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| (photo: al-Majalla) |
On August 31, 1978, Imam Musa al-Sadr, a charismatic Iranian born Shiite cleric in Lebanon and leader of the Shiite militia Amal ("Hope"), disappeared while in Libya for talks with Libyan leader Muamar Qaddafi. It was assumed that he had been murdered by Qaddafi's agents.
Whatever really happened to Sadr, his disappearance was a good fit with Shia mythology, paralleling, as it did, beliefs about the disappearance of the Twelfth Imam, Muhammad al-Muntazir, in either 873 or 878. The memory of this event was captured in the doctrine of ghaiba ("concealment" of the hidden imam), also referred to as "occultation," a messianic belief that describes the eventual return of the imam as a savior figure (mahdi ) who will lead the Shia to victory over their enemies.
Sadr's disappearance and presumed murder followed a pattern of "martyrdoms" stretching back to the very origins of Shiism in the deaths of Ali and Hussein, and proved a powerful galvanizing force among Lebanese Shia militiamen, who on the fifth anniversary of the Imam's disappearance in the summer of 1983 and in the midst of Lebanon's civil war, paralyzed West Beirut, the Muslim half of the city.