Asked in his weekly seminar the following question: How could we confront the problem of the spread of Myth in our society? How does Islam view this problem? And did it set the basis for this confrontation, whether in the myth’s religious roots, or its social and political manifestation?

The Religious Authority, Sayyed Muhammad Hussein Fadlullah, said:

Islam has focused on the mind as a fundamental value and as an essential criterion in the field of doctrine and faith to open up on knowing God, the most exalted, and believing in the Hereafter. God also wanted the mind to be the primary filter that purifies the cultural legacy and keeps the movement of thought within the scientific and objective framework.

Thus, we believe that there is a strong association between myth and ignorance. Wherever ignorance spreads, myth would flourish. Conversely, a society that adopts scientific methods will abandon myth, or at least restrict it to narrow and besieged circles.

It is true that the unseen represents a part of our belief, but only in the issues that are related to God and the Hereafter. As to what concerns this world, God wants us to act in accordance to the universal laws whose causes and effects could be discovered and benefited from.

There is another reason of the spread of myth in our societies that has to do with the political and social deterioration that inflicted the nation, as a result of the role of colonialism and arrogance in making the nation ignorant and backward. Colonialism even fought any source of creativity or academic achievement in our nation, and encouraged myth, leading to the deterioration of the entire nation, and to accepting the culture of deviation, including the colonial projects and plans.

On the other hand, Islam has vehemently fought all sources of myth including magic, soothsaying and fortune telling.  The Prophet(p.)’s   reaction to the belief in myth is crystal clear.   When the sun eclipsed on the same day his son, Ibrahim, died, and the people associated between the two events, the Prophet(p.)  is known to have said: “The sun and the moon are two of God's Ayats, that do not eclipse for the death of any human being".

We also have to realize that in addition to the forms of popular and political myths that grow in our society, there is another myth that the West, especially the Americans, are trying to impose on us. They want us to believe that all our problems and sufferings are a result of our concepts and our religion. They want us to relinquish our religion and substitute it with the new religion they are proposing: It is a religion that poses as a democracy while it is actually a dictatorship that is concealed by some big political objectives.

There is a major political myth that the US President is trying to convince those whose minds are small. He talks about Lebanon as a model for democracy to suggest to the world that he is the one who made it, while everyone knows that Lebanon since it was established is a unique case in the region in that it thrives on political freedom and that it is vulnerable to all kinds of change whether from the West or the East.

But at the same time, we warn that we are living a kind of political myth that made the majority of Lebanese deal with the political and sectarian symbols who have proved to be a failure as a destiny, they can do nothing about. This is probably because the Lebanese did not try to institute change as a unified people but rather as sects. Had they done so do they would have been able to change the corrupt situation, and punish those who committed the crime of making the country a farm for others, and who are still striving to accomplish what the arrogant powers want, away from the true spirit of independence and the dictates of true patriotism.

  We all have to call on the new Lebanese generations that are concerned about their future to engage in a new political and social contract that besieges the failures and rejects the sectarians, thus paving the way for the birth of an open Lebanese mentality that confronts political social and religious myth… A mentality that will make Lebanon one of the world's rejecting fronts of all kinds of tutelage , and any claim of mercy that might carry nothing but  torture and death.