ANN ARBOR — An unprecedented conference on Imam Musa al-Sadr, who was termed “The Vanished Imam” by writer Fouad Ajami, took place here last week.  Sadr rose to prominence in Lebanon ahead of the Lebanese civil war, and disappeared mysteriously during a visit to Libya in 1978, never to be heard from again.  He was the first organizer of Lebanese Shi’a and his institutional legacy lives on today.

Held at the University of Michigan and hosted by the university’s Center for Middle East and North African Studies (CMENAS), with support from the Dearborn-based Sadr Foundation, the conference spanned two days and offered a compelling view of a man little known outside the Arab and Shi’i Muslim community. Titled “Shi’a, Modernity and the Legacy of Musa al-Sadr,” the event drew about a hundred people, many of them from Dearborn. Among them were the two sons of the vanished imam, Sayyid Sadreddine Sadr, who traveled from Lebanon for the conference, and Sayyid Hamid Sadr, a Dearborn resident who heads the Sadr Foundation.

Augustus Richard Norton

Despite his relative obscurity, Imam Sadr has had a profound effect on the world’s Shi’i Muslim community, and by extension, on international affairs today. When U.S. President George W. Bush decided to enlist the Shi’a, including those in southeast Michigan’s large Lebanese  community, in a short-sighted strategy designed to help him overthrow Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, the Shi’a rose to world prominence in a way that Imam Sadr could never have imagined, and most probably would not have endorsed, according to the keynote speaker, Dr. Augustus R. Norton.

Norton is a longtime observer of the Lebanese Shi’a, having first visited Lebanon in 1980, two years after Sadr disappeared. He is the author of three books on Lebanon, including “Hezbollah, A Short History”; “Civil Society in the Middle East”; and AMAL and the Shi’a: Struggle for the Soul of Lebanon.” He is currently on leave from the Department of International Relations at Boston University to write about the Shi’a-Sunni divide. Norton is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and was an advisor to the Iraq Study Group. The professor opened the conference with a Friday evening session preceding a day-long meet on Saturday.

Norton detailed the 32-year-old imam’s arrival from Iraq in Tyre, Lebanon in the early 1960s, where he had journeyed to take over the post of a deceased shaykh who had been the most important political leader of the Lebanese Shi’a.  Though born in Iran and educated there and in Iraq, Lebanon was his ancestral homeland and he was fascinated by the country. He arrived with impeccable religious and familial credentials as well as a degree from a secular institution in Iran.

Sayed Musa al-Sadr

Sadr accepted the institutional legacy of his predecessor, but set out to build larger, more permanent institutions for the Shi’a. According to Norton, it was a propitious time for reform in Lebanon, made so by an industrial revolution in Lebanon and the newly mobile Shi’a community in the south as well as the presence of determined leftist elements in the country who were trying to woo the Shi’a.  The older generation’s concern that their children might, in fact, be attracted to the political left — and what that represented for their religious future — prompted the cooperation of many Shi’a with Imam Sadr’s vision of reform.

Sadr was as well welcomed by those in power in Lebanon, the Maronite Christians, because they also saw him as a counterweight to reform movements emanating from an increasingly active political left as well as from the rising notion of Arab nationalism.

But Norton said Sadr was a reformist himself, though he believed in incremental reform leading to a revolution in the way people perceived reality rather than violent revolution itself as a way to change.

“Successful reformers are complicated people,” Norton said, “because reform is by definition incremental change, which implies building consensus, cutting deals and compromising.”

Some in the audience took exception to this characterization, insisting that Sadr was driven by principle rather then being the consummate politician.

Norton pointed out that Sadr had many competitors — clerical and otherwise — and it would appear safe to assume that he did have to compromise, not his principles, but his demands, in order to effect the change he desired.

Norton described Sadr as “a man of charm, smiles, more inclined to instruct by humor than by harsh recriminations.”

“This was not a man of weapons,” Norton said. Rather his intent was social and political reform. When he arrived in Lebanon in the early 1960s, the Shi’a in Lebanon were one of the most disenfranchised groups in the world. Norton likened them in fact to the African American community in the United States prior to the civil rights movement.  Sadr often quoted the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. as he coaxed the Lebanese Shi’a community toward empowerment.

Sadr’s project of empowerment had several components, Norton said.  He worked on an ecumenical level and urged cooperation across sectarian lines. He opposed fanaticism. His outreach to the Christian community and their positive response was important. It represented the first Shi’a outreach to the other faith groups in the country and he authentically represented the least powerful group of people in Lebanon.

(L-R) Roschanack Shaery-Eisenlohr, UM Professor Juan Cole, Roland McKay, Imam Mostafa Qazwini, and Rula Abisaab

To the Shi’a he preached dignity and empowerment.  One of his first actions in Tyre was to outlaw begging, which was common among the poor Shi’a.
He also exampled what he preached. Before there was even a Palestinian presence in the south of the country, Israel attacked  and destroyed many homes belonging to the poor Shi’a there. The government’s response to their crisis was to make sure the Red Cross sent tents for the people’s shelter. Sadr rejected the tents, saying that the community did not want a government that would dole out charity, but one that would protect them, would prevent attacks from happening in the first place.

To modernize the Shi’a in Lebanon, Sadr not only demanded respect and rights fro them from the government, but told the people themselves that they had to take care of each other. He taught that freedom is a divine invention and that freedom demanded social responsibility. Oppression of people was an affront to God, he taught.

Norton said Imam Sadr firmly believed and taught that there is one God and that everyone is going to the same eternal destination. He saw various religions as different means of attaining the same end. The message was exemplified in his belief in the oneness of God, the oneness of humanity and the oneness of Lebanon.

Sadr’s major political rival during his 18 year career in Lebanon was Kamal Assad, a wealthy landowner from Bint Jebail, from whom the poor farmers had to purchase patronage.  These political bosses, or zu’ama, held sway over the agrarian population and fought Sadr for the continuation of the power they held.

Imam Sadr’s third major undertaking was the institutionalization of power and representation of the Shi’a. In 1969 he founded the Islamic Supreme Shi’a Council as a legitimate governmental body. “For the first time,” said Norton, “the Shi’a had institutional representation at the national level in Lebanon.” Sadr was elected head of the ISSC until the age of 65.  The effort was, of course, opposed by the zu’aama.  Sayyid Ibrahim Saleh, current representative of the ISSC in the United States, is a resident of Dearborn and was present at both the Friday and Saturday sessions.

Norton went on to outline the major events of the next decade, which witnessed the arrival of the Palestine Liberation Organization into the chaos of Lebanon, the increasing radicalization of the youth, the last pre-war parliamentary election to be held in Lebanon with its epic battle between the za’eem and Imam Sadr, Israeli attacks on the south and Lebanon’s devolution into civil war.

Through it all, Musa Sadr struggled on behalf of the Shi’a, vying for greater political and resource allocation, and more access to jobs, among other demands. He organized massive labor strikes, still opposed in 1973 to the use of force.

About this same time, there was a general Shi’a-wide reinterpretation of the martyrdom of Imam Hussein at Karbala. Norton said that while people in Latin and South America were re-evaluating Christianity as not so much a “turn the other cheek” philosophy but one of assuming responsibility for oneself, so too were the Shi’a learning that they must empower themselves.

In March of 1974, at a huge gathering of 50,000 in Baalbeck, Imam Musa railed against the government’s slow response to the Shi’a demands and for the first time expressed the need to take up arms, if necessary, to enforce equality.

In 1975, the country “slid into civil war,” as  Norton expresses it, and the Syrians entered the country to maintain the status quo and prevent a revolution.

By 1977, tensions between the southern Shi’a and the Palestinians were out of control and Sadr was critical of the Palestinians coming into Lebanon and starting a war from someone else’s land. That may have been his undoing.

On a trip to Libya in August of 1978, Imam Musa Sadr disappeared. Libyan leader Muammar Qaddhafi was angry that Sadr was opposing the Palestinians. It is widely believed that Libyan intelligence services killed him and his two companions.

Sadr’s greatest accomplishments, Norton said, were his convincing the Shi’a of the south that Lebanon was indeed their home, their final destination, and convincing them of the need for active citizenship.

Sayyid Mostafa Qazwini

Opening Saturday’s day-long session was Sayyid Mostafa al-Qazwini, of the Islamic Educational Center of Orange County, California and brother of Sayyid Hassan Qazwini of the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn. Qazwini addressed the reasons for Imam Sadr’s very positive social and political impact on the Lebanese Shi’a community.

Qazwini described Imam Musa as “a man of grand stature, rising nearly six and a half feet, with a ‘Christlike’ face … Imam Musa al-Sadr was a visionary man, a charismatic preacher and highly intelligent. He saw the plight of the Lebanese Shi’a and became passionate to awaken, reform and strengthen them socially and politically.”

Qazwini gave insight into Sadr’s ancestry and childhood, where he had a front row seat from which to learn from his father how involvement in politics can bring about social reform. He also detailed Sadr’s religious and secular education and the fact that he reached the stature of mujtahid at such a young age.

Qazwini said that an outgrowth of the SISC was the Harakat al-Mahrumeen, or Movement of the Disinherited, in 1971, which pursued better economic and social conditions for the Shi’a. AMAL was initially the military arm of this movement.

Regarding al-Sadr’s untimely disappearance, Qazwini said he had the power to mobilize the world’s Shi’a and neighboring Arab countries were fearful of that.

Liyakat Takim

Also speaking Saturday was Professor Liyakat Takim, from the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Denver. He spoke about al-Sadr’s impact on Shi’a jurisprudence.

“He believed that the scholar must not only preach and teach, but also reach out to the community,” Takim said, which was a change in the way scholars had viewed themselves before that. 

 

Classical scholars viewed the world in two parts: the Muslim part and the non-Muslim part. And they saw themselves as the inheritors of the holy texts. “But al-Sadr divided the world into the oppressed and the oppressors, ” said Takim, “and he said that if we are indifferent to injustice, there is something wrong with our faith.” Being a scholar did not, for him, mean isolating himself from the community. He believed scholars inherited not only the texts, but the intellectual challenges of interpretation, as well.  He believed himself to be the link between the texts and the community. He believed that the scholar is responsible for the liberation of the masses.

“Sadr united the world under ethical precepts instead of dividing it on a geographical basis,” Takim said.

“Sharia was crafted based on many tools,” he said. “It is important to be pluralistic which requires us to re-interpret the texts … Traditional fiqh was formulated in the context of Muslims being the majority — new fiqh is needed for when Muslims are a minority.”

Takim also said “Islamic law is subject to juristic speculation and needs to undergo continuous revision … Muslim law must lead to the welfare of the community and not to its harm … we must review and refine these laws in keeping with the current situation.”

Rula Abisaab

Professor Rula Abisaab, of the Institute of Islamic Studies at McGill University, spoke on “Modern Anxiety: Musa al-Sadr and the Nation-State.”

She said that Sadr supported the confessional system of government but supported the constitutional rights of all. “He felt that secularization would destroy enmity against Israel.”

Roschanack Shaery-Eisenlohr

Also addressing attendees were Roschanack Shaery-Eisenlohr, an independent scholar, who discussed Sadr’s many identities, professors Juan Cole and Ronald Stockton of the U of M. Cole, a specialist in the Shi’a, chaired a wrap-up panel discussion.

The event was organized by Roland D. McKay, MA/MPP Candidate at the CMENAS/Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy and moderated by Gottfried Hagen, Associate Professor in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at U of M and director of CMENAS.