ABSTRACT
Records of the Supreme Islamic Shi’a Council document the fact that the imam was officially invited to Libya to discuss the “dangerous situation in Lebanon” with Colonel Mu’mmar al-Qadhdhafi. The Libyan leader had vowed to crush all those who were “attempting to abort the popular revolution that the Lebanese nationalist forces had ignited in Lebanon.” To the radical Palestinian organizations in particular, South Lebanon was the most readily accessed theater of operations from which to initiate the liberation of Palestine and, ultimately, the entire Arab world. Lebanon’s civil war, which ignited on 13 April 1975, was the quietus of the “Lebanese miracle.” The strike was hailed as a “blessed step” toward peace and love amidst the carnage that had become Lebanon. “Lebanon was the definitive homeland for the Shi’a,” the cleric claimed, since they, like the Christians, belonged to a minority that had no chance for equitable treatment in the larger Sunni Arab world.
