In Memoriam

How does one speak of a man who loathed making noise? Who shunned grand gestures and every form of display, even though his brilliance and nobility, much to his own chagrin, were locked in thoroughly unfair competition with his extreme modesty? The task is particularly difficult. All the more so because the man himself, never fond of the media, interviews, honors or public exposure, would have disapproved of the rather perilous exercise undertaken by the author of these lines. And yet it is precisely because Sheikh Michel el-Khoury, who passed away on July 4, 2026, just shy of one hundred, had chosen the path of silence and discretion, faithful to his leitmotif that “one must serve rather than serve oneself,” with the state and its primacy taking precedence over everything else, that speaking of him now seems absolutely necessary, at a time when Lebanon is undergoing such profound decay. All the more so because his vision of Lebanon and of its role remains more relevant than ever.

The spirit and legacy of the Ulama Mohammed Hassan al-Amine, leading authority of Lebanese-centered, statist, and Amelite Shiism, remain more relevant than ever, five years after his passing. Five years ago, on 10 April 2021, the Shia scholar Mohammed Hassan al-Amine died in Sidon of COVID contracted at the age of seventy-five. Lebanon had long been collapsing before his eyes — and it continued inexorably to come apart after him. Perhaps paradoxically magnanimous on this occasion, the Grim Reaper granted this wise and gentle man — as it had, nearly a decade earlier, to his friend Hani Fahs — the opportunity to be spared further suffering in the face of the appalling spectacle of the continuing agony of the Land of the Cedar, and, with it, of the Shia community. No doubt finitude made him a gracious and final bow by removing him from this world before his darkest prophecies began to be fulfilled with such precision. Or perhaps this is simply that ultimate consolation which allows us to survive the disappearance of the fundamental landmarks that had gradually underpinned an entire vision of politics founded on moderation, coexistence and peace.

If I write these words today, it is not out of ethics, friendship, or politeness, but out of the immense respect I hold for a man who gave so much to Lebanon and who remained an unknown soldier. This man's name is Mohammed Hussein Shamseddine, and from 1992 to 2026 he thought and drafted the majority of the political literature that formed the cornerstone upon which we built the narrative of this country's sovereignty and independence. For Mohammed Hussein Shamseddine, sovereignty and independence were always bound to national unity, upon which they directly depended. And whenever that national unity was broken, whatever the reason, it inevitably brought with it a rupture in the country's independence and sovereignty.

Forty days ago, Mohammed Hussein Shamseddine passed away. An exceptional mind, a Shia democrat, a thinker of the living together, and an inveterate supporter of preserving Greater Lebanon. This article is not so much a tribute as it is a precise testimony of everything this man—humble, discreet, and unknown to the general public—was and what he brought to the public debate. He is a calm, slender, taciturn man. Every day, in the early afternoon, he arrives at the March 14 general secretariat, settles in quietly and gives himself over to his reflections, his readings, his writings. A new initiative, no doubt, is taking shape, worked out with his fellow travellers Samir Frangieh and Fares Souaid. The ideas Frangieh puts to paper, in French or in Arabic, pass through Shamseddine's hands — he reflects, reciprocates, adds his comments and observations. The intellectual and political osmosis between the two men, intensely human, is total, and the result always substantial, carried by a philosophical, humanist, profound vision of conviviality.

It was February 4, 2021, on a bleak winter morning. The body of Lokman Slim, the archetype of the committed intellectual, had just been found in his car, riddled with bullets. One more nail in the coffin of a Lebanon rotten and gnawed to the marrow by Hezbollah’s criminal hubris. Lokman’s abduction the previous day and his subsequent assassination followed a pattern long familiar. In Lebanon, for more than half a century, anyone who dares to challenge the prevailing totalitarian order becomes a potential target for elimination. Intellectuals, in particular, have always been expendable. Their disappearance rarely ignites nationalist fervor, communal solidarity, localist reflexes, or clan outrage, because they command no mobs, no militias, no crowds of blind adherents. In that sense, they are easy prey — and therefore preferred prey.

How miserly time is. Lebanon and the East have known few women like Salma Merchak Slim, mother of the thinker-martyr Lokman, who passed away yesterday, longing to be reunited with him, without having seen human justice strike down his assassins. Salma Merchak survived her son by exactly five years, her tears flowing inward, within a vast heart saturated with sorrow, only rarely moistening her cheeks. She remained present, upright, unbroken, alongside her daughter Rasha al-Ameer, Monika Bergmann, and her son’s companions, steadfast in defending the values of dialogue, acceptance of the other, knowledge, culture, and the Enlightenment.