The Impact of Musa al-Sadr and Khomeini’s Fight for Religious Influence over Lebanon

Abstract

After Musa al-Sadr arrived in Lebanon in 1959, the passive Shi’i community became active, and this activism finally ended with Hezbollah gaining control in Lebanon and serving Iran in its confrontation with Israel. The research literature on al-Sadr and his activities in Lebanon shows that al-Sadr was, and still remains, a phenomenon who, by virtue of his deeds and charisma, elevated the Shi’i population in Lebanon from being a feeble and ineffective community to a proud and dominant one. This article shows how Musa al-Sadr’s actions not only inspired the Shi’i revolution in Lebanon but also led to its wider dissemination all over the Middle East, starting with the Iranian Islamic Revolution. It will also describe how both the informal relations and the three different ideologies held by Khomeini, the Shah and al-Sadr finally helped al-Sadr crystallize his own revolutionary formula for political Shi’ism. That is, how al-Sadr’s activism and propagating within the Shi’i community in Lebanon two decades before the Islamic Revolution in Iran prepared the community to accept Khomeini’s message of a revival of Shi’ism.

1. Introduction

In an article for Majallah, Hanin Ghaddar, an exiled Lebanese publicist, asked, “Did Khomeini kidnap Moussa al-Sadr?” Expanding the perspective from newspaper columns to academia, we can find many suppositions and rational analyses in the research literature that discuss this question in different ways. Among them is a possibility that the research may have missed for many years since the prevailing orthodoxy is that Ayatollah Khomeini was the leading Shi’i revivalist of the 20th century while, in fact, there were others who were not quite as famous.

Though he is commonly considered the father of the Islamic Revolution, Khomeini was, in truth, inspired by al-Sadr. Between them, they represented the political and religious pillars of Shi’ism. Having successfully integrated the faith into Lebanon, al-Sadr was the preeminent figure in Shi’ism until his disappearance in Libya in 1978. The following year, Khomeini displaced the Shah as the leader of Iran. This article’s thesis, overlooked by prevailing treatments of the Iranian Revolution, is that this tectonic shift in Iranian politics would not have occurred without the influence of al-Sadr’s political teachings. A discussion of Ghaddar’s article will enable a re-examination of the relationship between al-Sadr and Khomeini and thus allow a better understanding of how she arrived at her assumptions. To set this in its proper context, the nature of the relations between the two and between each of them with Mohammad Reza Shah, the last monarch of Iran, must also be discussed.

Ghaddar begins by referring to two statements by a former Iranian parliamentarian and Khomeini’s aide, Jalāl al-Din al-Fārsi: “Al-Sadr deserved to be killed because he called the Christians to pray in mosques, and that’s why he deserved to die” and “Iran decided that al-Sadr [was] worthless and that his killing would have no value.” (Ghaddar 2018). There are many questions that arise regarding these careless statements. For instance, why condemn al-Sadr because of his behavior toward Christians (whose religion is legitimate, according to Islam) and not because of his de-facto recognition of the Alawis?1 (Zisser 2011). As far as the second statement is concerned, it was in fact made at the time of al-Sadr’s disappearance when Iran was under the Shah’s rule, not Khomeini’s. These questions, especially those relating to al-Sadr’s recognition of the Alawis as legitimate Shi’ites, should be looked at closely as they have major implications in relation to the argument about a global Shi’i revolution, i.e., increasing the Shi’ites’ power in the Middle East not only in Iran but also in Syria. Al-Sadr’s acknowledgment of the legitimacy of the Alawis was based on his desire for cooperation, or on existent cooperation, with Alawite clerics both in Syria and Lebanon. It was, however, also because of Hafez al-Assad’s request for this that a fatwa was later issued by al-Sadr recognizing the Alawis as Shi’ites in order to return them to the Twelver-Shi’i circle.2

2. Musa al-Sadr and His Enemies

Shimon Shapira responds to Ghaddar’s question in his article “Who Was Behind the Killing of Imam Musa al-Sadr?” Shapira apparently solved the riddle and claimed that Khomeini and his associates should be considered the brains behind al-Sadr’s disappearance and were probably his executioners. To support his suspicions and to show why Khomeini was most likely the one most interested in seeing al-Sadr out of Lebanese religious and political life, Shapira cites prominent books and articles. While the use of fragments of testimonies and the memoirs of revolutionary figures may not be sufficient to blame Khomeini for the fate of al-Sadr, they provide enough evidence for the purpose of the present article, which is to reexamine the tension that existed between al-Sadr and Khomeini (Shapira 2020; Hashem 2019).

In contrast to Shapira, Ghaddar did not question the credibility of al-Fārsi’s weak and questionable statements and was similarly uncritical regarding whether Khomeini was involved in al-Sadr’s disappearance and kidnapping. Ghaddar supports her argument by citing the tensions that arose between al-Sadr and Khomeini when the latter became aware of the alleged ties that existed between the Shah and al-Sadr. Ghaddar refers to Andrew Scott Cooper’s 2016 book The Fall of Heaven: The Pahlavis and the Final Days of Imperial Iran, in which he claims that “the Shah and al-Sadr had secret contacts despite known tensions, and the Shah may have wanted al-Sadr to return to Iran to thwart Ayatollah Khomeini’s ambitions before the revolution.” (Ghaddar 2018). Other researchers, however, claim that these contacts were not secret at all. Sanam Vakil, for example, says that “The shah maintained contact with prominent Shia such as Musa al Sadr, as well as the Maronite community of Lebanon, which also quietly encouraged Shia empowerment in Iran” and that, “[n]eedless to say, the Shah’s support of the Shia cleric … represents the quintessential link between the two countries [Iran and Lebanon].” (Vakil 2018).

Rasul Jafarian provides another perspective and reveals that the Shah became pessimistic about al-Sadr. According to Jafarian, when Asadollah Alam (Iran’s prime minister from 1962–1964) informed the Shah that he had told the U.S. ambassador that Iran had three pillars (the Shi’ites, the Persian language and the monarchy), the Shah replied: “Unfortunately the Shi’ites are good for nothing, they have done nothing in Iraq, in Lebanon and in Iran (and) also all of the communists are Shi’ite.” It seems that, during their conversation, Alam defended the Shi’ites and told the Shah that they were a minority. The Shah said they were really politically and socially incompetent in Lebanon, and Alam replied that this was because they were not organized. Finally, the Shah concluded, “and now Musa al-Sadr has come … at first we helped him, but he showed that he was insincere and not the one we wanted.” Alam recalled that, after this, “I said nothing more.”.

Jafarian continues with the fact that on 4 August 1977, al-Sadr sent another letter to Alam and asked if he would help the Lebanese Shi’ites even though the Shah still hated him. Alam recorded in his memoirs that “al-Sadr wrote a letter from Lebanon. The Shah ordered me not to respond since al-Sadr is the one who is responsible for all the Shiites’ problems, but he shows himself as the defender of the Shiites.”3

H. E. Chehabi and Hassan I. Mneimneh suggest another interpretation of this conversation between the Shah and Alam regarding the future of al-Sadr and the Lebanese Shi’ites. Chehabi and Mneimneh write that the Shah and Alam were disappointed with al-Sadr, who had allegedly collaborated with the opponents of the Shah (probably the pro-Khomeini clerics and opposition groups, although the authors do not say exactly who). The Shah saw no future for the Shi’ites of either Iraq or Lebanon since he considered them to be “useless and stupid”, while they both considered the Shi’ites of Iran to be communists. Chehabi and Mneimneh conclude that “the Shah then complained that although he had at first supported Sadr, he had turned out to be a hypocrite (doru).” (Chehabi and Mneimneh 2006).

Amir Taheri saw things more clearly and, in his book The Spirit of Allah, claims that “Sadr … had forged a close and profitable link with the Shah and it was with the latter’s help that he went to Lebanon to establish a Shi’ite charitable organization. Sadr had almost certainly been in contact with SAVAK but not as an agent, as was later claimed by Libya’s Colonel Moammar al-Gaddafi.” (Taheri 1985).

While Taheri describes the Sadr-SAVAK (SAVAK-Sazeman-e Ettelat va Amniat-e Kešvar–The Shah’s Intelligence and Security Organization of the Country) relationship in vague and uncertain terms, Abbas William Samii describes it very clearly. For him, al-Sadr’s appearance in Lebanon was initially managed by SAVAK, evidenced by the fact that Teymur Bakhtiar, the head of SAVAK, was involved in the decision about which marja Iran would be sent to fill the role of the Shi’ite Mufti in Lebanon and, after being impressed by al-Sadr, Bakhtiar decided that al-Sadr was the right man for the job. Samii agrees with Taheri about al-Sadr’s role with SAVAK, saying, “This is not to imply that Sadr had been recruited as a SAVAK agent.” He, however, finally concludes that “this was the state of SAVAK activity which greeted Sayyid Musa Sadr upon his arrival in Lebanon in 1960.” (Samii 1997). Shortly after this, when Bakhtiar defected to Lebanon, he asked to use al-Sadr for his own political needs, and following Sadr’s request, President Helou refused to extradite Bakhtiar to Iran. This not only resulted in Iran cutting diplomatic ties with Lebanon for a time but also in Sadr being stripped of his Iranian passport (Reisinezhad 2017).

In 1972, the Shah appointed Mansour Qadar as Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon and the head of the SAVAK station in Beirut, where he served until December 1979 (Reisinezhad 2017, p. 52). Qadar, the Shah’s messenger and the most powerful Iranian ambassador in the Middle East, saw al-Sadr as a tool who could be used to promote the Shah’s political ambitions for the Shi’ite community in Lebanon. Samii claims that “through Qadar’s interference and SAVAK’s overwhelming influence in the Iranian decision-making apparatus, Sadr’s potential was lost to the Iranian government. Instead, the Shah, in an attempt to save his throne, was forced to work closely with the Christian and Shia elites.” (Samii 1997, p. 85). Barbara Slavin sees al-Sadr’s breakup with the Shah in a different light and argues that although he took the Shah’s money for the benefit of social projects within the Shi’ite community in Lebanon (through SAVAK), he decided “to break with the Shah as the regime became increasingly despotic.” (Slavin 2008).

Ghaddar, citing Cooper’s claim that “Al-Sadr was the only hope for the coexistence of Shi’ism and modernity”, however, could be providing support for Alam’s argument (Ghaddar 2018). Slavin clarifies this when he writes how al-Sadr “appears to have alienated both Khomeini and Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi of Iran, being too moderate for the former and too radical for the latter.” (Slavin 2008). This falls exactly in line with the Shah’s suspicion that al-Sadr was reviving the Lebanese Shi’ites as a political force and could no longer be considered a solely religious figure who would compete with Khomeini for the Iranian people’s hearts.

One of this article’s aims is to understand how Ghaddar arrived at the conclusions she reached based on al-Fārsī’s and Cooper’s claims. For Ghaddar, al-Sadr’s background and deeds in Iran, and later in Lebanon, reflect a basic political and religious agenda that could be tied to that of Khomeini. If we try to distill this into a single idea, it would be that al-Sadr mainly took care of the Shi’ites in Lebanon and their political ambitions, which were all part and parcel of Lebanese nationality. In contrast, Khomeini favored a pan-Islamic ideology over an ideology of local nationality, while the Shah wanted al-Sadr to turn the Lebanese Shi’ites’ hearts toward him.

Ghaddar also claims that “his [al-Sadr’s] Najaf training distanced him from Wilaiat al-Faqih”, which was Khomeini’s doctrine for the rule of the clerics over politics (Ghaddar 2018). It should be noted that when al-Sadr attended the Najaf madrassas and hawzas during the 1950s, Khomeini was still in Iran and was not yet voicing or writing his Velayat-e Faqih ideology. The 1970s, however, were years marked by al-Sadr’s total independence since he was both the Shi’ite Mufti in Lebanon and a Shi’ite intellectual who did not consider Velayat-e Faqih to be something that should be promoted or applied.

Al-Sadr’s troubles, however, came not only from members of Khomeini’s circle but also and mainly from the Shah. Samii claims that by 1974, the Shah had decided to stop helping the Lebanese Shi’ites. The Shah’s plan had been for the Shi’ites of Lebanon to ally themselves with him, not al-Sadr or any other religious cleric, but he began to suspect that al-Sadr was being “paid off by Iraq and Libya.” (Samii 1997, p. 83). In fact, he was being paid off by al-Assad’s Syria. Despite this, according to Samii, the Shah wanted to give al-Sadr one “last chance to terminate his contacts with countries hostile to Iran.” When this did not happen, the Shah, through Qadar, “tried to have Sadr replaced as head of the Supreme Shia Council by Sayyid Hussein Shirazi, an Iraqi-born mullah who had been expelled from Najaf by the Ba’thist regime–but he did not succeed.” (Samii 1997, p. 83).

As seen by the Shah and Khomeini, al-Sadr’s independence was clearly religious independence that he had transformed into social and political deeds. Ghaddar argues that al-Sadr took this independence too far when his “religious training and political message paved the ground for the militarization of the Shi’a in Lebanon”, and later, this was used “as a tool for empowerment by Hezbollah.” (Ghaddar 2018).

All of these claims can be seen to be a complete contradiction of our main thesis, which is that it was al-Sadr who initiated the political process of Shi’ite militarization that started with Lebanon and then, with Khomeini’s contribution, moved from Iran to other parts of the Middle East and affected both Shi’ites and Sunnis.

The militarization of the Shi’ites of Lebanon carried out by al-Sadr took place during the 1970s in parallel with the establishment of many local and foreign oppositional Palestinians and anti-Shah groups. Initially, the groups that were pro-Khomeini were trained under the auspices of the Amal Movement, and those that rejected Khomeini were trained by Palestinian groups. According to Samii, “[a]fter Yasser Arafat met with Ayatollah Khomeini in Najaf, more formal ties were made between their two organizations, and trainees were sent to Lebanon.” (Samii 1997, pp. 78–79).

Both the Shah and Khomeini kept an eye on al-Sadr’s activities in Lebanon and saw that he was becoming disconcertingly prominent. This is of importance as it demonstrates how al-Sadr’s actions not only led to the Shi’i revolution in Lebanon but also ignited revolutions all over the Middle East, starting with the Islamic Revolution in Iran. In addition to exploring this, this article will show the informal relations between the competing groups in Lebanon and the triangle of ideologies (Khomeini/Shah/al-Sadr) that finally helped al-Sadr to crystalize his own revolutionary formula for political Shi’ism. That is, this article aims to illustrate how al-Sadr rebuilt the Lebanese Shi’ite community using different theological and practical methods, leading this community to be fully involved in politics. Moreover, it will show how Khomeini saw this as the reflection of his own interpretation of Velayat-e Faqih regarding how Shi’ite clerics should take precedence over politicians.

In sum, it seems that al-Sadr had several enemies: the Crown (the Shah), the Palestinians’ supporters within and outside of Lebanon, and the Shi’i sector (Khomeini and his circles in Iran and Iraq). The argument about who was responsible for his disappearance/death is unanswerable and only reflects the motives of those who had an intention to make him disappear. All agree that al-Sadr, by combining his natural charisma and virtues, along with his prestige as a religious figure, eclipsed both in Lebanon and his religious community’s leaders in Iran and Iraq.

3. Musa al-Sadr: The Bridge of Two Schools

There is no other Shi’i religious figure who was, or is, a combination of the personality, life story, and religious-political thought of the two old schools of Qom and Najaf in the way that al-Sadr was, and the effect he had on all the Shi’ites in the Middle East after his disappearance in August 1978 was also a unique phenomenon. This should take nothing away from the importance of other prominent and respected Shi’ite clerics, but when one compares al-Sadr’s background of religious studies and status, his social and political credentials, and his successes with them, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that few others could have achieved the successes of al-Sadr in putting the Lebanese Shi’ites on the map of political Shi’ism.

His life’s journey involved him being the lone messenger traveling between Iran, Iraq and Lebanon, which also symbolically resembled the journey between the Shi’i religious schools that existed in them. His combination of the ideas that first formed during his early religious life in Iran and then in Iraq and his ability not only to bring theory into practice but also to transform forbidden political ideas into activism made him a unique figure and the man for whom the Shi’ite community–and not just in Lebanon–had been waiting. The appellation imam could not have been more suited for him, and although he might have held the same rank as others before and after his time, he, unlike other Shi’i religious clerics, had the historic opportunity to apply not only well-known and agreed-upon principles to the lives of his Shi’i followers but also other principles that had previously been spoken about only as theories.

Musa al-Sadr was born on 15 March 1928, in Qom, Iran, to a family of Grand Ayatollahs whose genealogy went back to Musa al-Kazem, the seventh Imam of the Twelver Imams (Shapira 1987). The al-Sadr family originated in Jabel Amil, near Tyre in Lebanon, where they preached the ‘righteous way of Islam,’ a method followed by all subsequent generations in Lebanon and, later, in Iran and Iraq (Taheri 1987). Since the 16th century, when Persia was ruled by the Safavid dynasty, the Shi’i clerics of Jabel Amil visited Persia and later made it their home since it had become the regional Shi’i center and was backed by a stable monarchy. Many of these clerics also found Persia to be a refuge from the Sunni Ottoman Sultanate’s oppression (Ajami 1987; Fahs 1996).

The basic tenets of al-Sadr’s political and religious philosophy seem to have been formulated before his time in his own family’s history. Sadr al-Din, his great-grandfather, was educated in Najaf, where he married into the prominent (and Shi’i) Kashif al-Ghita family. His family then left for Esfahan, Iran, where they built their own Mujtahid family (Shapira 1987, p. 6). Ismail, Musa’s grandfather, was a student of Mirza Khan Shirazi (d. 1984), and Ismail himself became a Marja’ Taqlid before he died in 1919 (Ajami 1987, pp. 52–54). Al-Sadr’s father, Sadr al-Din al-Sadr, was also an Ayatollah and led the Qomi School until his death in 1953. A year later, Musa left Qom for Najaf in order to broaden his religious knowledge (Shapira 1987, p. 5).

The Shi’i religious centers in Najaf, Karbala and Qom evolved over the years into focal junctions that attracted clerics from all over the Shi’i world and also became incubators for the development of ideological and theoretical ideas that influenced not only the Arab and Persian worlds (Taheri 1985, p. 194), but also Musa al-Sadr himself, who absorbed their political thought and activism that became integral parts of his life. While the religious power and status of his family helped him rise in the political arena (Ajami 1987, pp. 56–58), it was especially the influence of the religious centers that allowed him to flourish.

When al-Sadr went to Najaf to study in 1954, Reisinezhad claims that he undertook this journey “with SAVAK’s indirect permission to continue his Fiqh study under Ayatollah Mohsen al-Hakim.” (Reisinezhad 2017, p. 70). Al-Sadr, it seems, went with the expectation of absorbing as much religious knowledge as he could. Four years later, at the age of 30, al-Sadr mastered the role of a mujtahid and joined his family’s long line of high-ranking clerics (Shapira 1987, p. 6). This religious position and environment, however, were not enough to build al-Sadr’s ideological and intellectual world, so he sought the best teachers and theoreticians he could find in Najaf. Among them was the Grand Ayatollah Abu al-Qasim al-Khoei, who would become best known as an expert on the practice of quietism, which taught that clerics must not be involved in politics (Fuller and Francke 1999). According to al-Khoei, the role of the grand cleric, the marja, must be to attend to social affairs and justice (Norton 1994).

The outlook of another Grand Ayatollah, Mohssein al-Hakim, was nearly opposite to al-Khoei’s since he believed that clerics should involve themselves in political activism, and he was responsible for reshaping al-Sadr’s political point of view. It was this exact environment and the presence and participation of prominent religious figures, like Musa and Mohammad Baqir al-Sadr, Mohammad Mehdi Shamseddine, and Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, that was so influential in matters of political thinking attached to religious interpretations (Norton 1994, p. 194). Despite the contrast between quietism and activism, all of the above influences would form the mosaic of ideas that motivated the Shi’ite revivalists during the second half of the 20th century in the Middle East.4

One of the most influential figures, both in Iraq and Iran in the 1940s–1950s, was Ayatollah Abu al-Qasim Kashani, who was a figure whom al-Sadr wanted to emulate (Shapira 1987, p. 26) but who was also a very strange figure among the religious Shi’i elite. For him, the promotion of Iran’s national interests was no less important than the promotion of religious issues. In effect, he sanctified the issue of nationalism, which strengthened the religion itself and made it more cosmopolitan (Yazdi 1990). In order to strengthen nationalism, however, the religious factions had to utilize politics. Kashani knew that the ulama of his generation still saw politics as forbidden territory (especially Shi’ite clerics from the Arab world, as Iranian clerics had been very much involved in Iranian politics during the relatively open years of the 1940s and early 1950s), so instead of fighting them, he became a political religious figure (Yazdi 1990, p. 289).

Kashani, one of al-Sadr’s teachers (and his father-in-law), saw nationalism as fundamental to gathering the people within one identity. According to him, if Westerners were to leave Iran and then the Middle East, the Muslim nations would be able to practice a better form of Islam (Yazdi 1990, p. 290). The necessary religious reforms, he believed, could only be achieved when the state was rid of foreign influences. He also thought that the religious factions and ulama must be more pragmatic in order to achieve these religious goals. Since Kashani did not see secular and religious people as two different groups, he claimed that Islam could be of great service to national issues, patriotism, politics, and constitutionalism.5

Kashani’s approach was an endorsement of pure religious activism, something that was unusual at that time, especially within the religious Shi’i factions. Seeing that Islam was providing them with political and military guidance led other religious figures around Kashani to consider activism on behalf of religion as a wake-up call for the people to take their fate into their own hands and not let corrupt politics ruin the country (Doroshenko 1975, pp. 80–82). The origin of Kashani’s pan-Islamic approach was his belief that the ummah (the whole Muslim community) should be reunited for the benefit of Islam by its leadership (Yazdi 1990, p. 192). This desire to reunite was more ideological than territorial since he still believed in regional nationalism, whereby countries had their own identities with the common denominator of Islam (Yazdi 1990, p. 292 and Doroshenko 1975, p. 83). However, it was challenging for al-Sadr to take this interpretation of nationalism from his homeland of Iran, which had already unified around intense nationalism, to Lebanon, which is still grappling with the question of nationalism and national identity today. Despite being dedicated to dealing with the Lebanese Shi’ites’ problems and challenges, he was never disconnected from Iran and was next influenced by the ideology of Ali Shariati (1933–1977), who influenced many other revolutionaries, both secular and religious.

Shariati, like al-Sadr, was the product of his religious and school environment. He was first taught to question Islam by his father, Mohammad Taqi Shariati, who considered Islam to be more a philosophical and social doctrine than a set of private and public rules governing faithful religious behavior (Rahnema 1994). Muslims were looking for a new way to define themselves that would disconnect them from the old system while still allowing them to continue to serve Islam. Thus, Ali interpreted Islam in modern and socio-economic terms that enabled him to connect the religious texts to modern needs (Rahnema 1994, p. 214).

In many ways, Shariati was a new voice that had a new and different ability to talk to the younger generation with new terminology that placed Islamic values into a modern context. Moreover, he was actively involved in his own revolutionary causes and participated in protests, including for Mohammad Mossadegh’s nationalism and socialists in both Iran and France (Rahnema 1994, p. 215). He was a flagbearer for the struggles of the Iranian people.

Shariati viewed sacrifice for the cause (shahadat) as the highest value for devoted religious people, not only as an instrument but as a goal (Rahnema 1994). Shariati’s book Shahadat, which was translated into Arabic by one of al-Sadr’s students, imbued al-Sadr’s adherents with a new spirit and fresh hope for achieving their goals. The expression “Every day is Ashura and every land is Karbala” would establish itself in Lebanon and was mainly used for al-Sadr’s political battles and in order to awaken the Shi’i to strive to improve their lives (Rahnema 1994). Shariati, in Shahadat and Pas az Shahadat, wrote about the need to explore the modern Shi’a with revolutionary eyes, but he died in 1977 and thus did not witness the Iranian Revolution. It can, however, be said with certainty that his immediate intention was to address the need to export the social and religious idealism of the Shi’i to other Shi’ite communities in the Middle East and to use politics as a platform to unite them as a community. Al-Sadr understood Shariati’s intentions and revolutionary thought very well and imported these messages to Lebanon, but Khomeini understood things differently (Cohen 2015).

Al-Sadr not only read Shariati’s books and lectures but also referred to him in his speeches and used his words and ideas to explain Shariati’s ideology and philosophy to improve the current situation. As a religious leader and figure, al-Sadr did not hesitate to use Shariati’s name in public, and, in doing this, he was different from his counterparts in Iran, who used Shariati’s ideas without attributing them to him. For example, in a speech about the tension between Israel and the south of Lebanon, al-Sadr said: “In fact, I mentioned at the ceremony that we were looking for a doctor like Dr. Shariati. Because we are facing events that do not satisfy us, a backward, unjust society, oppressors, reactionaries, dispersion, a lack of investment, colonialism…”6 His eagerness to apply Shariati’s understanding of the Shi’ites’ situation in the 1970s is apparent: “When we look forward, we see that this man, Dr. Ali Shariati, respects our way of thought and our noble ideology, we acknowledge and appreciate him, and we all can learn a lot from his revolutionary thoughts and respected ideals… He turns dark to light and heretics into believers….”7

While al-Sadr’s understanding of the marja’s role was partly shaped by the prevailing environment and influential figures during this period, it was Mohammad Baqir al-Sadr, Musa’s cousin and brother-in-law, who had by far the most influence on his life. Mohammad was a theoretician and intellectual who, during the 1970s, founded the Da’wah movement in Iraq. Elvire Corboz claims that Mohammad “produced writings which inspired a new constitution for the Islamic Republic established after the country’s second revolution (1978–1979).” (Corboz 2015). He was, apparently, also a devoted follower of Khomeini’s Velayat-e Faqih doctrine (Shapira 1987, p. 26), since he was terrified of communists’ possible influence over Muslims. As a result, he supported Khomeini’s political activism, which was against both Western and Eastern influences (Norton 1994, p. 194). Khomeini welcomed Mohammad’s activism since other mujtahids, especially Ayatollah al-Khoei, were rejecting Khomeini’s activism; as noted by Corboz: “Activism was not widely accepted in the Iraqi hawza.” (Norton 1994, p. 164).

Ultimately, being a long-time student and devotee of some prominent religious figures could not be advantageous forever, so al-Sadr had to find his own way. He soon understood that, at this stage of his life, he needed to combine secular studies with religious ones, so he returned to Tehran to study law and political economics (Shapira 1987, p. 5).

During the next stage of al-Sadr’s life, which began with his arrival in Lebanon in 1959, he had to utilize both quietism and activism in order to lead the Lebanese Shi’i into a better future. His Lebanese experience would finally cause al-Sadr to create a different Shi’i community–one that would not follow its teachers exactly, whether they were from Iran or Iraq. His creation of this new path, which would be imitated mainly by his own teacher, Ayatollah Khomeini, was very different from what the Shah intended it to be.

4. Lebanon’s Winning Formula: Being Involved

Hilal Khashan, a Lebanese professor and intellectual, tried to decipher the secret of the Lebanese identity by analyzing local and regional historical events that have influenced and formed Lebanese society along with political changes that partly shaped this local identity. For Khashan, Lebanon’s main identity problem was the result of the historical rivalry between Sunnis and Shi’ites, which had remained under the surface for centuries and only arose when the French started to establish modern Lebanon. Before this took place, political power had been in the hands of the Ottomans, who treated the Shi’ites as a tolerated religious minority. The rise of the Islamic Republic of Iran and Hezbollah, however, intensified the dormant argument over political influence from the local religious groups (Khashan 2016).

When al-Sadr arrived in Lebanon in 1959, the local Islamic groups were deeply involved in their fight over power, and he had to choose which school of thought—quietism or activism–would provide the authority he needed to lead the Shi’i community. Fouad Ajami claims that, at first, al-Sadr did not consider his arrival a historically significant event in his life (Ajami 1987, pp. 57–59). Al-Sadr was in no hurry for this job–being the Shi’ite Lebanese’s Mufti–since he had a good and satisfying life in Iran, but once he arrived, he understood that the first thing he had to do was to lead the community (Sharey-Eisenlohr 2008) indirectly rather than by exerting direct control.

Al-Sadr understood his limitations since, for the Shi’i community, he was like the biblical Lot: “This one fellow came in to sojourn, and he will needs play the judge” (Genesis, 19:9). Therefore, although he had the religious power to issue fatwas, he decided he had to earn the respect of the people and not force himself on them (Shapira 1987, p. 8). Al-Sadr understood that the local religious hierarchy was devoted only to their own power over the people, and their lack of interest in their own people was something he was not used to. In Qom and Najaf, the clerics and the people had been united in an emotional bond that made each group responsible for the other (Halawi 1992). Conversely, in Lebanon, it was every man for himself. The religious factions were unconcerned by the fact that their youngsters were running away from the villages straight into the hands of the secular left and the Sunnis. For al-Sadr, there was no better time than the present to bring Qom’s and Najaf’s religious ideologies and practices into people’s lives. For that reason, the Qom and Najaf religious centers supported him financially and ideologically and saw him as their representative in Lebanon (Shapira 1987, p. 8). This support helped al-Sadr offer the Shi’i community something they might have been able to get from their own maraji but never did, and in this way, he earned the people’s respect and attention.

Al-Sadr’s first mission was to bring the Shi’i community into ‘alignment’ with the other groups in Lebanon (Fuller and Francke 1999, p. 205). They had long become accustomed to going to their leaders, and now the leader was coming to them: he came to give speeches, he gathered them together for protests, and he led marches and the community into new spheres and activities that they had never known about nor participated in. He gave them pride, and they gave it back to him in kind (Ajami 1987, pp. 202–3). His presence and intensive activities led to a new era and new social and political agendas, and, for the first time, the Shi’ites in Lebanon felt that they had a purpose and destiny. Finally, someone had succeeded in redefining their local identity, and this sense of identity was helping them to find their place (Nakash 2006).

Saddiq Nabulsi, in his review of al-Sadr’s contributions to the Lebanese Shi’ite community, argues that the period between 1959–1978 was one of the stages of development that formed under the impact of the enormous changes that were storming through the Arab world and was characterized by explosive events from the far north to the far south of Lebanon. Nabulsi adds that al-Sadr sought to present new perceptions about the prevailing intellectual, political and economic values and trends of the Shi’i as a Lebanese entity as well as the priorities that should be adopted at both the national and private sectarian levels. Finally, he concludes that al-Sadr’s message “should be read as one of the episodes of Islamic ascendancy in the region, especially since we consider that the Imam’s movement is linked to the prospects of the Islamic change project in both Iran under the leadership of Imam Khomeini and in Iraq under the leadership of Imam Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr, and emphasizing the essential role of the Imam in historical transformations witnessed by the Shiite community during his reign.” (Nabulsi 2011). In other words, Nabulsi says that what happened in Iran and Iraq was started by al-Sadr in Lebanon.

A more conservative opinion about al-Sadr’s activities in Lebanon can be found in Imam al-Sadr: A Biography and a Journey [al-seerah wa al-masirah al-imam musa al-sadr], which contains speeches, documents and primary sources. The book’s Persian translator provides some political insight into the relationship between al-Sadr and Khomeini by noting that “the relationship of Imam al-Sadr with the Iranian Islamic Revolution was always governed by continuous communication with the Imam Sayyid Ruhollah Mousavi Khomeini.”8

5. The Teacher and the Student–But Which Was Which?

While al-Sadr was turning ideology into reality in Lebanon, Khomeini was still only talking about it, although he had tried to influence prominent Iraqi maraji (i.e., al-Khoei) to take action, especially against communist parties rather than merely political stands. Furthermore, while al-Sadr was paving the way toward self-recognition and an understanding of politics for the Lebanese Shi’i, Khomeini was only imagining how the realization of his theories could develop. In both cases, the reality in Lebanon and Iran forced these figures to find solutions, some of which could be learned from Shi’i history, while others had to be invented. For al-Sadr, the reality was his field of operations for testing his theories based on his studies. These studies had to be derived from his own religious curriculum, and if they were not, he would invent solutions but still relate them to his main religious agenda. For instance, he never saw violence and fighting as a way to achieve any goal, but in the harsh environment of Lebanon, he could find no other solution. The main problem he had was how to connect it to a Shi’i narrative that would justify the use of weapons. For example, on the eve of the civil war in 1974, al-Sadr had to use the events of the Battle of Karbala in 680 as a justification and referred to Imam Husayn’s sacrifice for this purpose. Husayn, al-Sadr declared, chose to fight tyranny and corruption and to sacrifice himself on the altar of Islam and his people (Shapira 1987, p. 16). This would later be echoed by Khomeini, as noted by Michael M. J. Fischer: “The historical nature of the symbolic structure I call the Karbala paradigm has been highlighted by the 1977–1979 revolution.” (Fischer 1980). However, neither al-Sadr nor Khomeini invented these political usages of the ‘Karbala paradigm,’ which had much earlier roots. As Fischer points out, “The Karbala paradigm had been honed over the years into a device for heightening political consciousness of the moral failings of the government.” (Fischer 1980, p. 11). Edith Szanto, who also dealt with the Karbala paradigm, claims that this paradigm helped Ali Shariati to define what the two kinds of Shi’ism that revolutionaries are fighting for were: “[T]he first type was the ‘pure, just, and populist’ Shi’ism of ‘Ali ibn Abi Talib, the first Imam [whose son Husayn had fought to save Karbala]. The second was Safavid Shi’ism, the worldly, complacent, and corrupt piety of the scholarly elite, the ulema.” (Szanto 2013). It is thus clear that al-Sadr, using Shariati’s Karbala paradigm, adopted his understanding of how to present his message and fight for the Shi’ites.

Of the many books and articles published since the Islamic Revolution that relate to the impact of the revolution upon the regional Shi’i, most maintain that al-Sadr was Khomeini’s student. Khomeini would most likely have been 26–28 years older than al-Sadr, but there is no doubt that al-Sadr had—at least during the 1960s and early 1970s—a good and fruitful connection with Khomeini, which is clear in light of their social positions in Iraq, Iran and Lebanon. This is unsurprising since relationships between maraji had long been a common practice, but the one between al-Sadr and Khomeini was unusual because it was tested by the fact that they were both on historic missions−Khomeini for the Iranian Shi’ites and al-Sadr for the Lebanese Shi’ites. Both had well-rooted ideologies and agendas to fulfill, and it would not be an exaggeration to assume that they were in secret or veiled competition with each other.

Khomeini believed that it was al-Sadr’s responsibility to carry the Iranian message to Lebanon in the way that Khomeini understood it—as Shi’i political activism led by the Ayatollahs. As noted earlier, al-Sadr was promoting two main schools of thought in Lebanon which he had to bridge in order to faithfully fulfill the mission he was sent on–to provide religious leadership to the Shi’ite community. This ultimately meant that leading the community according to the tenets of religious activism was steering al-Sadr into a situation where he had to combine ideas from both schools of thought to best provide for the Shi’ite Lebanese. In addition, he had to do this while calculating the problems he was already experiencing due to disagreements with the established leadership, who preferred their own interests over those of the community.

Al-Sadr gave voice to these schools of thought when, for the first time in the history of the Lebanese Shi’ites, he established the Shi’ite Higher Council and, subsequently, the al-maḥrūmīn and āmal movements. As in the case of the Iranian religious paradigm, religious leadership was at the center of these missions (Nakash 2006, p. 141). It is easy to attribute their success to Khomeini’s ideology and influence, but al-Sadr took these decisions long before Khomeini started promoting his Velayat-e Faqih ideology. Functioning assemblies and religious councils had, after all, existed for ages throughout Shiite history, especially in Iran. We can, however, still give credit to Khomeini for his unrecognized (and probably unintentional) religious support for al-Sadr’s deeds.

The years 1968–1971 were very significant in Shi’ite history because it was during this time that Khomeini consolidated his Velayat-e Faqih methods and tried to convince the Shi’ite maraji that power must be seized by the clerics in order to save the Shi’i from destruction. This new rationale for the adoption of activism found a captive audience when it reached al-Sadr (Halawi 1992, p. 177).

“In 1971 Khomeini met another holy man who was to leave a deep mark on his thinking. This new influence was Musa Sadr.” In essence, Taheri is saying here that al-Sadr’s contribution to the Islamic Revolution was valuable and precious, and this is supported when he declares that “his [al-Sadr’s] most important contribution to Islamic revolutionary thought was his development of the concept of the division of any society into the mustakbar (the top dog) and the mustaḍ’af (the underdogs).” Al-Sadr shared this idea with Khomeini, who, both before and after the revolution, expanded it into a whole way of thinking that would apply to all Muslims all over the world, not just to the Shi’ites (Taheri 1987, p. 164).

One might think that al-Sadr’s activity after 1970–1971 must have been coordinated with Khomeini’s new method of activism, but his actions, both before and after these years, indicate that he was independent enough to act regardless of Khomeini’s methods. We can, however, make the rational assumption that both had absorbed their ideological activism from the same source–either from Najaf or from one combined school of Iranian activism. In any case, al-Sadr was the first to turn theory into reality, and it was the case of Lebanon that may have led Khomeini to understand that his revolution was possible.

Shapira hints at a common understanding reached by Khomeini and al-Sadr about their responsibilities as religious leaders. In Shapira’s article, al-Sadr is quoted as saying that the “people who are ruling say that the clerics should only pray and not be involved in other things. They request that we fast and pray for their favor while, at the same time, they turn their backs on religion and use religion to hold on to their appointed positions.” Al-Sadr did not see any difference between din (religion) and dunia (the world), as one depends on the other, and therefore the religious leader must bridge the two (Shapira 1987, p. 15). Khomeini, for his part, in his Velayat-e Faqih, condemned the regime of Mohammad Reza Shah but also spoke in general about the attempt to hide the clerics in the mosques and madrassas. For him, the clerics had to be involved in practical politics in order to create an Islamic government whose immediate goal would be to save the Shi’i religion from secularism and destruction (Khomeini 2011).

Another example of the coordination between them was the Islamic unity that both spoke about, but while al-Sadr was referring to unity in Lebanon, Khomeini was referring to pan-Shi’ite Islamic unity (Shapira 1987, p. 12). Both of them were, however, referring to an Islamic identity that had to raise its head and promote its agenda among the people through politics. Al-Sadr saw his primary mission as the renewal, or, more accurately, the creation of a new Lebanese Shi’ite sense of identity. This, he believed, would help the community to be more attached to their homeland and to see themselves first and foremost as Lebanese, irrespective of a pan-Shi’ite identity (Nakash 2006, p. 142). This was the opposite of Khomeini’s preference for a pan-Shi’ite identity over a local one.

Al-Sadr’s ability to use religious terminology that meant the same thing to both secular and religious Shi’ites was a phenomenon and was something that resembled the language used in Shariati’s speeches and messages as well. Al-Sadr’s ability to create a social movement that, in the future, would turn into a militia (ḥarkat al-maḥrūmīn to āmal) based mainly on the negative premise that they were the oppressed enabled him to reunite hitherto divided forces within the Shi’ite community. In addition to this, he opened the movement’s ranks to those who soon found its aims suitable: “Every young man must also pray and must train, carry arms and prepare for the establishment of a Lebanese resistance” (“ān īṣalī waījib ‘alīya ān īutadrib waān īuḥamil al-silāḥ”) (Musa al-Sadr 1975). Khomeini’s message, on the other hand, was aimed mainly at the religious factions in Iran since some of the secular factions fought back against him, while most simply ignored him.

The power that al-Sadr gained from the success of the al-maḥrūmīn movement was due to its uniqueness in being the first of its kind in Lebanese Shi’ite life. It became the common denominator for all parts of the Shi’ite community and represented their common will. The Lebanese Shi’ites saw al-Sadr’s activism as positive in contrast to what they had been used to for generations, which was their local maraji’s quietism. Al-Sadr’s ideological leadership, which was built upon his earlier studies in Najaf and Qom, enabled him to offer a total revision of the Shi’ite socio-political reality, especially regarding its approach to politics. Yizhak Nakash claims that the goal of all this was to “create a new, confident Lebanese Shi’i and to renew the relationship between the Shi’ite community and the state.” (Nakash 2006, p. 142). Taheri’s claims also strengthen the argument that Khomeini and al-Sadr were, paradoxically, both close to each other and also a sort of nemesis for each other. While neither spoke about the quality of their relationship, their deeds revealed a great deal about it. For example, “Sadr, although related to Khomeini, never sided with the Ayatollah openly and was closer to the more moderate Grand Ayatollahs” (Taheri 1985, p. 225).

During the first days of the Second Civil War in 1975, al-Sadr changed al-maḥrūmīn from an unarmed movement into a militia. While this newly reshaped movement had no choice but to join the fight to protect the Shi’ite community in the state, al-Sadr had to wrap this activity in a religious message, even though this was far from a religious war. For him, amal, the initials of the new militia (al-āfwaj al-muqāwama al-lubnānīa) and which also means ‘hope’ in Arabic, represented the people’s hope to fulfill the Islamic mission of the Mahdi9.

At this time, when Khomeini’s associates were being hunted in Iran by the Shah’s SAVAK, many of them found shelter and a new home with al-Sadr’s new militia, which made it possible for them to use amal’s facilities to prepare for their own fight and revolution.10 In this way, Lebanon became not only a shelter but also a central base for Khomeini’s revolutionary activities. Al-Sadr, having received military assistance from his Syrian patron, Hafez al-Assad, transferred this assistance to Khomeini’s associates (Shapira 2020, p. 30). These new Iranian forces would return victoriously to Iran and establish Hezbollah and, later, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). A few fighters, like Mostafa Chamran and the brothers Hadi and Mahdi Hashemi, would stay in Lebanon within amal’s political and military ranks and, after separating from amal, would establish the Lebanese Hezbollah.

6. Exporting the Lebanese Shi’ite Revolution

After the Islamic Revolution in Iran, Khomeini put much effort into exporting his revolution to other Shi’ite communities in the Middle East. In this respect, Lebanon was no different from Iraq or Saudi Arabia, but in this section, the aim is to show that it was the Lebanese Shi’ite revolution that was exported to Khomeini, who then exported his revolution elsewhere. However, al-Sadr’s movement did not manage to take over the state while Khomeini overthrew the Shah, and the regime he established is still going strong almost half a century later.

Majed Halawi says that al-Sadr’s local agenda could only have been for Lebanon since Lebanon’s Shi’ite religious origins and orientation could not allow it to be subsumed into another Muslim country in the region. According to Halawi, al-Sadr was not taught to think on the macro (Middle Eastern) level but only on the micro (Lebanese) one. The Islamic harmony that al-Sadr was talking about when he established the Higher Council was an attempt to link Khomeini’s future macro agenda to al-Sadr’s micro-level outcome (Halawi 1992, p. 143).

By the end of the 1960s, al-Sadr had become more widely acknowledged as an important figure outside Lebanon, whether by his deeds or by his writings (Halawi 1992, p. 143). Being familiar with the maraji’s elites also helped him to elicit cooperation from other relevant intellectuals. In 1968, he participated in a conference held in Germany about the Imamate Shi’a, and in 1970, he attended Al-Azhar’s Council for Islamic Research and the Ulama Assembly in Cairo. On these occasions, al-Sadr called for the cooperation between Sunnis and Shi’ites to be expanded and for ceremonies and religious holidays to be united (Shapira 1987, p. 13). His vision was to unify the ummah of the Sunnis and the Shi’ites and to find ways to connect the ummah with other religions, especially the Christians in Lebanon (Abadhari 2009). In this regard, al-Sadr used the Ashura ceremonies in Lebanon to promote the message that Islam and Christianity were actually close to each other because of the nature of their religions: “Our memories of this year, in Lebanon in particular, carry the divine message and noble verses that Christians are the closest people to Muslims” (“ān al-masīḥīīn huma āqrabu alnās ila al-muslimīn”) (Musa al-Sadr 1977). There were also calls from Khomeini to unite the forces of the Sunnis with the Shi’ites, but not with Christians. This effort at unification would be only carried out under the leadership of the Shi’ites, which itself would only take place after the victory of the Islamic Revolution.

But al-Sadr was not in any competition with Khomeini; in fact, the opposite is true. Al-Sadr was highly connected and well-known as a religious figure who was accepted by all religions in Lebanon and elsewhere. This enabled al-Sadr to help Khomeini when he asked the Pope and the UN to secure Khomeini’s transfer, first from Iran to Turkey and then to Iraq. In Iraq, Khomeini continued his correspondence with al-Sadr (Musa al-Sadr 1977).

Al-Sadr’s heritage is not only his awakening of the Lebanese Shi’ites but primarily the ideological and religious understanding that made him a reformer and a revolutionary. In an article in Le Monde on 23 August 1978, just days before his disappearance, al-Sadr presented the Shi’i revival as the success of a revolutionary community. For him, “the insurrection of the Iranian people is different from all similar movements around the world.” Al-Sadr did not say which revolutionary group possessed the truth, neither the Mojahedin nor Khomeini; instead, what he saw was the people’s awakening as a community: “This is the movement of a people with diverse generations: in the souks, in schools, in mosques, in cities and even in the smallest hamlets.” (Musa al-Sadr 1987). It is no surprise that neither the Shah nor Khomeini subsequently sympathized with his “supportive” message–the Shah because al-Sadr supported the revolution and called for him to be toppled and Khomeini because he did not like being identified with all the other revolutionaries.

7. Conclusions

The Islamic Revolution, which used Shi’i symbols revived by al-Sadr two decades before to inflame the people’s hearts, broke out a few months after al-Sadr’s disappearance. It was through this common use of symbols that al-Sadr’s pan-Islamic view combined with his devoted efforts to bring the local Shi’ite identity and nationality to life in Lebanon, which were factors that would influence the Iranian Revolution.

The ideological waves created by the revolution, which spread all over the Middle East and are still being felt now, were welcomed in Lebanon since, as noted above, the Lebanese had already been alerted to the Shi’ite revolution by al-Sadr. For them, Khomeini was not bringing anything new; they were already ready for the next stage. The Iranian Revolution, along with the support it received from the Shi’ite Lebanese, subsequently resulted in the establishment of Hezbollah, which, today, is the dominant power in Lebanon and represents Iranian interests more than it does Lebanese interests. When one compares the outcomes in other Shi’ite communities in the Middle East with those in Lebanon, it seems that al-Sadr was highly effective. This could probably not have been so without al-Sadr’s decades-long presence and activities in Lebanon; without al-Sadr, Khomeini’s revolutionary message would likely have fallen on the ears of a disunited and impotent community, as happened in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and elsewhere.

The close connections between al-Sadr and Khomeini were possible because both had been educated in Qom and Najaf and were not only inspired by the schools of quietism and activism but also shared the same goal of reviving Shi’ism and Shi’ites wherever they were. It was, however, the new approach to politics developed in Najaf by both schools from the early 1950s until al-Sadr left that shaped the latter’s political thought and which was later followed by Khomeini. Al-Sadr was the first to apply this approach to the reality of the impossible political and social environment of Lebanon, and it was this that made al-Sadr the first real Shi’i revolutionist that Khomeini later learned from.

Khomeini intended to expand the role of Shi’ism throughout the Middle East, while al-Sadr preferred to nationalize it within the borders of particular states. Khomeini wanted to ignite localized Shi’ite revolutions that would then join his general one, while al-Sadr preferred to rekindle the people’s belief in religion and thereby revive their belief in the clerics. Khomeini thus saw things differently, and we can assume that he was afraid that al-Sadr’s superior religious knowledge and personal charisma would be obstacles to the exporting of his own revolution. There is, in fact, evidence that some of Khomeini’s close aides called al-Sadr an ‘American agent’ and that others cooperated with Gaddafi’s associates in Lebanon who were responsible for al-Sadr’s disappearance (Cohen 2015, pp. 127–30).

Barbara Slavin seems to be confident that this charge is true, writing that “the regime of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi appears to have carried out the killing for several reasons: possibly at the behest of Khomeini, who was jealous of Sadr, for the Palestinians, with whom the Lebanese Shiites had clashed, or for the shah who feared the religious revival that Sadr had unleashed.” (Slavin 2008, p. 4). However, Slavin also refers to Richard Norton’s comment that “there is no definitive answer” to the mystery of al-Sadr’s disappearance. Indeed, Norton expresses his doubts about who was to blame: “I continue to hear educated Lebanese Shi’is say it was done by Khomeini because Musa Sadr was the moderate wing of the revolution and wanted a more inclusive face.” (Slavin 2008, p. 4). While all of the above contributed to the emergence of many conspiracy theories about Khomeini’s involvement in al-Sadr’s disappearance, nobody has yet found a ‘smoking gun’ pointing to Khomeini as the culprit.

The personal charisma and social skills of both al-Sadr and Khomeini should not be underestimated since neither of them could have succeeded without them. Al-Sadr’s life in Najaf and Qom helped him become a fluent preacher who advocated a timeless message that inspired both emotional and rational responses in the people. Al-Sadr also created a new kind of Shi’i religious leader, one who was a leader in all areas of his people’s lives rather than one moving behind a curtain as in the past. Al-Sadr became the pilot case of the new form of leadership, which would later appear elsewhere in the region with Khomeini, Sistani, Faḍlallah, Nasrallah, and other prominent Shi’i religious leaders, all of whom imitated al-Sadr’s new type of leadership and innovative political-religious thought.

The plans that the Shah and SAVAK had to exploit the young al-Sadr’s charisma and prestige in Lebanon turned out to be a poor gamble. Neither the Shah nor anybody else could have imagined that al-Sadr would succeed in Lebanon to the extent that he did. Their desire to exploit the situation in Lebanon for their geopolitical needs and al-Sadr’s fundamental understanding that the Shi’ites had the potential to improve their own situation allowed al-Sadr to turn the tables on them for the benefit of the Shi’ites and nobody else. His rejection of the Shah and Khomeini’s agenda and his plan for the Lebanese Shi’ites was an almost automatic reflex by al-Sadr to protect his creation–sovereignty for the Lebanese Shi’ites.

Some of the credit for this must go to Khomeini because of his uncompromising efforts to export his ideological revolution to the Shi’ites throughout the Middle East. We should, however, also be aware of the long path that al-Sadr traveled that began in the early 1960s when Khomeini was still Ayatollah Borujerdi’s right-hand man and both were devoted to the agenda of quietism. When al-Sadr was beginning his mission to revive and reconstruct the Lebanese Shi’ite community’s self-confidence and political awareness, Khomeini was Borujerdi’s messenger to the Shah. While al-Sadr was leading the Lebanese Shi’ites toward becoming a major political factor in the state, Khomeini was only just starting his own political and religious journey.

Despite the often unspoken dilemmas and disagreements between al-Sadr and Khomeini about how to practice Shi’ism in modern times, both ultimately saw contemporary Shi’ism in the same way: as the main factor that could lead Shi’ite communities into politics. The major question that neither could adequately answer was how Shi’ite communities throughout the Middle East could practice modern Shi’ism in the same way. Nevertheless, the case of Lebanon (from al-Sadr’s arrival in 1959 until his disappearance in 1978) before the Iranian Revolution in 1979 is evidence for the strengthening of Ayatollah Khomeini’s message about the right way Shi’ism should adapt itself in order to survive in the turbulence of Sunni-dominated Middle Eastern politics.

Finally, the importance of al-Sadr to the Islamic Revolution in Iran must be emphasized, and he probably heralded it by his deeds. His ability to incorporate both theological schools (Qom and Najaf) into one political movement in Lebanon was a unique approach that no one in the Shi’ite world had managed before. That the essence of this innovative way is hidden within the theory of Valayat-i Faqih enabled Ayatollah Khomeini to implement it in Iran. Al-Sadr’s ability to use religious terminology and references to the establishment of the Shi’a–such as his use of the Karbala massacre and Imam Hossein’s sacrifice to save the religion–as a way to attract secular audiences within the Lebanese Shi’ite community could be seen in a similar light to the way his intellectual teacher Ali Shariati revolutionized the Islamic message for modern times on the eve of the revolution in Iran, when Shi’ites and the secular and religious communities could find a way to interpret their political ambitions and aims. The bridge that al-Sadr built between these schools and motifs enabled him to be called Imam both in its literal meaning–the one who is at the front, the leader–and in its messianic interpretation of innovator and redeemer.