The country will remain a farm for the sects as long as the mentality does not change
Allama Sayyed Ali Fadlallah patronized the opening ceremony of the new building of the Imam Al-Rida Mabarra in Habboush - Nabatieh, coinciding with the eleventh anniversary of the passing of the Marja Allama Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, in the presence of the Director General of Al-Mabarrat Dr. Mohammad Baqer Fadlallah, the head of the Lebanese community in Gabon Imad Jaber, and political, social and educational figures and religious scholars.
After verses from the Holy Quran and the national anthem, Allama Fadlallah delivered a speech in which he said: “We meet once again in Nabatieh, the city of knowledge and scholars, of heroism and martyrdom, of pride, of coexistence, and of the giving and righteousness that never runs dry from its charitable sons - to open this humanitarian edifice whose foundation stone we laid four years ago, so as to affirm the continuation of the journey of giving and goodness and this approach drawn by the Marja Sayyed Fadlallah.” He affirmed that when the Sayyed set out with his humanitarian and mission-driven projects he possessed no money but relied on his Lord and on the people's trust.
His Eminence added: “The Sayyed lived the people's concerns and addressed their hearts, their minds and their consciences. His thought set out to awaken the human being and their energies and capacities. He did not want a frozen thought that does not work by the measures of reality, but a moving thought, a thought of constant giving. He loved all people and stressed the points of meeting and the common denominators that bring them together and unite them, and he loved those he disagreed with so that dialogue might afterwards be easier - for life is not built with rancour and the summoning of enmities, nor by rejecting those you disagree with.”
His Eminence held: “Life is built by extending bridges, by communication and encounter. We may differ with the other religiously, denominationally or politically, but we must always - especially in this homeland, which is living through crises and difficult challenges at every level - search for the points of meeting, strengthen them and work on them, so that we may reach common denominators and solutions that bring us out of this tragic reality.”
He said: “We will be wherever people need us - where there is a poor person, a person with a disability, an orphan, an elderly person, and everyone in need of medicine, treatment and a school. Our responsibility is to be alongside good people, to work to extend a helping hand to them and to ease their pains and their suffering.” He pointed out that “in this country we have grown used to pulling out our thorns with our fingernails, and we had hoped that the state would carry out its responsibilities and its role in caring for these poor and needy classes - for the country needs a state in which a person lives their humanity and their dignity, rather than losing the most basic requisites of a dignified life”.
He held: “The problem of this country is with this political class that has ruled it and that looks upon it as a milking cow for its interests and its calculations, and not for the account of the people and the homeland”, noting the necessity “that this mentality by which it and its institutions are run should change, and that Lebanon should become a country instead of being a farm for this sect or that, or for this position or that”.
He concluded: “We will continue to wager on people's awareness in raising their voices high in the face of everyone who brought them to this situation, impoverished them, humiliated them and destroyed their future and the future of their children
