Sayyed Abbas Mussawi the man of resistance and public service

Source: Al-Manar TV, 15-2-2007
Abbas Mussawi was born in 1952 in the Shayah region in Beirut`s southern suburb. He lived in a conservative home and grew up to witness the oppression of the Palestinian people. So he joined the Palestinian resistance when he was ten and underwent military training. He joined Sayyed Mussa al-Sadr`s Hawza in the Lebanese southern city of Tyre and officially wore his turban at sixteen. Sayyed Abbas Mussawi then left to Iraq to continue his studies under martyr Sayyed Mohamad Baqer al-Hakim. He returned to Lebanon in 1978 after spending nine years in the Holy city of Najaf. The fist thing Sayyed Abbas did upon his return was to gather Hawza students who were expelled from Iraq, in a modest religious school called "Al-Muntazar Hawza" in the city of Baalbek. He believed that Islamic unity starts with the unity of Muslim scholars, so he founded the Muslim Scholars Association in 1979. It was the first gathering of scholars to be founded in Lebanon, which later expanded to gather Sunni and Shiite scholars. With a prevailing atmosphere of frustration and defeat caused by the 1982 "Israeli" invasion of Lebanon, Sayyed Mussawi and few of his Hawza companions expanded their activities to include resistance to the occupation. Sayyed Abbas left his home in Baalbek and headed to Beirut and then in 1985 to south Lebanon, where he settled down with his family in the city of Tyre. He used to spend most of his time with resistance fighters and directly followed up military operations against the "Israeli" occupation. Sayyed Mussawi was elected as Hizbullah Secretary General in May 1991. He established a new era for Hizbullah, one of resistance and public services. "We will serve you with our eyelids," was his famous quotation that is still one of Hizbullah`s main slogans. On the 16th of February 1992 "Israeli" helicopters attacked Sayyed Abbas Mussawi`s motorcade in southern Lebanon, killing him, his wife, son, and four others.