An Imam Is Missing

And the mystery troubles Middle East relations

Where is he? That question, in bold Arabic script, was written across posters displayed on walls throughout the Muslim areas of Lebanon last week. They portrayed Imam Moussa Sadr, 50, the beloved leader of the country's 900,000-strong Shi'ite Muslim community, who inexplicably disappeared in late August. So long as the question of his whereabouts remained unanswered, the mystery of the missing Imam threatened to trouble relations between Lebanon, Libya and Iran--and possibly other nations as well.

The mystery began when the Imam and two aides flew from Beirut to Tripoli, ostensibly to attend ceremonies commemorating the 1969 coup that brought Libyan Leader Muammar Gaddafi to power. But the Imam was not to be seen at festivities in the Libyan capital. Instead, it was announced that he and his party were departing for Italy the day before the scheduled celebrations. Although he was booked on an Alitalia flight to Rome, the crew, when questioned later, did not remember the highly visible Imam--who is more than 6 ft. tall, bearded, and wears the imposing robes of an Islamic mullah. In fact, he had utterly vanished.

When word of the disappearance reached Beirut, horrified Shi'ites promptly accused Gaddafi of having imprisoned or murdered the Imam because the Libyan viewed him as a rival to his own ambitions as spiritual leader of the Muslim world. The embarrassed Libyans quickly sent a team to Rome that claimed to have documentary proof that the Imam had left Tripoli on schedule. The Palestine Liberation Organization, which feeds on Libyan oil money and also backs the Muslims in their struggle against Lebanon's Christians, dispatched its own investigators to Tripoli. They reportedly turned up the Imam's baggage, abandoned in a hotel. Italian police, after combing hotels, boardinghouses and the homes of Lebanese in Rome, announced that there was no evidence that the Imam had ever been in the Italian capital. Throughout the Middle East, there were rumors that the Imam, who was born in the Iranian holy city of Qum, had secretly returned to his homeland to join the anti-Shah underground. Alternatively, there was a rumor he had been kidnaped by the Shah's secret police.

Whatever the explanation of Moussa Sadr's disappearance, troubled Lebanon had lost a potent moderating force in the Imam. As a political as well as spiritual leader of the country's most impoverished community, he had founded technical schools, sports centers and medical clinics for the poor. He had repeatedly attempted to head off bloody sectarian strife. In 1975, during the Lebanese civil war, he interrupted an antiwar hunger strike to persuade Muslim guerrillas to lift the siege of a Christian village, and thus averted a massacre. Last week many of his followers were praying that Moussa Sadr was carrying out a 1,200-year-old prophecy that Shi'ite Imams who disappear will one day reappear to usher in an era of peace and prosperity.

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