Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr was executed in 1980 by the regime of Saddam Hussein along with his sister, Amina Sadr bint al-Huda.

Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr was born in al-Kazimiya, Iraq to the prominent Sadr family, which originated from Jabal Amel in Lebanon.

[2][failed verification] When the Ba'athists arrested Al-Sadr in 1977, his sister Amina Sadr bint al-Huda made a speech in the Imam Ali mosque in Najaf inviting the people to demonstrate.

In 1979–1980, anti-Ba'ath riots arose in Iraq's Shia areas by groups who were working toward an Islamic revolution in their country.

[4][page needed] In the aftermath of Iran's revolution, Iraq's Shia community called on Mohammad Baqir al-Sadr to be their "Iraqi Ayatollah Khomeini", leading a revolt against the Ba'ath regime.

[5][6] Community leaders, tribal heads, and hundreds of ordinary members of the public paid their allegiance to al-Sadr.

[5] The cleric's imprisonment led to another wave of protests in June after a seminal, powerful appeal from al-Sadr's sister, Bint al-Huda.

[8] His execution raised no criticism from Western countries because Al-Sadr had openly supported Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran.

[10] In 2024, Saadoun Sabri Jamil Jumaa al-Qaisi, a senior security official during Saddam's regime, was arrested in Erbil for overseeing Al-Sadr's detention and killing.

He was subsequently commissioned by the government of Kuwait to assess how that country's oil wealth could be managed in keeping with Islamic principles.

[21]Al-Sadr was executed by Saddam Hussein in 1980 before he was able to provide any details of the mechanism for the practical application of the shahada concept in an Islamic state.

This, therefore, is what led Imam Hussein to intervene challenging Yazid in order to restore the true teachings of Islam, and consequently laying down his own life.

In Al-Sadr's own words, the shahid's (witness – person performing shahada or supervision) duties are "to protect the correct doctrines and to see that deviations do not grow to the extent of threatening the ideology itself".