The president of Al-Mabarrat Charitable Association Allama Sayyed Ali Fadlallah patronized the iftar held by Al-Mabarrat Association at Al-Rahma High School in Kfarjoz, in the presence of the representative of the speaker of parliament Mr. Nabih Berri, MP Hani Qbeisi; MP Yassine Jaber; the representative of MP Mohammad Raad, Ali Qansou; the cultural attaché at the Iranian embassy in Beirut Mohammad Shariatmadar; the president of the Higher Customs Council Brigadier General Asaad Tufaili; the representative of the Islamic Jihad Movement in Lebanon Ihsan Ataya; the organizational official of the Amal Movement in the South region Bassem Lameh; the vice-president of the General Labour Confederation in Lebanon Hassan Faqih; and heads of municipalities, mukhtars and figures.
The public relations director at Al-Mabarrat Association Jaafar Aqil delivered a speech in which he spoke of the association's achievements at every level, and Sayyed Fadlallah gave a speech in which he said: “The most important thing we enjoy in the blessed month of Ramadan is these gatherings, when we come together with all our diversities - religions, denominations, and political and social positions - to meet around the goal for which God sent the prophets and messengers. It is natural that this should happen in a month whose title is the month of God, for the month of God cannot but be the month of communication and encounter for the good of the human being and of life. He, Glorified and Exalted, said to us: {Cooperate in righteousness and piety, and do not cooperate in sin and aggression}.. He is the One who made among the first responsibilities of a human being, so that they may be near to Him, that they be of help to their fellow human being - for “all creatures are God's dependants, and the dearest of them to Him is the one most beneficial to His dependants.. and whoever brings joy to the people of a household”.. A person does not realize the meaning of worship until they become one who strives to meet people's needs, and the best of people with Him is the one who benefits people. In God's reckoning there is no place for the selfish who are absorbed in themselves or in the narrow frame whose concern they live, nor for those who do not feel the pains of the people around them, nor for those who fragment their humanity so that they sense the pains of those of their sects, their denominations and their positions, and of those in their own countries or of their political and social positions, while they do not sense the pains of those who are not of their sect, their denomination or their political position - indeed they may oppress them.. Is this not what we live in our reality, when one of us sees that it is the right of the people of their sect or their denomination or their political position to attain a dignified life and safety, and does not see that for others and does not sense their pains, so that humanity becomes fragmented for them?”
He added: “Those who ascribe themselves to God can only be, as God is with His creation, giving without reckoning and not discriminating among them - He gives even to those who openly show Him enmity and disobey Him. Dear ones, we will not be able to build a cohesive, strong society or homeland, in whatever frame we live - family or tribal - nor to secure its presence, if we do not free ourselves from our selfishness.. if we do not emerge from the labyrinths of our private interests, whether personal or sectarian.. if we do not meet without any barriers that confiscate our humanity, and if we do not cooperate for the sake of our people, all our people, and for the sake of the homeland, all the homeland, and so that the future may be for everyone.”
He continued: “These institutions are a witness to what the encounter on goodness for the human being can do, for they came into being only through the meeting of the wills to do good, and they will not be able to develop or to continue carrying out their role except through this encounter.. Hence these institutions have been keen, since their launch and in practice, to shade all the diversities of this homeland and for everyone to shelter under them.. We take pride that those who took part in building these institutions are all this diversity, and we will be keen to maintain it, to remain faithful to this diversity and to preserve it.”
He said: “There is another witness to what the meeting of the wills to do good may achieve, and it is the time we are living.. For on the twenty-fifth of May comes the anniversary of the liberation, which takes us back to the day that is considered a turning point in the conflict with the Zionist enemy and a qualitative leap whose positive results we still reap, after it made this enemy think long before embarking on a war, when entering Lebanon had been a stroll. The world watched, live, the defeat of the army said to be invincible and its departure from Lebanon in the darkest night and at extreme speed, leaving behind its vehicles and its equipment so as to lighten the burden of flight, forgetting the thousands of collaborators who gathered at the barbed-wire fences demanding that the enemy open the gates so they might escape with their collaboration. This victory, followed by the July victory in 2006, would not have happened but for the coming together of the Lebanese of all their sects and political denominations and the joining of their efforts - between the one who fought and the one who gave money; the one who extended a hand of support in politics and the one who offered supplication.. At that time all the sectarian or denominational and even political banners fell away, so that there was one voice in confronting the occupier.. apart from a few who were on the margins of the occupation and departed with it, or of whom some traces remain in defeatist political mentalities.. For this victory was but the child of that unifying unity.. and it is what defeated the enemy and completed what the rifle had begun in the process of cleansing the land and fortifying it.”
He added: “On the anniversary of the victory we want the value of this victory to take root.. We will not be content, as many are content, with pride in this victory; rather we want it to grow, to become greater and to swell - not only in souls but on the land as well, this land humanized by the abundant blood that watered it and the great sacrifices that adorned it.. that we hold fast to this land, which has become for us a place of honour and pride as it is the place of victory.”
He noted: “We will not be able to preserve the victory except by preserving our internal unity, which some seek to shake and tamper with. We face great events in the region, and everyone follows the American-Israeli display of force at the region's doors and this threatening and menacing, in an effort to make use of what the enemy sees as its opportunity to weaken the Arab and Islamic body, after the denominational, sectarian and political strife has eaten away at it what it has.. This aims at liquidating the Palestinian cause and everyone who stands in the way of the arrogant project in the region.”
He said: “We are called to consolidate our unity in the face of the enemy's arrogance and its recklessness, to be cautious, and to press on with preparing the conditions for a successful confrontation with the enemy, which does not cease to continue its threats and its manoeuvres and to simulate a new war - and to stand in confrontation with the threats that come from beyond the seas.”
Fadlallah called for “standing together to restore health to the internal arena after the elections, where the electoral discourse broke loose from its bounds and left its negative effects; and for working by every means to confront corruption, so as to make the people of this country feel that they are dignified and honoured and that they live in the care of a strong and just state in which the problems of unemployment are treated and the difficult social problems are faced after all this laxity over years in placing the finger on the wound and healing it, and after the neglect of addressing the simplest files relating to electricity, waste and others.
The Lebanese await, after the completion of the parliamentary speakership election, haste in completing the picture in the cabinet, so that the state's institutions may be complete in order to face the external challenges that are reflected on the Lebanese interior, and everything happening in the surroundings that is reflected on the internal atmosphere.”
He noted that “as we stand on the threshold of the fortieth year of these institutions, which set out to ease our society's pains and its wounds, we repeat the affirmation that these institutions were not and will not be the institutions of an individual or a family; they were and will remain the institutions of the whole nation.. We are all concerned with the responsibility for these institutions, for they embrace this society's orphans, its people with disabilities, its elderly and its sick, and whoever needs us to extend our hands to them. Let each of us feel the responsibility, and each has their role in that: with money, with offering advice and counsel, with constructive criticism, with helping them to carry out their role.. And at the same time, let us stand in the face of those who raise noise and irresponsible talk that proceeds from no religious or legal basis.. We do not claim that these institutions are infallible or that those working in them do not make mistakes.. There are mistakes, but we are keen not to cover them up and not to defend them; rather we are always in a workshop of reform, reconsideration and course correction.”
Fadlallah concluded: “Our choice will remain to raise the structure high and to tend it with the means we possess, and not to turn our backs on all of that - with the help and accompaniment God has provided us in the hearts of the sincere and the loving. We will continue the road and complete the journey.. and our goal is always God, His pleasure and working towards what He has called us to of serving His dependants and His people, all His people.”
