Appendix: Memorial Address by Mazhar al-Anbari, Former Minister of Justice

At the memorial ceremony for the late Dr. AbdulWahab Homad

Distinguished guests,

A foreign poet, mourning a fellow poet, said: "Time cannot cut the wing from the bird; bird and wing fall together like a single feather. Neither the eagle nor the poet, nor anyone who has once soared in his life, can die and pass away as all other things die."

Our gathering here today is further proof that whoever has once soared in his life does not pass away and sink into oblivion as other people do.

I have not stood here to speak about a talent for law. Talent, as you know, is a blessing that heaven grants to whom it will, and human beings deserve no credit for the genius and gifts that heaven bestows. People are asked, rather, how they have tended the secrets God placed in them.

In any case, I do not put talent first; what matters is how the gifted man uses his gift. Did he spend his effort in developing it, refining it and serving it, so as to bring it to whatever perfection is possible, and beyond? Did he set it on the path of truth and goodness? Did he bear the trust that the heavens, the earth and the mountains refused to bear? All this depends on a man's will, and one day he will be asked about it before God and before people.

It is no accident that Shawqi says:

In the service of the law, our departed friend perfected the tools of learning and put abundant effort into his studies, earning his doctorate in France. He returned home and taught criminal law at the Faculty of Law in Damascus, and in 1950 he worked with the late Mr. Georges Jabbara (a counselor at the Court of Cassation) and Judge Riad al-Midani, of the legislation department of the Ministry of Justice, on adapting the Code of Criminal Procedure from the Lebanese Code of Criminal Procedure, itself taken from the French Code of Criminal Procedure with a few minor changes. He went on to write books on the general part of the Penal Code, on criminal procedure and on political crimes.

Years later he resigned from Damascus University and taught for four years at the University of Rabat and for fifteen years at Kuwait University, and during that period he wrote books on the general part of the Kuwaiti penal law, on Kuwaiti criminal procedure and on international crime.

After his return home he reissued his book on the general part of the Syrian Penal Code and his book on Syrian criminal procedure, adding to the knowledge in both and revising some of the views he had expressed in them. He also published another book, titled "Advanced Studies in Comparative Criminal Jurisprudence."

Truth be told, his books filled a great gap in the legal library, with abundant learning, a clear pen and sound judgment.

Professor Homad placed his learning in the service of the great causes. He fulfilled a national duty in presenting these legal studies, and he hoped that men of criminal law would carry them forward through their experience, in defense of right and of the law. He held that safeguarding human dignity is the most sacred duty laid upon the lawmaker and the man of government, and that no homeland can have dignity unless the dignity of every individual in it is protected.

He saw that the edifice of criminal law was being battered today by stormy currents of criticism and abuse, because of the growth of crime and the failure of the efforts modern societies make to halt its steady rise. So he made his advanced study of comparative criminal jurisprudence, his last book, a descriptive work that keeps to the legal schools of thought without neglecting what application demands in real social life, and he put forward proposals in theory and in practice, so that his study would not remain a critique content to diagnose the disease without helping in the search for the cure.

Our departed friend worked as a lawyer in Aleppo at the start of his career. The legal profession is, without doubt, a profession of giants, and its mission the highest of missions. It may be the only profession that its members leave for the highest offices of state, and when they leave office they do not hesitate to hurry back to it, prouder than ever to belong to it, proud to return to the shelter of its spreading shade and to help raise its fluttering banner. There is nothing a man can hope to achieve in his life that the legal profession cannot give him and bestow on him, whether it be wealth, glory, fame, public service, or the power to establish right, achieve justice, rescue the needy and mend the rifts of the human soul. In the field of the law there is room to reach every goal and quench every thirst, and it is no exaggeration to say that the legal profession, were it not a great profession, would be a delightful and exciting pastime. Yet it has always been, and will always be, the hardest and harshest of professions, the most beset with dangers and perils. Its road is long, and its beginning above all is full of obstacles and hurdles. Whatever money there is in the law, there is more in other professions; whatever fame or material gain it offers, it is not the best way to such material ends. As for its mission, its ideals, its legendary feats of heroism, these are goals that can be reached only by one who is proof against error, willing to bear hardship, and heedless, in doing his duty, of any sacrifice or loss of any kind. The history of the legal profession is full of great lawyers who paid the heaviest price for the sake of justice and of right, and who rose to the rank of martyrs in doing their duty as they understood it, often understanding it ahead of their generation and of the society in which they lived.

Our departed friend found that theoretical knowledge and the treasures of general culture produce honorable practitioners of a profession, and he judged it better to form chosen men, dazzled by living justice, who would carry the torch of high ideals, pure and clear, up into the sky of social progress. So he chose to be a teacher of lawyers. He taught the law and trained generations of lawyers who were dazzled by theoretical knowledge as they were by living justice, and generations studied under him who became judges of whom the country is proud, for their learning and for their character.

I served as Minister of Justice not long after he had left the ministry, and I taught the Penal Code that he used to teach. I know that at the Ministry of Justice he was careful to apply the law and to protect the judges and enable them to do their work as fully and as well as possible, and that in his teaching he was eager to benefit his students and spur them on to seek ever more knowledge.

Gentlemen,

Among the Roman stories is this one. A famous actor named Florus asked his wise friend Agrippinus, "Aren't you going down now to attend the festival?" "No," he said. The actor said: "And shouldn't I go? I have to play a part in the play before Caesar and the public, and I cannot stay away." His friend told him: "As for you, go and play your part in the tragedy before Caesar and the public." The man was astonished and said: "How can you advise me to go when you yourself refuse to go?" Agrippinus, his patience exhausted, replied: "You, my friend, are the ordinary thread in the robe, so do not ask me to be just another ordinary thread. I, I am the purple thread that gives the robe its luster, its brilliance and its distinction. So go about your business, and leave me to mine."

In the faded, sickly fabric of life, AbdulWahab Homad was the purple thread.

I have spoken of our departed friend as though we were strangers:

Yet I know that his colleagues and his students remember him always, and that whatever sash the universities where he taught may wear, now or in days to come, it will not lack a purple thread of loftiness and splendor that Professor Homad added to the fabric of their life, a thread that will go on shining and gleaming for as long as these universities endure, and as long as they keep the desire to increase learning and knowledge, to look to the future, to aspire to unity and to defend Arab human rights.

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