An   edited lecture by the by The Religious Authority, Sayyed Muhammad Hussein Fadlullah

 Delivered in the city of Homs (Syria) on the 12^th of March 2001

In this lecture, the Sayyed sheds the light on the significance of having an objective and rational Islamic discourse in building a civilized and advanced nation. He also highlights the importance of dialogue in conveying one’s thought provided that it seeks to reach common factors and stays away from fanaticism.

 Taking about a discourse, any discourse, is talking about how a human being communicates his thought to the other, and how the other lives in his thought. Our problem in all the ages of backwardness has always been that some of us were trying to besiege others, impose their ideas on them, persecute and suffocate them. Thus, we lived the selfishness of thought in an environment of backwardness, since the story of human thought has always been the movement of one's mind inside the mind of the other. This leads to creativity, originality and development. But when thought suffocates and lives selfishness it will collapse and ultimately die.

Our problem in this East, and the Arab world in particular, is that we do not master the rhetoric that expresses what we think of, and that we are mainly interested in how it echoes, be that the religious, cultural social or political rhetoric, in ourselves and not in the other. That is why the other no longer understands us, since we are not concerned about him. We, in our Arab world, enjoy the plurality of the religious, secular and nationalistic thoughts, but we also live a fanaticism in both the secular and religious trends. Fanaticism is not a product of religion; it is the product of emotionality and instinctually that grows in an atmosphere of backwardness and reproduces it.

Fanaticism emerges from cultural religious, political and secular weaknesses, for those who truly understand and believe in what they call for; are not afraid of giving freedom to the other. Those who confiscate freedom are those who are afraid that freedom will confiscate their backwardness, weakness and hesitation.

The International Arrogance that imposed itself on us. It has arranged for the backwardness to develop, making it live in a "civilized" way is that has nothing to do with civilization except may be an external layer… It incited strife to ensure that tribal and religious fanaticism would grow – making each individual and group live self-fanaticism.

When we confront the world challenges that try to cancel our identity in the name of globalization and seek to dominate us politically and economically, we ought to think: How do we talk to the world, and even before that how do we talk with one another.

It is because we do not know how to conduct an objective dialogue that the fanaticisms prospered and acted on fragmenting us politically and religiously and turning us into foes. The Islamic discourse should broaden its scope to include the rhetoric of one to the other, since your Islam is the humanitarianism living in the other.

Thus, humanitarianism is the image of our inner self; it is the image of our mind, heart and ability to change the reality.

Why should let our emotions and instincts dominate our thought, if we seek to conduct a dialogue and reach understandings. The role of thought is to rationalize the instinct and not to succumb to it. If dialogue aims at making the two sides one, and if pluralism is maintained in a single united body, then why do not we hold a dialogue to see what is objective in any idea and study it… then dialogue does not aim at scoring points. It is a means for searching for truth and reaching it…

You are free to choose the thought you want, but you shoulder the responsibility of making such a choice, for he who does not bear a responsibility when he makes such a choice would be moving without setting any goal… Thus, when you weigh between the positive and negative consequences of your choice, it means that you understand the complexity of making a choice.

If we try earnestly to acquire a scientific knowledge and an objective Islamic discourse that will allow us to rebuild our civilization and revive our culture, we would outdo others, because their progress was limited in time, while we can develop an open-ended culture that relies on the teachings of Islam, which was sent for the good of all mankind.