00:02Bismillahirrahmanirrahim. Assalamu alaikum and a very good morning.
00:06I spent the better part of my life in service of the Lord.
00:10I've sat with hard decisions.
00:12I've felt a particular weight of knowing that how you decide will ripple far beyond the movement,
00:20touching lives and shaping norms in ways you may never fully see.
00:25And I've asked myself more times than I can count the question,
00:30nothing defines every serious leader.
00:33Am I giving this better than I found it?
00:37Not more prominent, not more celebrated, certainly not more popular,
00:43better, more trusted, more worthy of the faith placed in it by people who have nowhere else to turn.
00:50That question has never left me.
00:53And I suspect it has never left you either.
00:56Not if you have been paying attention to what this work truly asks of us.
01:02Because you know what it means to hold the line.
01:05And the line is being tested.
01:07You know the loneliness of a decision that is right but not popular.
01:11You know the discipline of faith serves the long term when the short term is pressing in from every direction.
01:19There is a gentleman.
01:20I want to say something directly about that experience.
01:24It is not a burden unique to any one of us.
01:27It is the shared condition of everyone in this room who takes their responsibilities seriously.
01:33And the fact that it is shared that you are not alone in carrying it is precisely why a platform
01:39like this matters so deeply.
01:43Leaders, they try it.
01:45And when they do, something goes with them, quietly, without announcement that we can never fully recover.
01:52The wisdom of how they navigated a particular crisis.
01:57The instincts they developed over years of facing institutional pressure.
02:02That wisdom lives in memory.
02:04And when memory steps down, it is gone.
02:07This is what it is all about today.
02:10We cannot afford to lose that.
02:12And the people who built this initiative have understood that with a clarity I find genuinely and milder.
02:20The Tunzaki lectures on leadership and stewardship are not a ceremonial series.
02:26They are serious.
02:27They are a serious, sustained effort to create a living dialogue between those who have left and those who are
02:35preparing to lead.
02:37To bring experience and principle into conversation with each other in a space that takes both seriously.
02:46And the Leadership and Stewardship Research Initiative will do the longer, deeper work alongside it.
02:52Building scholarship that is rigorous, honest, and directly relevant to the realities of leading institutions under pressure.
03:01Not theory for its own sake, but knowledge we can actually use.
03:06Knowledge we can pass on.
03:08Ladies and gentlemen, I want to close with something I believe with full conviction.
03:13Legacy is not what you leave for yourself.
03:16It is what you leave for others.
03:18It is not the title on your door, or a tribute on your retirement dinner.
03:23It is the state of institution when the next person walks in.
03:27It is the culture they inherit whether it is more accountable, more transparent, more faithful to its founding purpose than
03:37the one you received.
03:39It is the evidence visible in the decisions and the norms and the quiet conduct of an institution that the
03:47people who came before took their stewardship seriously.
03:51My late father, whom Tunzaki knew personally, was a civil servant of his working life, always reminded me that if
04:05you ever entered a grand office, which he did, never ever get carried away.
04:11Always think of the day you leave it and leave a legacy that the country will be proud of.
04:19I am proud to say Tunzaki is a living example of this.
04:29So I want to say to you, to every person in this room who carries a responsibility, who has felt
04:36the weight of institutional leadership, who has asked themselves whether they are living things better than they found them.
04:42Your work matters. The decisions you make in the quiet rooms, under pressure, without applause, matter.
04:50And the wisdom you have built through those decisions is not yours alone to keep. It belongs to us.
04:57To these communities, to these communities, to the next generation of leaders who will inherit what we built here and
05:04who deserve to inherit something worthy of their education.
05:09This is what, ladies and gentlemen, today is about. That is what this initiative is about. And that is why
05:16when I asked to be here, I did not, as you said. I won't miss the world for it.
05:22To the organizers. To the organizers, what you have built here is significant. I hope you feel the weight of
05:28that today in the best possible way.
05:31To everyone in this room, I hope you leave with a renewed sense of what you are here to do.
05:38Not because of what I have said, but because of what this community gathered in this room represents.
05:44And those who will lead after us, the next generation of judges, jurists, when one day that clarion call comes,
05:55do not ask where to buy the goods. Just put it on and serve the country with the passion that
06:03Tonsaki has.
06:14To the people who are willing to deliver the power of our society, to the people who actually are willing
06:15to serve the kind of the city of Egypt and the city of Egypt, the city of Egypt and the
06:15city of Egypt, all the most opportunities that have been served in history and choose the kind of the city.
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