From Al Hasanayn with Love
Um Mahmud cried as she pressed her lips on his picture:" I wish it was me, he was our father, he was the father of all the orphans," the old woman cried as the funeral ceremony of Ayatollah Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah went on.
At The front of the procession, grown men, members of parliament, minister and clergy were literally shedding tears. Maybe he was their father.
In a sense Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah was a father, a spiritual father in the broadest sense of the word. Sayyed Fadlallah was originally from a Shiite southern village and was an outright supporter of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, yet living in a confessional society he constantly advocated dialogue among the sects and called for the rights of Muslims and Christians to live in harmony even during the brutal civil war. His name connoted unity and openness to others.
Observers have constantly voiced this trait in the Lebanese cleric through their writings. One of the first Lebanese journalists to have met him and written about him is Journalist Mona Sekariyeh. Her first encounter with Sayyed Fadlallah was in 1983, and what struck her first then was his ability to impact anyone he met even people who are of a different faith. When I asked her about him she seemed overwhelmed with emotions and said:" The human and ethical trait in him was part of his religious personality; I was never religious, and yet he encouraged me to go back and see him looking forward to a profoundly enlightening discussion; no question was a taboo. Loving him as you would love your father was inevitable."
But it wasn't only Lebanese who were delighted in his presence. A foreigner's visit to Lebanon seemed to always include a stop at the home of Sayyed Mohammad Hussein, even figures like former US president Jimmy Carter. Little did they know that throughout his sermons to his people for over 30 years he spoke in essence of what the people of the United States of America believe their country was founded upon: "... the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness... and justice for all..."
His unquestionable support for the resistance whether in Lebanon or Palestine had made him a target of the US and "Israel", yet this did not keep him from encouraging Jewish-Muslim dialogue.
Those who did have the privilege to meet with this exceptional person were touched by him. Frances Guy, British ambassador to Lebanon is one striking example: "The world needs more men like him willing to reach out across faiths, acknowledging the reality of the modern world and daring to confront old constraints" she states.
As I stood at his funeral trying to grasp what was actually happening I met my mother, and she asked me if I remembered how we met him every Friday at the old mosque when I was no older than 5 years old. There, he did what no Muslim clergy would ever do: he made sure that he gave men and women an equal duration of time for prayers, a sermon and an open discussion.
I remembered that we always sat in front, and I could never stop watching him and his voice still echoed in my heart to this day. And then my mother told me that her mother too had taken her to the mosque in Naba'a in east Beirut in the early 70s, but after the war broke out and segregation was forced upon the Lebanese she lost him. It wasn't until my mother was a young woman herself that she found him again in Imam Al Reda mosque in southern Beirut with the same fatherly smile. I then realized the universality of Sayyed Fadllallah and was thankful that he reached many generations.
His liberal thought was considered by him as part of the daring nature of Islam, where the human being would pursue the absolute truth of matters. Unfortunately, even some of his fellow Muslim and Shiite clerics failed to comprehend this about him.
But those who did had always considered him a fatherly figure who would listen and always tell them the truth.
"Today, we have lost a compassionate father, a wise guide, a fortified shelter, and a strong support that was present at all stages,"
Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah
Throughout my life, I have always supported the human being in his humanism and I have supported the oppressed. I think it is the person's right to live his freedom and it is her and his right to face the injustice imposed on each by revolting against it, using his practical, realistic and available means to end the oppressor's injustice toward him, whether it is an individual, a community, a nation, or a state; whether male or female."
Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah
