ASIA/LEBANON - New Mufti installed, a man of dialogue

Beirut (Agenzia Fides) – Today 16 September, the new Mufti of the Republic of Lebanon Sheikh Abdel Latif Deria elected in August, will assume his duties. The ceremony of investiture will be held at Mohammad el-Amin Mosque in the presence of the Premier Tannam Salam and other leading citizens of the country where for months the political groups which dominate the political scene have failed to come to an agreement for the election of a new President. Maronite Patriarch Boutros Bechara Rai returned from the United States interrupting a pastoral visit to take part in the ceremony.
The 61 year old Derian, expected to remain Mufti of the Republic of Lebanon until he is 72, is known as a man of dialogue and farsightedness. According to the Lebanese press his investiture will very soon render possible an interreligious meeting to identify a common front for the leaders of Lebanon’s different religious communities to divert the danger that Lebanon is also destabilised by the Jihadists in action in the Middle East.
Lebanon’s new Mufti, is his first speeches after his election, explicitly stigmatised clashes between Shiite and Sunni Muslims which contributes considerably to bloodshed and destabilisation all over the Middle East region, and he strongly condemned the forced uprooting of local Christian communities. “Relations between Shiite and Sunni Muslims in Lebanon – Derian said among other things – are not as they should be. (…). What we are doing to each other in Syria, Iraq, in Lebanon and in Yemen and Libya, is far worse than what the Israelis have done in Gaza and in Palestine”. “In less than five years – the new Lebanese Mufti said with emphasis- wars between us have left half a million persons dead and 12 million displaced, not counting the oppression and uprooting of Christians and other communities. Phenomena which must be combatted day after day”. (GV) (Agenzia Fides 16/9/2014).