36 Facts About Musa al-Sadr

Musa Sadr al-Din al-Sadr was an Iranian-born Lebanese scholar and political leader who founded the Amal Movement.

Musa al-Sadr 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.

Musa al-Sadr left Qom for Najaf to study theology and returned to Iran after the 1958 Iraqi coup d'etat.

Musa al-Sadr gave the Shia population of Lebanon "a sense of community".

Musa al-Sadr came from a long line of clerics tracing their ancestry back to Jabal Amel.

Musa al-Sadr's great-great-grandfather S Salih b Muhammad Sharafeddin, a high-ranking cleric, was born in Shhour, a village near Tyre, Lebanon.

Musa al-Sadr returned to Najaf shortly before his death in 1847.

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

Musa al-Sadr attended Hayat Elementary School in Qom where he attended seminary classes informally; he started his official seminary education in 1941.

Musa al-Sadr's teachers considered him a "quick learner and remarkably knowledgeable for his young age".

Musa al-Sadr moved to Tehran, where he completed a degree in Islamic jurisprudence and political sciences from Tehran University and learned some English and French.

Musa al-Sadr then returned to Qom to study theology and Islamic philosophy under Allamah Muhammad Husayn Tabatabai.

Musa al-Sadr had met him previously in 1936 when his family had hosted Abd al-Husayn in Iran.

Musa al-Sadr began contributing with the third issue, focusing on Islamic economics, "a novel subject at the time".

Musa al-Sadr 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.

Musa al-Sadr left Najaf for Tyre in late 1959, as the "emissary" of Ayatollah Broujerdi and Ayatollah Hakim.

In 1967, Imam Musa 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.

Musa al-Sadr met with Ivorian President Felix Houphouet-Boigny and Senegalese President Leopold Sedar Senghor and provided symbolic assistance to orphans in Senegal.

Sadr, who became known as Imam Musa al-Sadr, quickly became one of the most prominent advocates for the Shia population of Lebanon, a group that was both economically and politically disadvantaged.

Musa al-Sadr was seen as a moderate, demanding that the Maronite Christians relinquish some of their power, but pursuing ecumenism and peaceful relations between the groups.

In 1969, Imam Musa al-Sadr was appointed the first head of the Supreme Islamic Shia Council in Lebanon, an entity meant to give the Shia more say in government.

Musa al-Sadr revived the Jami'at al-Birr wal-Ihsan charity, founded by S Salih b Muhammad Sharafeddin and gathered money for The Social Institute, an orphanage in Tyre.

Musa al-Sadr actively cooperated with Mostafa Chamran, Sadegh Ghotbzadeh, and other Iranian Islamist activists during the civil war.

Musa al-Sadr maintained strong family relations with political leaders in Iran, Lebanon and Iraq.

Musa al-Sadr is related to noted Iranian individuals namely Sadeq Tabatabaei, as well as Mohammad Khatami, and Ayatollah Khomeini's son Ahmad Khomeini.

Musa al-Sadr was, in addition, a dazzling speaker in a culture that exalted the spoken word and those who could express in classical Arabic what was on the minds of others.

Sayyid Musa al-Sadr winked at traditions with a daring uncommon to men of his clerical calling and background.

Musa al-Sadr was a hit with women, who admired his looks and his elegance and were pleased that they did not have to scurry out of living rooms and meetings when he arrived, as they did with ulama of more conservative outlook.

However, supporters of the missing cleric pointed out that Musa al-Sadr's baggage was found in a Tripoli hotel and there was no evidence of his arrival in Rome.

Airlines could not confirm that Musa al-Sadr had ever flown to Italy from Libya.

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.

Imam Musa al-Sadr is still regarded as an important political and spiritual leader by the Shia Lebanese community.

Musa al-Sadr's great political influence and fame was enough for people to not consider his philosophical attitude, although he was a well-trained follower of long living intellectual tradition of Islamic Philosophy.

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