In the Name of Allah, the most gracious, the most Merciful

Thanks and praise are due to Allah, peace and blessings are upon his best creature Muhammad bin Abdullah who came with the complete right religious even though the atheist do not accept that, peace and blessings are upon infallible Imams from his family, and permanent curse may be upon their enemies till the day of judgement.

May Allah multiply your and our rewards on the Imam Sadiq (PBUH) martyrdom. We congratulate you and bless this conference.

Allah said: “the Mercifull, He taught the Quran, created Man, and taught Man Quran.” Allah is the most truthful.

After the grace of existence, the first and best grace is to have the religion of right which is introduced through the prophet Muhammad (PBUH&HF) to show it to the entire human beings, a religion which is full of grace and dignity. The prophet (PBUH&HF) tried his best to edify humanity using his rulings and duties and obligations of Islam. He (PBUH&HF) ordered us to prioritize knowledge as it is so important to human life. With knowledge, nations head other nations. Knowledge represents life and losing it means death, or worse than death. The dead gets rid of responsibilities, but the one who lacks knowledge cannot bear its consequences and is helpless to do them due to losing knowledge which may help him. If we consider these abundancy of fields of knowledge, we can find that they are of two general types: knowledge of religion (theology) and natural sciences which means all types of knowledge from which we can get the utmost advantage in living a good life.

Knowledge of religion is the responsibility of Hawzas, chief among them is the Hawza of Holy Najaf (mother of all Hawzas) which has been taken care of by Allah along the time. The Hawza of Holy Najaf takes its spirituality from Imam Ali’s holy shrine nearing it and is enlighten by the abundance of knowledge by his infallible Imam sons and specially Imam Jafar Al-Sadiq. Through their students, this pure tradition has been preserved, leaving to us seas of knowledge in which we are diving with the great minds that have studied under our righteous religious scholars (the living and the dead), may Allah be pleased with them all.

As for knowledge of bodies, it means the sciences that are taught in the schools, colleges and universities. The one who endowed himself for such honor has such types of various fields of knowledge without which Man’s needs cannot be met. Today, nations are in constant contest to advance and to rule the government in the knowledge that peoples have.

We congratulate, support and bless the efforts of university leaders, professors, and students, praying Allah to keep them on the right path. 

Knowledge has been enlarged and diversified that we need to classify them, though it was not enlarge at the beginning of history. There are scholars who had both types of knowledge: knowledge of religion and of bodies. Imam Jafar Al-Sadiq was one of the leading figures in such filed who took his knowledge from his ancestors (peace and blessings be upon them all). He (PBUH) set foundations to so many fields of knowledge which is still a considerable source for many. In other words, we can say that he (PBUH) is like a comprehensive university where all types of knowledge exist. So many fields were known at his time such as medicine, chemistry, mathematics, astrology, philosophy, linguistics and jurisprudence) not to mention other skills as debates, persuasion and the like. He would answer any question with a reasonable, precise answer related to the divine knowledge. He (PBUH) one the few in history who has such type of scientific and intellectual knowledge.  

Today, with Allah’s support, we have the opportunity to stand up here in this conference and we –in Holy Najaf- follow up the efforts of teachers and professors as well as students to have knowledge from this prestigious university. We pray Allah to bring all success to all in order to continue the march after our dear Imam Sadiq (PBUH) to save the wounded Iraq from the humiliation of following foreigners. Iraq is full of economic wealth and fortunes, enlightened minds, strategic geographical position, a matter that makes Iraq the focus of greedy aggressors.   

We would like to draw attention of the people in charge of the university that there is slow work in terms of academic excellence, lacking the incentives. There are also hidden malignant hands here and there trying to bring up atheism depending on the worldly knowledge that they have. Such people try to keep people away from Ahlulbait (PBUH), the source of religion and knowledge. Therefore, the university should be purified from such ideas, and the Hawza in Najaf is ready to answer all suspicious issues. 

I am here to serve you. I will put my trust in you, as there is a team from Hawza in Najaf and under the supervision of the religious authority whose mere job is to discuss all ideas and rectify them as well as refuting whatever false allegations.  

I pray Allah that there is no such people who wants to spread this poison among the youth, and leaders of the university should be alert lest this disease spreads on a wide scale that it will be difficult to treat it.

At last, we should know that knowledge is life.  With a good doctrine and looking forward to advancing, it is our ultimate goal. Allah says “o those who believe, response to Allah and His Messenger when you are called for what keeps you alive, and be informed that Allah exists between one’s soul and heart and we will stand in front of Him.”

Allah is the most truthful, the highest, the greatest.

Wassalam