Beirut, on October 22, 2013

His Eminence the Sheikh Akl of the Druze Unitarian Community the Sheikh Naim Hassan received at the House of the Community in Verdun – Beirut a delegation from the Constitutional Body of the religions and cultures forum for Development and Dialogue, presided by the Sheikh Hussein Chehade in presence of the Head of the Cultural Committee at the Confessional Council of the Druze Unitarian Community and the member of the forum’s Constitutional Body the Sheikh Sami Abou El Mona.

His Eminence emphasized before the delegation the necessity of the permanent dialogue between all the partisans of religions and confessions, in order to come up with effective results that protect the diversity characterizing Lebanon as well as the Islamic union and fortifies coexistence between the Muslims and Christians in the East and in the World as well. He also declared that the fruitful and honest dialogue based on the principles of constructive cooperation is the one and only warrantee to solve the crises through which all of us are going.

Following the meeting, the Sheikh Chehade pronounced a speech mentioning that the delegation has submitted to his Eminence the Sheikh Akl the final form of the forum’s constitutional statement. It also offered to his Eminence an invitation to attend the launching of the forum on October 30th. He added: “It gave me pleasure to listen to important suggestions from his Eminence the Sheikh Akl and these will be the direct concern of the control committee in its preparation for the programs related to the forum”.

The Sheikh Chehade declared: “the meeting was an occasion through which we discussed the painful situation in Lebanon and both the Arab and Islamic World, and that will never end unless by opening all the paths of religious and political dialogue. We really hope that the forum would complete such institutions so that we would all cooperate to move from dialogue to the topics of human, development and civil peace in Lebanon in particular, and the East and the whole world in general, considering that “the civilizations crisis nowadays is a crisis of justice and ethics”.