| At the ceremony honouring 430 university graduates of Al-Mabarrat Association Fadlallah: We are working to build a generation that knows no exclusion or takfir of the other | ||
| The Al-Mabarrat Graduates Association honoured 430 university graduates at a ceremony held under the patronage of Allama Sayyed Ali Fadlallah in the hall of the UNESCO Palace in Beirut, in the presence of political, social and educational figures. Dr Mustafa Haidari delivered the graduates' speech and said: Al-Mabarrat Association was not and will not be a passing station in my life. In it I breathed the fragrance of faith and the meaning of being a human being useful to my family, my society and my homeland - self-sacrificing, giving, looking at those around me with the eye of love and mercy. In it I learned how to respect the other's mind and his experience in life; and in the midst of my modest experience I became certain of the depth of His Eminence's call, that the dialogue of minds enriches, bears fruit and strengthens the bonds of love that build souls and lay the foundation for the radiance of life. He added: Al-Mabarrat refined my spirit and made me aware of the meaning of being committed to my humanity and conscious of my responsibility towards myself and towards the other; and this is what made the other realize the importance of Al-Mabarrat's message and of its institutions in education and teaching. Al-Moussawi Then the president of the Graduates Association Ahmad Al-Moussawi spoke and said: Today we celebrate with you 430 graduates licensed in all specializations; this is the third cohort the association has honoured, and they were all brought up in the embrace of Al-Mabarrat Charitable Association before beginning the journey of higher studies at various universities and then plunging into work. Today there are 3,100 graduate members in the embrace of the Al-Mabarrat Graduates Association. He added: Among the most important aims of the Al-Mabarrat Graduates Association is strengthening communication with its graduates and benefiting from their academic expertise or securing work opportunities for them. It has been able to secure 255 work opportunities inside Al-Mabarrat's institutions, in addition to securing a network of relations with associations and institutions to secure work opportunities for these graduates. The association has succeeded in playing a great role in developing this process. Khoury Then there was testimony by the secretary of the Islamic-Christian Meeting Naji Khoury about the Lady Mary, and by the president of the union of leagues of alumni of the Catholic schools in Lebanon, who said: What unites us is far stronger than what may divide us. The recent events have proved that we are in the greatest need of gathering more around one another and of casting aside division and rancours. There is a great difference between our open Eastern cultures and those cultures coming to us from far, far away. We are the children of light and the children of the heavenly books; we have one spring and one estuary. As for those whom the winds of unbelief and blasphemy have carried to us, they have no Lord and no religion. He added: Our culture is the culture of building - building the free human being, the human being as the greatest value; while their culture is the culture of demolition, slaughter and takfir. And let no one think that the bearers of the banner of killing and terrorism are only the butchering fighters who have left the truth; for intellectual, psychological, cultural, religious, social and political terrorism has become like moss growing around us everywhere, threatening our being and striking at the shared principles on which we all grew up in this homeland. Fadlallah For his part, Fadlallah said: The aim was clear in building Al-Mabarrat's institutions, namely to build a generation that possesses strength - the strength of knowledge, but not just any knowledge: knowledge armed with faith. He said: We seek to build a generation that knows no exclusion or closure or takfir of the other; a generation that sees the common denominators in its relationship with others, with religions and denominations, and inside the homeland; a generation that sees that difference and diversity are the character of life, and that they are a richness and a treasure if dealt with well; a generation that feels responsible for making this homeland a model and an example of the ability of religions to coexist, to meet and to communicate. He addressed the graduates, saying: Your homeland needs you to protect it from the violent winds blowing upon it - the winds of sectarian and denominational fanaticisms, of elimination and exclusion, which have grown and are growing through ignorance, backwardness and a lack of awareness of religion in its authenticity and its truth, the religion of mercy, love and the extending of bridges to others. Therefore your role, young people, is to remove what has stuck in the minds of some who consider that their sincerity to their religion lies in withdrawing into themselves and closing themselves off from themselves and from others, so that their only concern is sincerity to their own particularity. He added: It is the right of your homeland and your religion upon you that you should continue the journey of knowledge and development in a world that casts aside stagnation - for whoever stands still is overtaken by time. As for your right upon this homeland, it is that it should open the doors for you so that you may pass through them towards wide horizons, so as to fulfil your ambitions; that it should not subject you to the calculations we have become used to in the employment system based on the denomination, the sect and the political party to which the job applicant belongs, nor should the state with its politicians make you loiter at the doors of this leader or that. He called on the state to emerge from improvisation to planning at the level of the quality of universities, so as to raise up university education, and at the level of the quality of specializations. The fields are open, and abundantly so, for literary and humanities specializations, law and political science, while the fields remain limited and not available to everyone in engineering, medicine and applied sciences. He stressed the necessity of raising up the university of the poor, so that it does not enter into political and non-political calculations. We want it to be far from these calculations, for its own sake, for the homeland's sake, for this generation and its future, and for the poor and the rich; we want it to be the university of everyone. |
