The Al-Mabarrat Scouts Association honoured its former president Hajj Afif Al-Zayyat at a large ceremony it held at the Al-Saha heritage village in Beirut, in the presence of former speaker Hussein Al-Husseini, the Minister of Youth and Sports Mohammad Fneish, MP Fadi Alameh, the Iranian cultural attaché Mohammad Mahdi Shariatmadar, the president of Al-Mabarrat Charitable Association Sayyed Ali Fadlallah, the new president of the Al-Mabarrat Scouts Dr. Mohammad Baqer Fadlallah, in addition to political, security, military, judicial, municipal, scouting, social and educational figures, the family and friends of the man being honoured, and a number of the leaders of the Al-Mabarrat Scouts Association.
The celebration featured a speech from the friends of the man being honoured delivered by the president of the Al-Jarrah Scouts Association, the lawyer Mohammad Issa, in which he spoke “of the qualities and merits of Commander Afif Al-Zayyat, his role in activating scout work and his constant effort to establish firm relations binding the Al-Mabarrat Scouts Association with the other associations.”
As for the president of Al-Mabarrat Charitable Association Allama Sayyed Ali Fadlallah, he spoke of the role of “Commander Afif Al-Zayyat, pioneering in founding the Al-Mabarrat Scouts Association, his care for and embrace of the leaders, and his constant keenness to build their mission-driven character and their sense of openness and engagement in society.”
He noted that “Hajj Afif Al-Zayyat wanted the Al-Mabarrat Scouts Association not to be an isolated, insular association embodying the sectarian and denominational Lebanese political reality in its divisions, its conflicts and its tensions; rather he wanted it to be an open association, crossing in its communication all the ramparts and barriers made to serve factional projects here and factional projects there.”
Fadlallah held “that much of what is put forward in the name of religion in this homeland inflames its great wounds rather than binding them - and how much we need, as political, cultural and scholarly leaderships, to embody such a scout spirit in approaching our crises, which almost throw us into the abyss of collapse.”
He concluded: “Commander Hajj Afif Al-Zayyat is among the great and first pioneers at Al-Mabarrat Charitable Association, and he has been ever present since the launch, at every stage of its development, its flourishing and its progress, and at every important turning point of the challenges it has faced.”
The celebration closed with the presentation of a commemorative shield in the name of the association and its leaders, offered to the man being honoured by the president of Al-Mabarrat Charitable Association, the president of the Al-Mabarrat Scouts Association and His Excellency the Minister of Youth and Sports, then the taking of commemorative photographs.
