Al Maaref University in Lebanon Holds a Conference About
“Family Empowerment - The Social Foundation of Human Civilization”
The MECC Secretary General Dr. Michel Abs Calls for Organizing an Islamic-Christian Conference to Defend the Family, Empower it and Enhance Its Role in the Crisis-ridden Society
The Faculty of Religions and Human Sciences and the Research Center for Humanities and Religious Sciences at Al Maaref University - Lebanon held the fourth international conference under the title “Empowering the Family - The Social Foundation of Human Civilization,” on Thursday 25 and Friday 26 April 2024, in the conference hall on the university campus - Beirut.
Participants were specialized researchers from Lebanon, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Algeria, Tunisia, Uganda and Germany. As well as attendees were religious, social and political figures, as well as diplomatic, judicial and cultural personalities.
The conference included five panels, spread over two days, which revolved around many topics: first, the impact of intellectual and social transformations on the disintegration of the Western family, second, the disintegration of the family in the service of the capitalist economy, third, the paths and agreements for dismantling the family, fourth, the family is the basis of human society, and fifth, empowering the family is a human civilizational project.
The fourth panel of the conference was moderated by the Secretary General of the Middle East Council of Churches (MECC) Dr. Michel Abs, who delivered a speech that you can watch in the video, in which he spoke about the importance of the family and its functional and historical role in establishing and developing human society, stressing the inability to dispense with it or cancel its role despite all modernity’s attempts to avoid the family, ignore it, or marginalize its role.
At the end of the panel, the Secretary General Dr. Michel Abs praised the importance of this conference, declaring that the family values that the lecturers spoke about are also the values of Christians in the East. Based on this, Dr. Abs call on to hold an Islamic-Christian conference in order to defend the family, empower it, and enhance its role in the crisis-ridden society in order to avoid pathological conditions if the family is absent. The Secretary General's proposal was welcomed by the audience and will be followed up later.
Noting that the fourth panel included various interventions with several topics, which are the role of the social values of Islam and the West in family planning, with Sheikh Dr. Ahmed Vaezi - Iran; The family is the basis of the moral, social and human structure (a cognitive vision), with Sheikh Hassan Al Hadi - Lebanon; Towards a culture, laws, legislation and educational curricula for family protection, with Dr. Leila Belkhir - Algeria; And the motives and backgrounds of being forced to accept homosexuality in Western societies, with Dr. Souraya Ben Masmia - Tunisia.
It worth mentioning that during the conference, research papers were presented and addressed problems around the topics that were discussed, as well as many conclusions and recommendations were issued.
