Mūsā al-Ṣadr

Mūsā al-Ṣadr (born 1928, Qom, Iran—disappeared August 31, 1978, Libya?) was an Iranian-born Lebanese Shiʿi cleric. The son of an ayatollah, he received a traditional Islamic education in Qom and Najaf, Iraq, and also briefly studied political economy and law at Tehrān University. In the late 1950s he moved to Lebanon, where he became involved in social work among the country’s largely disenfranchised Shiʿi community. In 1968–69 he formed the Higher Shiʿi Islamic Council to promote the community’s interests, and in 1975 he formed Amal, an armed wing of his Ḥarakat al-Maḥrūmīn (“Movement of the Deprived”), a Shiʿi social reform movement, in order to defend the Shiʿi community in the Lebanese Civil War. He and a small entourage disappeared while on an official trip in Libya. The Libyan government disavowed any knowledge of what became of the cleric and his companions; his disappearance has remained a highly controversial mystery.