At the annual graduation ceremony for the students of Imam Ali High School in Maaroub, Allama Sayyed Ali Fadlallah declared: “Every year we await this gathering so that together we may present this abundant harvest, which we always look to and which we hope will remain abundant and distinguished.”
He said: “We meet today around the value of success and distinction, which represents a banner we should walk by and follow in all our lives. God wants us to be in the advanced position, and for distinction to be the character of our lives in everything in which we move - and this in turn represents a responsibility before God for which we will be asked when we stand before Him on the Day of Reckoning.”
He added: “We are here to affirm this value, and a school that carries this great name and this pioneering figure can only be the best and offer the finest, and must strive to be at the level of this Imam in terms of knowledge, strength, justice and the rest.”
He continued: “We have no partisanship. We call for complementarity and cooperation among the various institutions that seek to develop this society and to keep pace with the age in all the aspirations of knowledge, for we lack nothing to be at the forefront. We have the resolve, the minds and the means, for the stage is the stage of knowledge and the future belongs to knowledge. As a nation weakness and frailty crept into us when we were distracted from knowledge by moving strife and travelling wars.”
He said: “We call for marrying knowledge and faith; they must be in a position of complementarity and not of collision, for knowledge without faith may turn into a danger and a problem, just as faith without works turns into superstition, fanaticism and extremism.”
He continued: “We look to building this homeland, which we want to be a homeland of knowledge, faith, openness, encounter and the extending of bridges and communication among all its people.”
Fadlallah affirmed “the necessity of raising this generation with a mission-driven upbringing, so that when they assume a position they regard it as a responsibility and do not corrupt it but set it right and make it serve all people, not this denomination, this group or this sect”, stressing “that we raise a generation that works to ease this suffering our reality lives through, by way of a homeland of competence, values, justice and love”.
He addressed the students, saying: “You have great responsibilities towards your homeland, which needs your energies and your efforts, and you must continue the journey of knowledge and development so as to lift up all this painful reality.”
He affirmed that “the state has great responsibilities towards the graduates, by lifting up the universities so that they may offer the best”, stressing “the necessity of protecting the national university and developing it, so that it may not be the university of favouritism but the university of competence. It is the responsibility of the state and of all the political forces to preserve it, to keep it away from all the political and non-political tugs-of-war, squabbles and sensitivities, and to work to lift it up for the sake of the homeland and for the sake of this generation.”
He thanked all those working at the school for “their efforts, their dedication and their keenness to graduate these mission-driven generations that believe in open circles in this homeland, far from insularity, isolation and fanaticism”, valuing the families' role “because they are partners in bearing this responsibility”.
In closing, shields and certificates were distributed to the graduates.
The ceremony, attended by religious, municipal and social figures and the graduates' families, had opened with verses from the Holy Quran, then the national anthem, then a speech by the graduates, after which the school's students presented a set of anthems inspired by the occasion.
