused to relegate himself to a life of quiet scholarship and prayer:
The rulers say that the men of religion must only pray and not meddle in other things. They exhort us to fast and to pray for them so that the foundations of their reign will not be shaken, while they move away from religion and exploit it to hold on to their seats of power. . . . [Those in power] are the infidel of the infidels and the most atheist of the atheists. They want us to give ourselves up to them. (Cited in Ajami, 1986, p. 147.)
Civil War Erupts. Just one year later, al-Sadr’s efforts were overtaken by the onset of civil war in Lebanon. By July 1975 it became known that a militia adjunct to Harakat al-Mahrumin had been formed. The militia, Afwaj al-Muqawamah al-Lubnaniyah (the Lebanese Resistance Detachments), better known by the acronym AMAL (which also means “hope”), was initially trained by alFatah (the largest organization in the PLO) and it played a minor role in the fighting of 1975 and 1976. Musa al-Sadr’s movement was affiliated with the LNM and its PLO allies during the first year of the civil war, but it broke with them when the Syrians intervened in June 1976 to prevent the defeat of the Maronitedominated Lebanese Front.
Impressive as Imam Musa’s influence was, it is important not to exaggerate his impact in terms of the political mobilization of the Shl’is. The multiconfessional parties and militias attracted the majority of Sh!’! recruits and many more ShNs carried arms under the colors of these organizations than under Amal’s. Even in war the Sh-Ns suffered disproportionately; by a large measure they incurred more casualties than any other sect in Lebanon. Perhaps the single most important success achieved by al-Sadr was the reduction of the authority and the influence of the traditional ShN elites, but it was the civil war, and the associated growth of extralegal organizations, that conclusively rendered these personalities increasingly irrelevant in the Lebanese political system.
Despite his occasionally vehement histrionics, Musa al-Sadr was hardly a man of war. (He seems to have played only an indirect role in directing the military actions of the Amal militia.) In a poignant effort to curtail the violence, he declared a hunger strike, but the combination of visceral fury and frustration, government impotence, and the strength of the emerging warlords dwarfed the gesture. His weapons were words, and as a result his political efforts were short-circuited by the war. In the months preceding the outbreak of mayhem Musa al-Sadr’s star was still rising, but his political fortunes plummeted by 1976.
The Hidden Imam. Ironically, it was the still mysterious disappearance of Musa al-Sadr in 1978 that helped to retrieve the promise of his earlier efforts. In August 1978 he visited Libya with two companions, Shaykh Muhammad Shihadah Ya’qub and journalist `Abbas Badr al-Din. The party has not been heard from since. Although his fate is not known, it is widely suspected that he died at the hands of the Libyan leader, Colonel Mu’ammar al-Qadhdhafi for reasons that remain obscure. The anniversary of his disappearance, 31 August, is celebrated annually with a national strike in Lebanon.
Musa al-Sadr has become a hero to his followers, who revere his memory and take inspiration from his words and his suffering. The symbol of a missing imam-reminiscent as it is of the central dogma of Shiism-is hard to assail, and even his blood enemies are now heard to utter words of praise. The movement he founded, now simply called Amal, has-since his disappearance-become the largest Shi`i organization in Lebanon and one of the most powerful. Simultaneously, the more militant Hizbullah (Party of God) claims the Imam al-Gha’ib (or the Hidden Imam) as its forebear.
The competition for supremacy in Lebanon among the Shi`is is in large measure a matter of who is the rightful heir to the legacy of Musa al-Sadr. On the one side is Hizbullah, under the strong influence of Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah, which emerged after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and has been authoritatively associated with the kidnappings of foreigners. On the other side is Amal, still a reform movement, but an angrier, more vengeful one than it was under al-Sadr’s leadership. Musa al-Sadr would probably recognize neither organization, but his message that deprivation or second-class citizenship need not be passively accepted retains its power.
[See also Amal; Lebanon.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ajami, Fouad. The Vanished Imam: Musa al-Sadr and the Shia of Lebanon. Ithaca, N.Y., 1986.
Bulloch, John. Death of a Country: The Civil War in Lebanon. London, 1977
Cole, Juan R. I., and Nikki R. Keddie, eds. Shi’ism and Social Protest. New Haven, 1986.
Khalidi, Walid. Conflict and Violence in Lebanon: Confrontation in the Middle East. Cambridge, Mass., 1979.
Mallat, Chibli. Shi’i Thought from the South of Lebanon. Oxford, 1988. Norton, Augustus Richard. Amal and the Shi`a: Struggle for the Soul of Lebanon. Austin, 1987. (Arabic edition, Beirut, 1988.) Pakradouni, Karim. La paix manquee. 2d ed. Beirut, 1984.
Salibi, Kamal S. Crossroads to Civil War: Lebanon, 1958-1976. Delmar, N.Y., 1976.
Sicking, Thom, and Shereen Khairallah. “The Shi’a Awakening in Lebanon: A Search for Radical Change in a Traditional Way.” In Vision and Revision in Arab Society, 1974, pp. 97-130. Beirut, 1975
Theroux, Peter. The Strange Disappearance of Imam Moussa Sadr. London, 1987.
Wright, Robin. Sacred Rage: The Crusade of Modern Islam. New York, 1985.
AUGUSTS RICHARD NORTON