The president of Al-Mabarrat Charitable Association Allama Sayyed Ali Fadlallah and the member of the “Liberation and Development” bloc the deputy Yassine Jaber patronized the ceremony of laying the foundation stone of Imam Al-Rida Mabarrat in Kfarjouz on the Habboush - Nabatieh road, in the presence of the representative of the deputy Mohammad Raad, Ali Kanso; the representative of the deputy Abdel Latif Al-Zein, Youssef Al-Hajj; the representative of the president of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party Ali Kanso; the member of the Nationalist leadership in the south Dr Wissam Kanso; the political official of the Arab Socialist Baath Party in the south Fadlallah Kanso; the retired Brigadier General Dr Amin Hoteit; the son of the former minister Ali Kanso, Wajeb Kanso; the member of the Kassar Zaatar branch of the “Amal” Movement Sheikh Ismail Al-Shaer; the official for the liberal professions in “Hezbollah” in the second region the engineer Rabih Takach; and municipal, mukhtar, religious and women's figures.
The opening consisted of verses from the Holy Quran, the national anthem and a welcome by Sheikh Ali Ghandour, then Jaber delivered a speech in which he said: “This is one of the institutions that are the distillation of a lifetime and the cream of a life, which the late His Eminence the Marja' Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah enriched with love and the fragrance of humanity, and whose foundations he laid as courses of immortality and prayers that formed an ascent for his pure soul to the world of serenity, where there is no injustice, no rancour, no malice, no misery and no wretchedness. These are the institutions of life, which he filled with every meaning of humanity, with a soul that rises and is purified with them - a soul that returns, well pleased and pleasing, to the bliss of its Creator, pure and having never known rancour, because life cannot bear rancour: rancour is death and love is life, as the late His Eminence Sayyed Fadlallah said - the renewing thinker, with his openness to every other, his arming himself with moderation and his holding fast to the principles of dialogue. How much we need these principles in these difficult days we are living in Lebanon and in the Arab world.”
He added: “Your Eminence, may God have mercy on you: you were always one of the pillars of wisdom. The cloak you wrapped yourself in embraced believers, orphans and those in need of the provision of the hand and, more, of the provision of the soul. You created a space of reconciliation between religion and the world, which crossed denominations and sects, and so you became the champion of the human being, of truth, of justice, of mutual love and of brotherhood.”
He called for what unites and rejected what divides, and said: “The journey of the late Allama Marja' Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah was filled with struggle to raise high the word of truth, with the affairs of the world and with the honour of the homeland. Your slogan was always ‘as for that which benefits people, it remains on the earth'; and so you left behind you righteous work, by providing medicine, clothing and education for those in need. You founded the care institutions - Al-Mabarrat Charitable Association, which cares for four thousand orphans annually, 16 academic schools, seven vocational institutes, a hospital and a number of cultural institutions, religious seminaries, public libraries, lecture halls and charitable clinics.”
He concluded: “Here we are today before a new establishment, ‘Imam Al-Rida Mabarrat', under the patronage of your son Allama Sayyed Ali - broad in knowledge, rich in thought and a model of the learned jurist, with a transparency that reflects the springtime of the heart and the ray of a living conscience. As we lay together the foundation stone of Imam Al-Rida Mabarrat, we ask God Almighty to crown it with lasting human giving and to enrich it with the love and the care of Sayyed Ali.”
Fadlallah
Afterwards the girl Sahar Darwish delivered a speech, then Fadlallah spoke and said: “We meet once again in the embrace of the city of Nabatieh, the city which, as soon as you mention it, you summon up knowledge, creativity, martyrdom, pride, heroism and the dear stands taken in the face of the tyrannical governments and the despots who wanted to defile its land - the latest being the confrontation with the Zionist enemy. We summon up the harmony and the exemplary coexistence among all its components; we summon up the presence of its people in goodness and giving. And we meet to continue together the journey of the institutions of goodness: after Al-Rahma High School and the temporary building of Imam Al-Rida Mabarrat, here we are with you and with all the good people laying the foundation stone of a new building for Imam Al-Rida Mabarrat, which we promised, so that it may embrace within it orphans and difficult social cases. We shall not stop as long as there are pulses of goodness and giving in this nation, and as long as there are needs and requirements. In this we offer a model that joins other models of social solidarity and cooperation, for the sake of easing the pains of those in pain and the torments of the tormented, and for the sake of the advancement and development of this nation.”
He added: “The value on which these institutions were founded is that they set out from the people, and that they are a true expression of the joining together of the giving of good people. They did not come by a decree from this state or that, or from this party or that; rather they are a sincere desire on the part of those who felt the needs of their society and mobilized the goodness overflowing in their hearts and in the hearts of the people. These institutions were the product of that goodness, which will not stop as long as those who run them want from them no reward, no thanks and no favour, but rather regard them as a work purely for God and for the service of His dependants.”
He continued: “Reality and the conditions the country lives in have forced us to pull out our thorns with our own fingernails. This is what happened in security, when the resistance set out to remove the occupation that crouched on the chest of the homeland, after the Lebanese army had not been provided with the capacities needed for that; and this is what happened in securing social, educational and health institutions; and this is what is happening now in electricity, water and other requirements, where the state is absent from securing what is required and from looking after the security and the requirements of its citizens.
But this must not be the rule, for what we want is the state - the state capable of protecting its people, achieving their security, defending them and securing their requirements; a strong, capable state, a state that plans. Unfortunately, until now we have not built a real state in this country; we are still a state of sects and denominations, each with its own calculations. In this we do not lack capacities and means; we have the means, if we free ourselves from corruption. What we lack is the decision to build this state. That is why we await the dialogue sessions - with all appreciation for the one who patronizes them - to discuss the subjects of the presidency of the republic, or of setting the wheel of the institutions in motion, or the electoral law, or the oil, or other matters; whereas it is the institutions that ought to do this, and they ought not to accept the passing of a single day before we elect a president of the republic and set the wheel of the institutions in motion.”
He said: “The scale of the challenges facing us is great, whether at the social, economic or security level, amid terrorism's continuing attempts to seize opportunities to penetrate our reality; or at the external level, especially the Zionist enemy, which will not rest until it avenges its defeat in 2006 and which is awaiting the opportune moment for that; or the takfiri terrorism that threatens the country's eastern borders; or those violent winds coming from the region's conflicts, especially in Syria. The international and regional tug of war cannot be confronted with this flabbiness and this marking of time; nor should the heavy burden remain cast upon the shoulders of the army and the security forces with their limited capacities, or of those who support them in performing their role. Rather, this should be supported by a strong political consensus and a capable state. From here, there is a great responsibility on all the political forces to emerge from this coldness in dealing with the challenges and to face them with a spirit of responsibility, and to deal seriously with all the initiatives that have been and are being put forward to solve the crises, under whatever heading. Let the rule in that be the one Imam Ali proclaimed - ‘I shall be at peace so long as the affairs of the Muslims are at peace' - so that we say: I shall be at peace so long as the affairs of the homeland are at peace.”
He added: “We call for a serious dialogue, not for dialogue as we conduct it - a dialogue of killing time in the expectation of changes here and there, which may not come, and if they do come will not be to our account but to the account of the decision-makers in this world, who take their own interests into consideration and most often at the expense of our interests. It has become clear that the decision is now in the hands of the political forces, and they are able to emerge from all this marking of time if they decide to. We are sorry that the world around us and the world far from us should call on us to solve our problems while we do not do so, even though we see the extent of our human being's suffering.”
He concluded: “We shall not lack points of light. The points of light are present in this people, who are patient, who sacrifice, who give and who make strength out of weakness. This meeting is one of those points of light: in it we shall not be content with laying the foundation stone of a new building; rather we want to lay the foundation stone for building a strong homeland capable of facing the challenges - a stone through which we express our human being, a stone that secures for us a fitting position before God, for a position before Him is built only by serving the people who need our service. Thank you for your presence, and until new meetings.”
Then Jaber, Fadlallah and those present laid the Mabarrat's foundation stone.
