The Vanished Imam: Musa al Sadr and the Shia of Lebanon

By Fouad Ajami. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1986. 228 pp. $17.95.

Reviewed by Robert G. Hazo

For a long time, the Shia of Lebanon were the odd men out in that country. When the Lebanese census was last taken in the 1930s, they were the smallest of the major sects (behind the Maronites, the Sunni Muslims and the Druze). Accordingly, they were allotted, following the confessional system of proportional representation in Lebanon, few political, economic and educational opportunities. Being religiously separate from the Maronites and the Druze, and regarded as schismatics by the overwhelmingly more numerous and politically powerful Sunni Muslims, they languished for years as an underclass with a history of dispossession and pandemic discrimination. Indeed, in Lebanon, until quite recently, they were, as Fouad Ajami, the author of this historical-biographical tract on their development, describes them, the "dregs."

Their emergence in the last few years as one of the dominant players, if not the dominant player in Lebanese politics, is therefore noteworthy. In The Vanished Imam Ajami, a Lebanese Shiite himself who grew up during the period he describes, sets himself the task of explaining the change in Shia status. His focus is on Musa al Sadr, the first religious Imam of Lebanon's Shia and the head of the Shia Higher Council in that country from 1959 to his disappearance (and presumed murder) on a visit to Libya in 1978.

That Ajami has chosen to tell the recent history of the Lebanese Shia by using the story of their leader as its nucleus does not mean that he subscribes to the "great man" theory of history. On the contrary, he is quite explicit about the fact that Musa al Sadr's genius lay not in creating liberating circumstances, but rather in exploiting situations to obtain maximum advantage for his group. In contrast to the clarity he brings to a neglected part of Lebanese and Islamic society, Ajami's analysis and description of Musa al Sadr's character, motivation and charisma are almost always blurred. Whatever the reason, the reader is not left with a definite, much less indelible, image but rather with a host of qualified descriptions and judgments that convey the impression of a successful pragmatist at work—a clever manipulator rather than a visionary.

Exceptions are the pages where Ajami describes the Imam's ability to forge relationships with key followers, which is probably the essence of leadership in any case. Ajami describes the kind of impact Musa al Sadr had on different individuals in the Shia community and how each was attracted to his leadership. The author makes strikingly clear how Musa al Sadr, an alchemist in dealing in human material, was able to bring strong-minded men under his spell.

Since Ajami's approach to events, as exemplified in this work, is more that of a narrative historian than a social scientist, it is in his analysis and summary of recent Shia history in Southern Lebanon that he really makes his mark. The book, however, is flawed in one basic respect.

His portrayal of a people who move from a passive spirit of lament, melancholy and even hopelessness to one of aggressive pride takes into account a great deal: The fluid environment of Lebanon in the late fifties following the civil war against President Camille Chamoun; the phenomenal growth in Shia population; the breakdown of obstacles within the Shia community to educational and economic opportunity; the beginnings of Shia organizational efforts, particularly with Amal, the Shia militia; the increased interest in political participation and advancement; the collision of Shia customs with modern, secular society; the bracing effect of the Khomeini revolution in Iran; and, above all, the meteoric rise of Musa al Sadr, an immigrant from Iran who became in just six or seven years the catalyst for cohesion and progress among Lebanon's Shia and remained their acknowledged leader until his mysterious death or disappearance during or after a visit to Libya.

What Ajami plays down is the effect of the Arab-Israeli conflict on the Shia. This de-emphasis may reflect his general view that the Arab-Israeli conflict is less important than the traditional forces in Arab society for understanding the development of the modern Middle East; that the Palestinian problem has been bypassed; and that Arabism as such is dead or dying. What this view ignores, however, is the overwhelming effect of that one conflict on all Arabs, how it further Arabized and politicized the Shia, and, above all, how the Shia giant in Lebanon was roused to forge an indelible identity by resisting and defeating an Israeli occupation.

The legacy of the Israeli invasions of Lebanon in 1978 and 1982 is the split between the militant Shia led by Shaikh Sa'id Muhammad Hussein Fadallah, Imam Musa al Sadr's religious successor, and the secular Shia led by Nabih Berri. That division is explicable largely in terms of the willingness of the former to share the destiny of all the Arabs fighting Israel, and the emphasis by the latter on maintaining and consolidating Shia power in Lebanon.

Ajami's unwillingness to acknowledge that this and other major Shia developments result directly from the impact of the Arab-Israeli conflict seems inexplicable. Indeed, it raises the suspicion that his scholarly selectivity is a not-so-subtle form of prescription for the direction of Lebanese Shia activity in the future.

Robert G. Hazo is Chairman of the Middle East Policy Association and Senior Public Policy consultant of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.