Musa al-Sadr
Musa al-Sadr | |
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موسى صدر الدین الصدر | |
| 1st Leader of the Amal Movement | |
| In office 6 July 1974 – 31 August 1978 | |
| Preceded by | Office established |
| Succeeded by | Hussein el-Husseini |
| 1st President of the Supreme Islamic Shia Council | |
| In office 23 May 1969 – 31 August 1978 | |
| Preceded by | Office established |
| Succeeded by | Mohd. Mehdi Shamseddine |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 4 June 1928 |
| Party | Amal Movement |
| Other political affiliations | Supreme Islamic Shia Council |
| Spouse | Parvin Khalili |
| Parent |
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| Relatives | Ismail Sadr (grandfather) Haydar Sadr (uncle) Muhammad Sadr (cousin) Sadeq Tabatabaei (nephew) Zohreh Sadeghi (niece) |
| Alma mater | University of Tehran Qom Seminary |
| Profession |
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| Nicknames |
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| Went missing on 31 August 1978 (aged 50) in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya and has been Missing for 47 years, 6 months and 16 days | |
| Part of a series on the |
| Amal Movement |
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Musa Sadr al-Din al-Sadr (Arabic: موسى صدر الدین الصدر; Persian: موسی صدرالدین صدر; 4 June 1928 – disappeared 31 August 1978) was a Lebanese-Iranian Shia Muslim cleric, politician and revolutionary In Lebanon. He founded and revived many Lebanese Shia organisations, including schools, charities, and the Amal Movement.
Born in the Chaharmardan neighborhood in Qom, Iran, to an Iranian-Lebanese father and a Lebanese mother, he underwent both seminary and secular studies in Iran. He belongs to the Al-Sadr family from Jabal Amel in Lebanon, a branch of the Musawi family which traces its roots to Musa Ibn Jaafar, the seventh Shia Imam. Therefore, Musa al-Sadr is often styled with the honorific title Sayyid. He left Qom for Najaf to study theology and returned to Iran after the 1958 Iraqi coup d'état.
Some years later, al-Sadr went to Tyre, Lebanon as the emissary of Ayatollahs Borujerdi and Hakim. From Tyre, he published the periodical Maktabi Islam. Fouad Ajami called him a "towering figure in modern Shi'i political thought and praxis". He was noted to have given the Shia population of Lebanon "a sense of community". In 1974, al-Sadr co-founded the Amal Movement.
On 25 August 1978, Sadr and two companions, Sheikh Mohamad Yaacoub and Abbas Bader el-Dine, departed for Libya to meet with government officials at the invitation of Muammar Gaddafi. The three were last seen on 31 August. They were never heard from again. Many theories exist around the circumstances of al-Sadr's disappearance, none of which has been proven. His whereabouts remain unknown to this day.
In September 2025, a BBC News investigative team reported that a body found in 2011 in a secret mortuary in Libya bore a strong resemblance to al-Sadr based on facial recognition analysis performed by Hassan Ugail at the University of Bradford. The BBC report presented testimonies claiming that al-Sadr was assassinated by the Gaddafi regime shortly after his arrival in Libya but this theory remains contested by al-Sadr's family and the Amal leadership.