Al-Mabarrat Charitable Association held a meeting for its leadership categories from the various regions, at Issa Bin Maryam School in the southern town of Al-Khiyam, in order to discuss the association's general policies document.
The meeting featured a set of working papers presented by the council of teaching institutions, the council of care institutions, the general administration, the relations council, the council of productive institutions, the council of health institutions and the council of cultural and religious institutions. These papers carried many proposals, amendments and additions to the document.
Fadlallah
The association's president Allama Sayyed Ali Fadlallah said in an intervention: “It gladdens me greatly that we should be together at this meeting so that we may study a matter considered among the priorities of our work - a matter on which we should exert a great effort so as to bring it into the light in its complete form.”
He added: “When we want to pursue the policies we must set out from the basic source, from Islam in its authenticity, because there are those who have distorted and diminished this image: the pure Islam brought by the Messenger of God and the Ahl al-Bayt, and set out in our present by His Eminence Sayyed Fadlallah, may God's pleasure be upon him. We do not diminish others, but there is an image he presented that has its characteristics and its merits - and here our responsibility lies in exerting an effort to come to know this image.”
Fadlallah continued: “I would like to thank all those who exerted an effort in this framework until they brought out this picture in the form in which it has appeared. I affirm that there are very important additions made at this meeting that will enrich the governing policies. We do not set these policies merely to content ourselves with reading them or invoking them at our meetings, but so that they may become an approach we live in our lives.”
He pointed out that “Al-Mabarrat is among the most important associations and educational, care, productive, health and cultural institutions. Our world is in constant change and there are new theories; we must therefore remain in a state of cognitive tension, and we must offer the best.” He said: “We chose to be distinguished institutions, so let us work on this basis night and day, exert every effort and offer what we are able to do.”
Fadlallah affirmed “the necessity of openness in mind and heart to the various Lebanese segments”, and said: “We are not a society closed to others; we follow His Eminence the Sayyed's words that the mind is open and the heart is open - especially in this country governed by consensus and encounter - while preserving our principles and our values. We also affirm the policy of institutions and not of individuals, and the responsibilities we have are burdens and not privileges.”
He concluded, saying: “Everyone who works at a charitable institution must stand firm before the talk; words do not provoke us. We must affirm that any error at any institution harms all our institutions, and we therefore call for avoiding errors in our journey, through wisdom, sound judgement and continuous learning.”
For his part the association's Director General Mohammad Baqer Fadlallah affirmed in an intervention “the necessity that our pioneering institutional work be inseparable from and identified with the mission's values and principles, after an experience extending 40 years at Al-Mabarrat; that we be an example in this association with all its components in embodying these values and principles in word and deed, so that we may live Islam in the beats of our hearts, the movement of our minds and the panting of our breaths; and that we remain the pioneers in the individual and collective paths, in diversity within unity and in diversity in teaching, cultural and productive work, so as to attain the loftiest purposes”. He pointed out that “our meeting today came to activate and root our governing values and to launch the course of reflection on the association's general policies in all their diversities”.
He said: “Forty years, and Al-Mabarrat is still building edifices of goodness - for orphans in their care, for the poor in their needs, for the elderly in the autumn of their lives, for people with disabilities in bringing out their creativity, for the sick in easing their pains, for those thirsting for a mission-driven culture and for worshippers in their mosques.. for the generations in their quality secondary and university teaching, with a development that matches the best institutions in Lebanon.”
He concluded: “Al-Mabarrat builds the embracing society that has embraced all its institutions. These are Al-Mabarrat's radiances, and you represent rays of these radiances. The days do not change us: we fight rancour with love, shaking with steadfastness, rupture with connection, and the bad deed with the good one - and God will not waste the reward of one who does good work.”
