Speech by President of the Republic Armando Guebuza, Ponta Vermelha Palace, Official Banquet (Maputo, Mozambique)
20 November 2007
Your Highness the Aga Khan
Dear Guests
Ladies and Gentlemen
We give Your Highness and the illustrious delegation accompanying you, our warmest welcome do this Pearl of the Indic. It is our pleasure, above all, to be able to directly reiterate our felicitations on the occasion of the celebration of Your Highness Golden Jubilee as the 49th hereditary Imam of the Ismaili Muslim Community.
It is a great satisfaction to be united not only to celebrate the work that has been constructed over half a century of spiritual leadership of this religious community, but also for the projects you are developing in many parts of the world. We extend our wishes for great successes in the pursuance of your role and, in making available more cooperation and support to the various populations of the world, including the Mozambican people.
In your role as Founder and Chairman of the Aga Khan Development Network, you have, with great perseverance and enthusiasm, contributed significantly towards the integrity of mankind and towards the integrated development of the countries in the world.
Amongst us, we have encouraging signs which intensify our certainty that the bases are launched, for a wider, diversified and long-lasting cooperation with the Aga Khan Development Network, whether considering the integrity of mankind or the integrated development of our Mozambique. Let us consider as an example:
The rural and integrated development project of the coast in the Province of Cabo Delgado;
The investments in the Polana Hotel, a touristic and architectural reference, and of great importance in Mozambique;
The project of the Aga Khan Excellency Academy in Matola.
Part of these activities, which also include the areas of health, the development of national entrepreneurship and microfinances, currently benefit approximately 100 000 mozambicans.
Our people have access to these projects and its benefits, regardless of gender, religion and social status and, thus, the Aga Khan Development Network participates, in a sustained manner, in the battle against poverty in Mozambique, in the rural areas and in the city, from Rovuma to Maputo and from the Indic to Zumbo.
The dialogue we maintained this afternoon resulted in the identification of other areas which can be included in the co operation we are developing. Within this context, we underline our interest and commitment in seeing these areas identified and transformed into projects with results that will have a direct impact on the lives of our People.
We are sure that the implementation of the projects currently underway and with the materialisation of those which we identified today constitutes milestones of friendship and compassion amongst this Network and the Mozambicans. They are also a priceless contribution in the reduction of poverty and for the attainment of the Millennium Development Objectives.
It is convenient to recognize and highlight, that this compassion and friendship that the Aga Khan Development Network finds in Mozambique and within the heart of our People is born from a relationship many centuries old, during which the oriental traces and those of Islam were crystallised in our Beloved Motherland. With this exchange, our cultures have mutually grown and, from this relationship both have benefited as has benefited the rest of Mankind.
Your Highness,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Mozambique is characterised by Peace, stability and social and economic development. Last October the 4th, we celebrated fifteen years of peace and reconciliation in the breast of the Mozambican Family. One of the most marking moments of the celebration was the religious ceremony during which several religions jointly prayed for a Mozambique that continues do develop the principle that the only alternative to peace is Peace itself.
The stability in this Pearl of the Indic is further promoted by the environment of a multi party democracy, of dialogue, and of the inclusion which we cultivate in our everyday lives. It is equally sustained by the internal partnerships which we establish with several national players who, like us, have worked to transform Peace and stability into another important resource that has been put to work towards our social and economic development.
During these few days of your visit to our beloved Motherland, Your Highness will note that the new social and economical infrastructures are rising in our horizon as monuments that mark the victories we are attaining in our fight against poverty. More schools, more health posts and more fountains of drinkable water that are being introduced, along the height and width of our Mozambique, are having a considerable impact on the lives of our people. Likewise, more locations and Mozambican citizens are benefiting from:
More reconstructed roads and new bridges;
Mobile and fixed telephone network, and energy 24 hours a day;
They benefit, yet, from more work posts that are being created by the public and private investment both national and foreign. Recently, we inaugurated the project of Moma heavy sands which has had a visible impact, inclusively near the local communities.
Your Highness,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
The presence of Your Highness the Aga Khan amongst us, is a particularly distinct moment to exchange our views regarding the internal situation of Mozambique, and of the impact of the Aga Khan Development Neworks projects. It is, simultaneously, an opportunity to reiterate our joint commitment to proceed with our share in the construction of a world that is characterized by the culture of peace, solidarity, and prosperity.
Hence, we invite all present to join us in a toast:
For His Highness health and happiness;
To His Highness Golden Jubilee;
For the successes in the cooperation between Mozambique and the Aga Khan Development Network.
Thank you all for your attention.
Monday, October 13, 2008
Inauguration of the Restored Monuments in Darb al-Ahmar
Speech by His Highness the Aga Khan at the Inauguration of the Restored Monuments in Darb al-Ahmar (Cairo, Egypt)
26 October 2007
Bismillahir-Rahamir-Rahim
Your Excellencies
The Minister of Culture
The Governor of Cairo
Ambassadors
Distinguished Guests
It is a very particular pleasure for me to welcome you tonight, as we share in a special moment - and the first and most important thing that I want to do is to thank you for what you have done to make this moment possible.
The buildings we inaugurate are central elements in an effort which has given me profound personal satisfaction for nearly a quarter of a century - the revitalisation of Islamic Cairo.
The joy I received from this project stems from at least three of its extraordinary dimensions.
First, I have found that this endeavour has provided for me, personally, a profound sense of connection with my own ancestors, the Fatimid Caliphs, who founded Cairo and who laid its physical and cultural foundations 1000 years ago. To reach back across 35 generations and to be able to engage in the restoration and renewal of their legacy is a rare and stirring privilege. How could I not be affected seeing the remains of the original Fatimid walls and towers that protected this city when they founded it? And this experience has special meaning for me as I mark my own 50th year as Imam of the Shia Ismaili Muslims.
Secondly, this entire project, from the time we began, with so many of you, to dream about it, 23 years ago, has provided an inspiring example of broadly based cooperation among diverse people and institutions, working across cultural, religious and national lines, including participants from government, the private sector, and the non-profit institutions of civil society. It has involved people whose homes are thousands of miles away from Cairo and it has also involved, most profoundly, the people of this neighbourhood, those who live and work only minutes away, in the very shadows of these buildings.
Among the partnerships I would note today are the ones we have enjoyed with the Egyptian Government, the Ministry of Culture, the Governorate of Cairo, the Supreme Council of Antiquities, the Social Fund for Development, the World Monuments Fund, the Swiss Egyptian Development Fund, the Ford Foundation, the French Institute of Archaeology, the American Research Centre and the United States Embassy in Cairo, as well as the city of Stuttgart. And I would also note with gratitude the signing, this past July, by the Governorate and the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, of a formal Public-Private Partnership (PPP) linking Al-Azhar Park with the ongoing projects in Darb al-Ahmar and adjacent areas. Whatever barriers history might possibly have put in our way have been removed by our common will to achieve a remarkable goal.
These diverse interactions are particularly fitting, of course, as we remember the origins of this city. The Fatimids, after all, prided themselves on a broadly inclusive approach to knowledge. What they founded here would become a truly global city to use contemporary parlance. Pluralism was indeed the hallmark of a Golden Age of the City Victorious 1000 years ago. I am happy that I can feel in this time also, like during the time of my predecessors, that there is true pluralist consensus surrounding our endeavours all of us working together - to revive the Islamic city.
The first two reasons, then, for my special identification with this undertaking are its historical connections to the past, and the diverse and plural dimensions of its present. The third element, however, has to do with its sustainability in the future - and in discussing that future, two important questions come to mind.
They are: first, at what point of physical improvement can we consider that the areas of the Islamic city most at risk have been restored, rehabilitated and returned to their residents in a secured manner? And secondly, what can and should we do to ensure that the more than one million visitors per year who are likely to visit the Azhar Park in the future become an economic benefit rather than a potential economic burden for the residents of Darb al-Ahmar?
If we are able to develop and implement strong and fulfilling answers to these questions, then my third reason to view this as a thrilling project will be fulfilled: It will constitute an extraordinary gift to the future. Even as we look back over many centuries today even as we have reopened and literally uncovered gifts from the past as this project has developed so we can also look far ahead in time. We are aware today of the connections we are establishing to generations yet unborn, those who will live here and those who visit from afar, and who will treasure these sites as precious gateways to their history.
Let me attempt briefly to suggest some responses to the two questions I have asked earlier, the first being to define when sufficient physical work will have been completed for us to consider the core of the Islamic city restored. Logically, we must complete the work which is already underway, and which has produced such magnificent achievements as the restoration of the Kheyrebek Complex, where we are gathered today, and the Umm al Sultan Shabaan Mosque through the close collaboration with the Ministry of Culture and its Supreme Council of Antiquities. The ambitious conservation programme that lies ahead contemplates interventions in the Alin Aq Palace, the Tarabay Mausoleum, the Aslam Mosque, and in due course in the Blue Mosque. We must finish the restoration of the Ayyubid wall, and the most important open spaces along it. And we must complete the archaeological site at the North-west edge of the Park with its Fatimid and Mamluk excavations. This site, in turn, will be tied into the new museum of historic Cairo being created in collaboration with the Supreme Council of Antiquities, as well as the new Urban Plaza and the significant underground parking which are both part of the programme agreed by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture with the Governorate of Cairo.
To complete this list of future tasks, I should add that along the historic wall there are several hundred houses that remain to be restored, just as the Early Childhood Centre and the Vocational Training Centre remain to be completed. Finally, I cannot see how this enormous endeavour, which still lies ahead, could be considered complete without serious attention being given to the areas ongoing infrastructure, such as the road surfaces, the sewage disposal system, the distribution of water and electricity, and signage and public lighting.
The second question I have raised was how we increase the impact of the new economic life generated by the Azhar Park to the benefit of the people of Darb al-Ahmar.
In responding to this question, I would note that special emphasis has been placed by our planners on sustainability. It has always been clear that a strong financial base must be created just for maintaining the accomplishments we note today. The project must be compatible with the long term health of this neighbourhood and its community. For any important work of restoration to survive and to thrive into the longer-range future, it must contribute to the well-being of those who live in its presence so that they in turn will have reason to safeguard its enduring viability.
We have two opportunities to strengthen the economic life of this part of Islamic Cairo which I want to highlight today: The first is to encourage a higher number of the visitors to the Park to come to Darb al-Ahmar to see its historic buildings and to acquire goods and services. It is therefore essential that the North-west and South gates of the Park should be completed and opened as soon as possible, and that the visitors should be encouraged to walk to the restored wall, and then through it, into this unique historic area of Cairo, Darb al-Ahmar with its remarkable concentration of monuments and open spaces.
There is another way, a second way, to support the economic enhancement of the population of Darb al-Ahmar. I believe much more can and should be done with our micro-credit programme, by developing new products, better adapted to local needs, and making them more easily accessible. This work is ongoing, but it must be completed and put in place early enough so that the service providers and traders of Darb al-Ahmar can prepare themselves in good time for the increased number of visitors that will come from the Park.
A long and strenuous journey began when we gathered here back in 1984 to hold a seminar on the growth of Cairo. What we mark today is another milestone along that path not the first nor the last, but an important reminder of how far we have come and an added moment of encouragement as we continue the demanding journey which lies ahead of us.
I know you join me in feeling that we have been extraordinarily blessed in the heritage that has been given to us as well as in the friends and collaborators who now share our life and work all of us striving together to be good stewards of our inheritance as we pass it on to the future.
Thank You.
26 October 2007
Bismillahir-Rahamir-Rahim
Your Excellencies
The Minister of Culture
The Governor of Cairo
Ambassadors
Distinguished Guests
It is a very particular pleasure for me to welcome you tonight, as we share in a special moment - and the first and most important thing that I want to do is to thank you for what you have done to make this moment possible.
The buildings we inaugurate are central elements in an effort which has given me profound personal satisfaction for nearly a quarter of a century - the revitalisation of Islamic Cairo.
The joy I received from this project stems from at least three of its extraordinary dimensions.
First, I have found that this endeavour has provided for me, personally, a profound sense of connection with my own ancestors, the Fatimid Caliphs, who founded Cairo and who laid its physical and cultural foundations 1000 years ago. To reach back across 35 generations and to be able to engage in the restoration and renewal of their legacy is a rare and stirring privilege. How could I not be affected seeing the remains of the original Fatimid walls and towers that protected this city when they founded it? And this experience has special meaning for me as I mark my own 50th year as Imam of the Shia Ismaili Muslims.
Secondly, this entire project, from the time we began, with so many of you, to dream about it, 23 years ago, has provided an inspiring example of broadly based cooperation among diverse people and institutions, working across cultural, religious and national lines, including participants from government, the private sector, and the non-profit institutions of civil society. It has involved people whose homes are thousands of miles away from Cairo and it has also involved, most profoundly, the people of this neighbourhood, those who live and work only minutes away, in the very shadows of these buildings.
Among the partnerships I would note today are the ones we have enjoyed with the Egyptian Government, the Ministry of Culture, the Governorate of Cairo, the Supreme Council of Antiquities, the Social Fund for Development, the World Monuments Fund, the Swiss Egyptian Development Fund, the Ford Foundation, the French Institute of Archaeology, the American Research Centre and the United States Embassy in Cairo, as well as the city of Stuttgart. And I would also note with gratitude the signing, this past July, by the Governorate and the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, of a formal Public-Private Partnership (PPP) linking Al-Azhar Park with the ongoing projects in Darb al-Ahmar and adjacent areas. Whatever barriers history might possibly have put in our way have been removed by our common will to achieve a remarkable goal.
These diverse interactions are particularly fitting, of course, as we remember the origins of this city. The Fatimids, after all, prided themselves on a broadly inclusive approach to knowledge. What they founded here would become a truly global city to use contemporary parlance. Pluralism was indeed the hallmark of a Golden Age of the City Victorious 1000 years ago. I am happy that I can feel in this time also, like during the time of my predecessors, that there is true pluralist consensus surrounding our endeavours all of us working together - to revive the Islamic city.
The first two reasons, then, for my special identification with this undertaking are its historical connections to the past, and the diverse and plural dimensions of its present. The third element, however, has to do with its sustainability in the future - and in discussing that future, two important questions come to mind.
They are: first, at what point of physical improvement can we consider that the areas of the Islamic city most at risk have been restored, rehabilitated and returned to their residents in a secured manner? And secondly, what can and should we do to ensure that the more than one million visitors per year who are likely to visit the Azhar Park in the future become an economic benefit rather than a potential economic burden for the residents of Darb al-Ahmar?
If we are able to develop and implement strong and fulfilling answers to these questions, then my third reason to view this as a thrilling project will be fulfilled: It will constitute an extraordinary gift to the future. Even as we look back over many centuries today even as we have reopened and literally uncovered gifts from the past as this project has developed so we can also look far ahead in time. We are aware today of the connections we are establishing to generations yet unborn, those who will live here and those who visit from afar, and who will treasure these sites as precious gateways to their history.
Let me attempt briefly to suggest some responses to the two questions I have asked earlier, the first being to define when sufficient physical work will have been completed for us to consider the core of the Islamic city restored. Logically, we must complete the work which is already underway, and which has produced such magnificent achievements as the restoration of the Kheyrebek Complex, where we are gathered today, and the Umm al Sultan Shabaan Mosque through the close collaboration with the Ministry of Culture and its Supreme Council of Antiquities. The ambitious conservation programme that lies ahead contemplates interventions in the Alin Aq Palace, the Tarabay Mausoleum, the Aslam Mosque, and in due course in the Blue Mosque. We must finish the restoration of the Ayyubid wall, and the most important open spaces along it. And we must complete the archaeological site at the North-west edge of the Park with its Fatimid and Mamluk excavations. This site, in turn, will be tied into the new museum of historic Cairo being created in collaboration with the Supreme Council of Antiquities, as well as the new Urban Plaza and the significant underground parking which are both part of the programme agreed by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture with the Governorate of Cairo.
To complete this list of future tasks, I should add that along the historic wall there are several hundred houses that remain to be restored, just as the Early Childhood Centre and the Vocational Training Centre remain to be completed. Finally, I cannot see how this enormous endeavour, which still lies ahead, could be considered complete without serious attention being given to the areas ongoing infrastructure, such as the road surfaces, the sewage disposal system, the distribution of water and electricity, and signage and public lighting.
The second question I have raised was how we increase the impact of the new economic life generated by the Azhar Park to the benefit of the people of Darb al-Ahmar.
In responding to this question, I would note that special emphasis has been placed by our planners on sustainability. It has always been clear that a strong financial base must be created just for maintaining the accomplishments we note today. The project must be compatible with the long term health of this neighbourhood and its community. For any important work of restoration to survive and to thrive into the longer-range future, it must contribute to the well-being of those who live in its presence so that they in turn will have reason to safeguard its enduring viability.
We have two opportunities to strengthen the economic life of this part of Islamic Cairo which I want to highlight today: The first is to encourage a higher number of the visitors to the Park to come to Darb al-Ahmar to see its historic buildings and to acquire goods and services. It is therefore essential that the North-west and South gates of the Park should be completed and opened as soon as possible, and that the visitors should be encouraged to walk to the restored wall, and then through it, into this unique historic area of Cairo, Darb al-Ahmar with its remarkable concentration of monuments and open spaces.
There is another way, a second way, to support the economic enhancement of the population of Darb al-Ahmar. I believe much more can and should be done with our micro-credit programme, by developing new products, better adapted to local needs, and making them more easily accessible. This work is ongoing, but it must be completed and put in place early enough so that the service providers and traders of Darb al-Ahmar can prepare themselves in good time for the increased number of visitors that will come from the Park.
A long and strenuous journey began when we gathered here back in 1984 to hold a seminar on the growth of Cairo. What we mark today is another milestone along that path not the first nor the last, but an important reminder of how far we have come and an added moment of encouragement as we continue the demanding journey which lies ahead of us.
I know you join me in feeling that we have been extraordinarily blessed in the heritage that has been given to us as well as in the friends and collaborators who now share our life and work all of us striving together to be good stewards of our inheritance as we pass it on to the future.
Thank You.
2007 Aga Khan Award for Architecture, Presentation Ceremony
Speech by His Highness the Aga Khan at the Aga Khan Award for Architecture 2007 Award Presentation Ceremony (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia)
04 September 2007
Bismillah-ir-Rahman-ir-Rahim
Assalamu-Alaikum Warahmatullahi Wabarakatuh
Yang Amat Berhormat Dato Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi
and Datin Seri Jeanne Abdullah
Honourable Ministers
Excellencies
Distinguished Guests
What a great pleasure it is for me to greet you today, as we present the Aga Khan Award for Architecture. This is an event we await with great anticipation as it comes around on the calendar every three years. It is the culmination of a wonderful process of discussion, research, exploration, and deliberation - one that has involved, through the years, nearly 8000 nominated projects and tens of thousands of participants, in some 88 countries. I think of the Award not as an event but as a process - and my thanks go out to all of you who have been a part of it.
This is a very good time and a very good place to hold this culminating ceremony.
To begin with, we join our Malaysian friends in celebrating the 50 th anniversary just a few days ago of the Malaysian Merdeka. Anniversary occasions are valuable opportunities to reflect on the past and to plan for the future. The Malaysian people have had good reason this past week to look back with pride, and forward with hope. I am particularly pleased that we can welcome and congratulate the Prime Minister and his wife at this special moment in their nations history.
I often reflect back on that period in the late 1950s, when so many developing countries were suddenly gaining their independence. Those were the very first years of my Imamat - which, as you may know, has also marked its 50 th anniversary this summer. I recall both how excited and how sobered we were as we thought about the enormous challenges which then faced these newly independent nations - including Malaysia - as they worked to develop effective new institutions which would give meaning to their freedom.
I also recall how our emotions since that time have oscillated between hope and frustration as the story of development has unfolded. But more and more, in many places, the story has become one of promise and progress. This is particularly true, of course, here in Malaysia. And it is most especially evident as we look out on the face of this city.
I doubt that even the most imaginative among us could have envisioned fifty years ago what Kuala Lumpur would look like today. Surely the transformation of the built environment in this city is among the distinctive and exciting urban transformations in our lifetimes. More than that, the dramatic remaking of this city, so powerfully evidenced in the architectural realm, is all the more compelling because it expresses a profound transformation in the social and economic realms as well.
So again I would say that this is a good and appropriate place to gather this week - and a very appropriate time to be meeting.
Our common purpose today is to honour excellence in the field of architecture, as we have defined it for the purpose of the Award - represented by the nine projects which the Master Jury has selected as the 2007 awardees. It is with deep sincerity and appreciation that I extend my warmest congratulations to all of you.
The imperative that we honour excellence could be misleading, however, if we define the architectural enterprise too narrowly. What we spotlight through this award is an all-encompassing sweep of human endeavour, shaping an infinite variety of human spaces
The spaces we had in mind in establishing this Award were broadly defined, encompassing places both public and private, enclosed and open, urban and rural, residential and commercial, cultural and industrial, intimate and grand, religious and secular.
And the categories of people we had in mind also were broadly inclusive. We recognize with enormous respect those who initially dream about inspiring combinations of shape and scale, pattern and colour, texture and volume, line and light. But we also honour those who express those dreams in tangible designs, or through inspired on-site articulations, as well as those who finance these projects, and those whose skills as managers and builders convert abstract ideas into physical realities.
In short, our definition of the words Architects and Architecture is very comprehensive.
As has been mentioned, this Award itself is marking one of those round-numbered anniversaries tonight - the 30 th year since it was created, the tenth completion of its triennial cycle.
A central concept when this all began 30 years ago was the power of Architecture to connect the past with the present and the future. It was my strong impression then that Architecture had largely abandoned the indigenous past - especially in Muslim societies and in the developing world.
Perhaps it was a natural tendency - the thought that if we wanted to speed up the modernization process, we should clear our minds, and even our landscapes, of what some saw as the dead hand of the past. But, in doing so, we often cut ourselves off from great well-springs of inspiration, power and moral authority.
This is one of the reasons our Award Ceremonies have normally been held in historically significant settings - reminders of just how rich our Islamic heritage has been.
Our venues were NOT meant to imply however that our goal was simply to reproduce the past. In fact, the projects we have honoured through the years - over one hundred of them - have invariably rejected simplistic, copy-machine approaches. The fact that we hold these current ceremonies in a contemporary setting - one which has itself been a recipient of our Award, symbolizes our faith that Architecture can not only link us to the past, but also propel us, creatively, into the future.
The past is not something to stand on, but rather to build on. If ignoring the past was a problem on one side, then the opposite danger was an exaggerated submission to the past, so that some creations and creators became prisoners of dogma or nostalgia.
There is a danger, in every area of life, everywhere in the world, that people will respond to the hastening pace of change with an irrational fear of modernism, and will want to embrace uncritically that which has gone before. The Islamic world has sometimes been vulnerable to this temptation - and the rich potential for a new Islamic modernism has sometimes been under-estimated.
The Aga Khan Award was designed, in part, to address this situation, encouraging those who saw the past as a necessary prelude to the future - and who saw the future as a fulfilling extension of the past. And, by and large through the years, this objective has been accomplished.
In my view, a healthy life, for an individual or a community, means finding a way to relate the values of the past, the realities of the present, and the opportunities of the future. The built environment can play a central role in helping us to achieve that balance.
One other area in which Architecture can play a connecting role is through the bridging of man and nature, between the natural and the built environments. For Islam particularly, this bridging objective is a religious imperative. The Quran commands us to be good stewards of Allahs natural creation - even as we employ His gifts of time and talent to shape our surroundings. Neither environmental protection nor economic development can be long sustained unless both objectives are prioritized. They are part of a Common Agenda.
Finally, I might observe what you also know very well: the fact that architecture also connects people. I think of people of different ethnic, religious and political backgrounds, with different skills and temperaments, from different classes and social sectors - all of whom can come to understand one another better by experiencing one anothers architecture.
At its best, architecture is an inherently pluralistic enterprise - one that honours diversity - including diversity within and among Islamic communities. At its best, architecture will help people to come together across old divides rather than re-enforcing those divides and isolating one group from another.
Finally, as we present this Award for the tenth time, we must ask ourselves what we have learnt from the past three decades, and what should be our sights for the future.
While we cannot present an in-depth analysis right now, I think we can begin by acknowledging that, more or less everywhere in the Ummah, Muslims and others are asking themselves the right questions and are developing positive answers about their built environment: Are we building for the future in a culturally empathetic way? Do we now own and are we marshalling the necessary creative resources - ranging from new schools of architecture to new data bases, through which the architectural community can share its questions and answers, its problems and its successes? This in itself is a magnificent change from 1977, when such simple but essential questions were generally not being asked, or had only negative answers.
Looking to the future, we are faced with the challenge of change on a more massive scale than ever before in the history of Islam. As we look ahead, we can predict a continuing, relentless urbanisation in countries which are now largely rural. In some areas of the Ummah physical development is occurring at a near industrial scale. We can also see new international partnerships linking development institutions from the industrialised world with those of the Ummah. And, happily, we can now welcome the steady emergence of new, highly talented generations of Muslims and non-Muslims who appreciate the heritage of world-class buildings and spaces which characterized the Ummah for so many centuries - and who understand the power of Islamic cultural well-springs to inspire continuing accomplishment.
The talents and insights of these new generations of young creative people will be an enormously valuable resource in the years ahead. It is essential that the decision makers of the Ummah and of their development partners should trust and embrace these new generations of architectural professionals. It is my deep conviction that if this is done, while errors may be made, the outcomes will surely include a sense of authenticity, inspiration, heritage and creativity which will restore to many areas of the Ummah a sense of the architectural greatness of its past. If that happens, then the impact on the physical environment of world civilizations, well beyond the frontiers of the Ummah, will also be profound.
I believe that the awards we present today will facilitate that process - and amplify its impact.
We are proud that you who gather here are among the strong supporters of this award. We salute you for that support, even as we thank you for your participation in this great anniversary event - in this distinctive and forward-looking city.
Thank You.
04 September 2007
Bismillah-ir-Rahman-ir-Rahim
Assalamu-Alaikum Warahmatullahi Wabarakatuh
Yang Amat Berhormat Dato Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi
and Datin Seri Jeanne Abdullah
Honourable Ministers
Excellencies
Distinguished Guests
What a great pleasure it is for me to greet you today, as we present the Aga Khan Award for Architecture. This is an event we await with great anticipation as it comes around on the calendar every three years. It is the culmination of a wonderful process of discussion, research, exploration, and deliberation - one that has involved, through the years, nearly 8000 nominated projects and tens of thousands of participants, in some 88 countries. I think of the Award not as an event but as a process - and my thanks go out to all of you who have been a part of it.
This is a very good time and a very good place to hold this culminating ceremony.
To begin with, we join our Malaysian friends in celebrating the 50 th anniversary just a few days ago of the Malaysian Merdeka. Anniversary occasions are valuable opportunities to reflect on the past and to plan for the future. The Malaysian people have had good reason this past week to look back with pride, and forward with hope. I am particularly pleased that we can welcome and congratulate the Prime Minister and his wife at this special moment in their nations history.
I often reflect back on that period in the late 1950s, when so many developing countries were suddenly gaining their independence. Those were the very first years of my Imamat - which, as you may know, has also marked its 50 th anniversary this summer. I recall both how excited and how sobered we were as we thought about the enormous challenges which then faced these newly independent nations - including Malaysia - as they worked to develop effective new institutions which would give meaning to their freedom.
I also recall how our emotions since that time have oscillated between hope and frustration as the story of development has unfolded. But more and more, in many places, the story has become one of promise and progress. This is particularly true, of course, here in Malaysia. And it is most especially evident as we look out on the face of this city.
I doubt that even the most imaginative among us could have envisioned fifty years ago what Kuala Lumpur would look like today. Surely the transformation of the built environment in this city is among the distinctive and exciting urban transformations in our lifetimes. More than that, the dramatic remaking of this city, so powerfully evidenced in the architectural realm, is all the more compelling because it expresses a profound transformation in the social and economic realms as well.
So again I would say that this is a good and appropriate place to gather this week - and a very appropriate time to be meeting.
Our common purpose today is to honour excellence in the field of architecture, as we have defined it for the purpose of the Award - represented by the nine projects which the Master Jury has selected as the 2007 awardees. It is with deep sincerity and appreciation that I extend my warmest congratulations to all of you.
The imperative that we honour excellence could be misleading, however, if we define the architectural enterprise too narrowly. What we spotlight through this award is an all-encompassing sweep of human endeavour, shaping an infinite variety of human spaces
The spaces we had in mind in establishing this Award were broadly defined, encompassing places both public and private, enclosed and open, urban and rural, residential and commercial, cultural and industrial, intimate and grand, religious and secular.
And the categories of people we had in mind also were broadly inclusive. We recognize with enormous respect those who initially dream about inspiring combinations of shape and scale, pattern and colour, texture and volume, line and light. But we also honour those who express those dreams in tangible designs, or through inspired on-site articulations, as well as those who finance these projects, and those whose skills as managers and builders convert abstract ideas into physical realities.
In short, our definition of the words Architects and Architecture is very comprehensive.
As has been mentioned, this Award itself is marking one of those round-numbered anniversaries tonight - the 30 th year since it was created, the tenth completion of its triennial cycle.
A central concept when this all began 30 years ago was the power of Architecture to connect the past with the present and the future. It was my strong impression then that Architecture had largely abandoned the indigenous past - especially in Muslim societies and in the developing world.
Perhaps it was a natural tendency - the thought that if we wanted to speed up the modernization process, we should clear our minds, and even our landscapes, of what some saw as the dead hand of the past. But, in doing so, we often cut ourselves off from great well-springs of inspiration, power and moral authority.
This is one of the reasons our Award Ceremonies have normally been held in historically significant settings - reminders of just how rich our Islamic heritage has been.
Our venues were NOT meant to imply however that our goal was simply to reproduce the past. In fact, the projects we have honoured through the years - over one hundred of them - have invariably rejected simplistic, copy-machine approaches. The fact that we hold these current ceremonies in a contemporary setting - one which has itself been a recipient of our Award, symbolizes our faith that Architecture can not only link us to the past, but also propel us, creatively, into the future.
The past is not something to stand on, but rather to build on. If ignoring the past was a problem on one side, then the opposite danger was an exaggerated submission to the past, so that some creations and creators became prisoners of dogma or nostalgia.
There is a danger, in every area of life, everywhere in the world, that people will respond to the hastening pace of change with an irrational fear of modernism, and will want to embrace uncritically that which has gone before. The Islamic world has sometimes been vulnerable to this temptation - and the rich potential for a new Islamic modernism has sometimes been under-estimated.
The Aga Khan Award was designed, in part, to address this situation, encouraging those who saw the past as a necessary prelude to the future - and who saw the future as a fulfilling extension of the past. And, by and large through the years, this objective has been accomplished.
In my view, a healthy life, for an individual or a community, means finding a way to relate the values of the past, the realities of the present, and the opportunities of the future. The built environment can play a central role in helping us to achieve that balance.
One other area in which Architecture can play a connecting role is through the bridging of man and nature, between the natural and the built environments. For Islam particularly, this bridging objective is a religious imperative. The Quran commands us to be good stewards of Allahs natural creation - even as we employ His gifts of time and talent to shape our surroundings. Neither environmental protection nor economic development can be long sustained unless both objectives are prioritized. They are part of a Common Agenda.
Finally, I might observe what you also know very well: the fact that architecture also connects people. I think of people of different ethnic, religious and political backgrounds, with different skills and temperaments, from different classes and social sectors - all of whom can come to understand one another better by experiencing one anothers architecture.
At its best, architecture is an inherently pluralistic enterprise - one that honours diversity - including diversity within and among Islamic communities. At its best, architecture will help people to come together across old divides rather than re-enforcing those divides and isolating one group from another.
Finally, as we present this Award for the tenth time, we must ask ourselves what we have learnt from the past three decades, and what should be our sights for the future.
While we cannot present an in-depth analysis right now, I think we can begin by acknowledging that, more or less everywhere in the Ummah, Muslims and others are asking themselves the right questions and are developing positive answers about their built environment: Are we building for the future in a culturally empathetic way? Do we now own and are we marshalling the necessary creative resources - ranging from new schools of architecture to new data bases, through which the architectural community can share its questions and answers, its problems and its successes? This in itself is a magnificent change from 1977, when such simple but essential questions were generally not being asked, or had only negative answers.
Looking to the future, we are faced with the challenge of change on a more massive scale than ever before in the history of Islam. As we look ahead, we can predict a continuing, relentless urbanisation in countries which are now largely rural. In some areas of the Ummah physical development is occurring at a near industrial scale. We can also see new international partnerships linking development institutions from the industrialised world with those of the Ummah. And, happily, we can now welcome the steady emergence of new, highly talented generations of Muslims and non-Muslims who appreciate the heritage of world-class buildings and spaces which characterized the Ummah for so many centuries - and who understand the power of Islamic cultural well-springs to inspire continuing accomplishment.
The talents and insights of these new generations of young creative people will be an enormously valuable resource in the years ahead. It is essential that the decision makers of the Ummah and of their development partners should trust and embrace these new generations of architectural professionals. It is my deep conviction that if this is done, while errors may be made, the outcomes will surely include a sense of authenticity, inspiration, heritage and creativity which will restore to many areas of the Ummah a sense of the architectural greatness of its past. If that happens, then the impact on the physical environment of world civilizations, well beyond the frontiers of the Ummah, will also be profound.
I believe that the awards we present today will facilitate that process - and amplify its impact.
We are proud that you who gather here are among the strong supporters of this award. We salute you for that support, even as we thank you for your participation in this great anniversary event - in this distinctive and forward-looking city.
Thank You.
Friday, October 3, 2008
Opening Remarks by Salim Bhatia at the Stone Laying Ceremony of The Aga Khan Academy, Hyderabad
22 September 2006
It is a great privilege and pleasure to welcome such a distinguished group of individuals to this Foundation Stone-Laying Ceremony in Hyderabad. Thank you for being with us today. Your presence here signifies the importance you place on education and the role you see the Aga Khan Academies playing in education in Andhra Pradesh and in India. The Government of Andhra Pradesh has already expressed its enthusiasm for this project by the gift of this exceptional site. Your Excellency we greatly appreciate your and the government of Andhra Pradeshs generous support.
Thank you.
I have the honour of having been entrusted with the extraordinary vision of His Highness for the Academies as Director of the Aga Khan Academies. Under the guidance of His Highness and with the generous support of many expert advisors, both voluntary and remunerated, across the globe we are doing the careful, creative work of building the Aga Khan Academies network, of which the Hyderabad Academy is an integral part. At this time, we envisage a network of 18 campuses across South and Central Asia, East Africa, and the Middle East, to be established over the course of the next decade or so. This is not just a system of quality schools operated under the one banner but rather its a global learning community in which students and teachers at each Academy contribute and participate.
The decision His Highness took to establish the network of Aga Khan Academies is consistent with the Aga Khan Development Networks contemporary mandate to help relieve society of ignorance, disease and deprivation without regard to the faiths or national origins of the people whom they serve. And so, the Aga Khan Academy in Hyderabad too will serve Indian students from all backgrounds.
Over the past century, the Ismaili Imamat has built over 300 schools in the countries where we plan to build Academies. The Aga Khan Education Service currently operates 42 educational institutions in India, educating over 12,000 students and employing over 450 teachers. In addition, in conjunction with the Aga Khan Foundation, it impacts, through school improvement programs, an additional 365 institutions, 58,000 students and over 1300 teachers. The AKDN institutions in India play a critically important role of providing a solid education to many who would otherwise not have access to any education, particularly girls and boys in rural parts of the country.
As envisioned by His Highness, the Academies represent both a continuation of that proud tradition and a new direction. In establishing the network of Aga Khan Academies, the Aga Khan Development Network is not moving away from our commitment to those students, families, and teachers who are part of the AKES. In fact, we intend the Academies to become a primary resource for teacher development. The Academys in-house Professional Development Centre with its strong connection to the Aga Khan University Institute for Educational Development will also serve AKES teachers and other teachers from government and private schools regionally and nationally. Through this Professional Development Center at the Hyderabad campus, the Aga Khan Academies intend to make a sustained meaningful contribution to the quality of education in India.
In establishing the Academies, we are adding a new dimension to our diverse network of educational institutions. The AKDNs commitment--our tradition -- is to identify particular niches of human need, areas where there is significant human potential that can be developed if given the opportunity. We take care in assessing that need, think creatively and consult broadly in developing sustainable solutions, often quite original, in the form of institutions that will endure and evolve. The niches of human need we identify require bold and creative interventions, and, while we are humble about what we as committed individuals can accomplish in single lifetimes, we take a very long view and have confidence that working together we can effect lasting change.
Hazrat Ali, the first hereditary Imam of the Shia Muslims, emphasized in his teachings that No honor is like knowledge... No belief is like modesty and patience, no attainment is like humility, no power is like forbearance, and no support is more reliable than consultation. The work of creating the Aga Khan Academies honors knowledge and the transformative power knowledge has in peoples lives and in the future of society. We also take a fundamentally consultative approach to the work keeping our minds open to what others can teach us and connecting it to what we know and the particular challenges that we face. We approach all of what we do with modesty and patience, and yet, as my colleagues would tell you, we also bring a sense of urgency to our work every day matters.
And this days Foundation Stone-Laying Ceremony matters. It marks the beginning of the physical establishment of the Aga Khan Academy in Hyderabad, an institution for which we have developed a clear vision and plans, and yet which will take some time to create and even longer to have the impact on society that we expect it to have.
The underlying idea of the Aga Khan Academys network is to concentrate substantial resources on those exceptional individuals students and teachers who have the potential to transform society. This commitment stems from the fact that, provided with a world-class education, exceptional students from any background can fully achieve their significant potential and in so doing improve their lives, the lives of their families, their communities, their country, and the world. Providing a rich learning environment in which those rare intellectual and personal gifts can be fully developed and at the same time instilling a sense of social responsibility in these bright young minds, this is the philosophy behind the Aga Khan Academies.
We humbly hope that the global network of Aga Khan Academies will become as successful and enduring as the AKDN itself. To be sure, we are at this time a nascent program. Three years have not yet passed since we opened the very first Academy in Mombasa, Kenya. The campus there is still taking shape as we add the residential facilities. We see the Mombasa Academy as our test-bed, our intellectual trampoline on which we can develop and refine the program for the network of Academies. And yet it is not an experimental school: I am proud of our most recent International examination results, placing the school in the top tier of performance world-wide. In addition, students and faculty in Mombasa are setting new national records in swimming, adding local culture to a world class education through visiting artists programmes gaining a true appreciation of their peoples needs by working regularly in a local village with their less privileged brethren. In sum, the Academy is becoming the vibrant, healthy and rewarding learning environment of the sort we aim to create right here in Hyderabad.
In closing, we would all like to thank your Highness for your inspiring leadership, for your vision identifying important human needs, your commitment to tackling them with creative, bold initiatives and staying with them until the solutions are institutionalized.
Thank you.
It is a great privilege and pleasure to welcome such a distinguished group of individuals to this Foundation Stone-Laying Ceremony in Hyderabad. Thank you for being with us today. Your presence here signifies the importance you place on education and the role you see the Aga Khan Academies playing in education in Andhra Pradesh and in India. The Government of Andhra Pradesh has already expressed its enthusiasm for this project by the gift of this exceptional site. Your Excellency we greatly appreciate your and the government of Andhra Pradeshs generous support.
Thank you.
I have the honour of having been entrusted with the extraordinary vision of His Highness for the Academies as Director of the Aga Khan Academies. Under the guidance of His Highness and with the generous support of many expert advisors, both voluntary and remunerated, across the globe we are doing the careful, creative work of building the Aga Khan Academies network, of which the Hyderabad Academy is an integral part. At this time, we envisage a network of 18 campuses across South and Central Asia, East Africa, and the Middle East, to be established over the course of the next decade or so. This is not just a system of quality schools operated under the one banner but rather its a global learning community in which students and teachers at each Academy contribute and participate.
The decision His Highness took to establish the network of Aga Khan Academies is consistent with the Aga Khan Development Networks contemporary mandate to help relieve society of ignorance, disease and deprivation without regard to the faiths or national origins of the people whom they serve. And so, the Aga Khan Academy in Hyderabad too will serve Indian students from all backgrounds.
Over the past century, the Ismaili Imamat has built over 300 schools in the countries where we plan to build Academies. The Aga Khan Education Service currently operates 42 educational institutions in India, educating over 12,000 students and employing over 450 teachers. In addition, in conjunction with the Aga Khan Foundation, it impacts, through school improvement programs, an additional 365 institutions, 58,000 students and over 1300 teachers. The AKDN institutions in India play a critically important role of providing a solid education to many who would otherwise not have access to any education, particularly girls and boys in rural parts of the country.
As envisioned by His Highness, the Academies represent both a continuation of that proud tradition and a new direction. In establishing the network of Aga Khan Academies, the Aga Khan Development Network is not moving away from our commitment to those students, families, and teachers who are part of the AKES. In fact, we intend the Academies to become a primary resource for teacher development. The Academys in-house Professional Development Centre with its strong connection to the Aga Khan University Institute for Educational Development will also serve AKES teachers and other teachers from government and private schools regionally and nationally. Through this Professional Development Center at the Hyderabad campus, the Aga Khan Academies intend to make a sustained meaningful contribution to the quality of education in India.
In establishing the Academies, we are adding a new dimension to our diverse network of educational institutions. The AKDNs commitment--our tradition -- is to identify particular niches of human need, areas where there is significant human potential that can be developed if given the opportunity. We take care in assessing that need, think creatively and consult broadly in developing sustainable solutions, often quite original, in the form of institutions that will endure and evolve. The niches of human need we identify require bold and creative interventions, and, while we are humble about what we as committed individuals can accomplish in single lifetimes, we take a very long view and have confidence that working together we can effect lasting change.
Hazrat Ali, the first hereditary Imam of the Shia Muslims, emphasized in his teachings that No honor is like knowledge... No belief is like modesty and patience, no attainment is like humility, no power is like forbearance, and no support is more reliable than consultation. The work of creating the Aga Khan Academies honors knowledge and the transformative power knowledge has in peoples lives and in the future of society. We also take a fundamentally consultative approach to the work keeping our minds open to what others can teach us and connecting it to what we know and the particular challenges that we face. We approach all of what we do with modesty and patience, and yet, as my colleagues would tell you, we also bring a sense of urgency to our work every day matters.
And this days Foundation Stone-Laying Ceremony matters. It marks the beginning of the physical establishment of the Aga Khan Academy in Hyderabad, an institution for which we have developed a clear vision and plans, and yet which will take some time to create and even longer to have the impact on society that we expect it to have.
The underlying idea of the Aga Khan Academys network is to concentrate substantial resources on those exceptional individuals students and teachers who have the potential to transform society. This commitment stems from the fact that, provided with a world-class education, exceptional students from any background can fully achieve their significant potential and in so doing improve their lives, the lives of their families, their communities, their country, and the world. Providing a rich learning environment in which those rare intellectual and personal gifts can be fully developed and at the same time instilling a sense of social responsibility in these bright young minds, this is the philosophy behind the Aga Khan Academies.
We humbly hope that the global network of Aga Khan Academies will become as successful and enduring as the AKDN itself. To be sure, we are at this time a nascent program. Three years have not yet passed since we opened the very first Academy in Mombasa, Kenya. The campus there is still taking shape as we add the residential facilities. We see the Mombasa Academy as our test-bed, our intellectual trampoline on which we can develop and refine the program for the network of Academies. And yet it is not an experimental school: I am proud of our most recent International examination results, placing the school in the top tier of performance world-wide. In addition, students and faculty in Mombasa are setting new national records in swimming, adding local culture to a world class education through visiting artists programmes gaining a true appreciation of their peoples needs by working regularly in a local village with their less privileged brethren. In sum, the Academy is becoming the vibrant, healthy and rewarding learning environment of the sort we aim to create right here in Hyderabad.
In closing, we would all like to thank your Highness for your inspiring leadership, for your vision identifying important human needs, your commitment to tackling them with creative, bold initiatives and staying with them until the solutions are institutionalized.
Thank you.
Foundation Stone-Laying Ceremony of the Aga Khan Academy, Hyderabad
22 September 2006
Your Excellency the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh,
Honorable Ministers,
Distinguished Guests,
Ladies And Gentlemen:
Bismillah-ir-Rahman-ir-Rahim
Let me begin by thanking all of you for honoring us by joining in this celebration at this truly magnificent site. We are most deeply grateful to all who helped to make this site available to our Academy program. Your generosity will be a continuing inspiration to us all.
Our celebration today is part of a long, unfolding story. It is, for me, a highly personal story growing out of my familys active involvement through the years in the field of education especially in the developing world.
It was just about a century ago that my grandfather, Sir Sultan Mohammed Shah Aga Khan, began to build a network of educational institutions in places where the Ismaili community had settled. This network would eventually include some 300 schools 200 of which my grandfather opened personally.
In addition, he was the founding figure of Aligarh University, and I have continued that tradition through the establishment of the Aga Khan University and the University of Central Asia.
The tradition I am describing, however, goes back much further than one hundred years. For it was some one thousand years ago that my forefathers, the Fatimid Imam-Caliphs of Egypt, founded Al-Azhar University and the Academy of Knowledge in Cairo. For well over a millennium, the pursuit of knowledge has been a central element in our tradition.
Against this background, you can understand why this new educational beginning means so much to us.
But even while we renew a rich tradition inherited from the past, we are also looking deeply into the future. What we begin here may not have its full impact in any of our lifetimes. But the beginnings we undertake today may well be among the most important things we will ever do.
I would like to speak initially about the logic behind the Aga Khan Academies program to look at its philosophical underpinnings. For unless those foundations are sound, whatever we build will be inherently vulnerable.
We are taking our time in laying those foundations. We are designing for the long-range future and we have thought long and hard about our goals and how to achieve them. We have launched research projects and surveys. We have done our homework.
At the very heart of our conclusions is one, central conviction: the key to future progress in the developing world will be its ability to identify, to develop, and to retain expert and effective home-grown leadership.
In our lifetimes, the developing world has looked in various directions for the key to progress. For a while, it was thought to be enough that indigenous peoples simply throw off the yoke of colonialism which for some was the most important barrier to fulfillment and progress. This viewpoint often evolved into a hope that reasserting cultural identity would unlock the future and education sometimes became mainly a matter of tapping into ancient wisdom, expressed in distinctive languages. In many places, the promises of a charismatic ruler also captured the public imagination the mystique of the romantic hero and public education sometimes slipped into relative insignificance.
Over time, as frustration mounted, other cures were entertained in parts of the developing world. Ideologies of the left and the right came into vogue ranging from the siren songs of state socialism on one side to the allure of unrestrained capitalism on the other. The demands of dogma came to replace the disciplines of reason and education too often turned into indoctrination.
But none of these approaches proved adequate to the demands of their times and all of them seem increasingly inadequate to the demands of the present. A different approach has been needed. I would note that the people of this city and this region were among those who first came to realize this fact and to respond impressively to the challenge.
That response here and elsewhere has had, as its centerpiece, a distinctive intellectual style and a creative approach to leadership. As the pace of history has accelerated, agility and adaptability have become more important qualities than mere size or strength, and the race of life has gone increasingly to the nimble and the knowledgeable.
As the economic arena has been globalizing, openness and flexibility have become prerequisites for progress, and success has gone more and more to those who can connect and respond.
Specialized expertise, pragmatic temperament, mental resourcefulness these are increasingly the keys to effective leadership along with a capacity for intellectual humility which keeps ones mind constantly open to a variety of viewpoints and welcomes pluralistic exchange.
In such a world, the most important thing a student can learn is the ability to keep on learning.
What these developments mean is human resources have become more important than natural resources in determining the wealth of a society. And yet, there are still too many communities in which the true potential of the human resource base is sadly underdeveloped.
Too many of those who ought to be leading their communities in the hopeful world of tomorrow, are being left behind in the real world of today. Because good schools are not available to them early in life, they are often blocked from such opportunities as they grow older. And even those who do break through, into a world of wider educational opportunity, too often also break out and leave their home regions. The result is a widening gap between the expert and effective leadership these communities need and the leadership their educational systems are likely to deliver.
Am I saying that we should focus only on educating a leadership elite? Not by any means. Broad public education is still an essential obligation of a just society. But I also believe that the best interests of every society will be best served if its future leaders can be adequately prepared for an unusually demanding future if its outstanding students, in short, can be given an outstanding education.
Every society develops and depends on some set of leaders but the great question is how those leaders are developed and chosen. For much of human history, leaders were born into their roles, or they fought their way in or they bought their way in. Elites were normally based on physical power, or accumulated wealth, or inherited claims to authority.
But social progress can be greatest when aristocracies of class give way to aristocracies of talent or to use an even better term to meritocracies.
The well-led society of the future, in my view, will be a meritocracy where leadership roles are based on personal and intellectual excellence.
Our goal, then, is not to provide special education for a privileged elite but to provide an exceptional education for the truly exceptional.
This is the fundamental philosophy undergirding our Academies program.
How, then, will these goals be realized in practice? In all candor, some of our plans may have few precedents in this country and may strike some observers here as new and distinctive. But we have seen them tested in other contexts and believe they represent worthwhile challenges.
Our plans begin with the realization that governments alone cannot meet the educational challenges of the 21st century. Nor can private institutions which are constrained by the necessity to earn a profit. The answer lies in the expanding role of civil society in voluntary institutions which are not governmental but which are nonetheless dedicated to community values and the public good. We hope that the Aga Khan Academies will become leading exemplars of civil societys potential role.
Access to these schools (each of which will enroll 700 to 1200 young men and women) will thus be based solely on merit not on financial resources. Intellectual capacity and intrinsic character will determine not only who is admitted, but who is actively recruited for matriculation at these schools must go beyond passive selection and include an active outreach effort.
Once admitted, students will pursue a diverse and balanced curriculum, one which will evolve constantly as learning expands at an unprecedented pace. The best schools of the future will be those which select wisely just what learning will best help prepare students for an unpredictable future.
Our curriculum will be designed to qualify students for the widely-respected International Baccalaureate degree and beyond that, for admission to the very best university programs that may interest them in India and in every part of the world.
The International Baccalaureate program will help us prepare students to meet world-class standards joining a community of some 1800 other schools who use the IB framework, including highly respected institutions here in India. Using that framework, we can ensure that the education we provide will be tied to global concerns and keep pace with global developments.
But the Aga Khan Academies will also have their own areas of special emphasis, including: an explicit concern for the value of pluralism, a strong emphasis on the ethical dimensions of life, a more specialized knowledge of how global economics work, and a focus on comparative political systems.
We are often told these days that tension and violence in much of the world grows out of some fundamental clash of civilizations especially a clash between the Islamic world and the West. I disagree with that assessment. In my view, it is a clash of ignorances which is to blame. The Academies will seek to remedy such ignorances through the broad study of a variety of world cultures, including the Study of Muslim Civilizations, a subject which is often overlooked in some parts of the world today.
The principal language of instruction will be English todays primary language of global connection. But connectedness will also be enhanced in other ways. Every graduate will at least be bilingual, for example, and many will be trilingual. In his or her home Academy, a student will not only meet other students from a variety of cultural, ethnic and religious backgrounds but they will get to know one another as friends and neighbors something that residential schools are well-equipped to foster. And many will study for at least a year outside their home cultures, as well.
Each of our Academies can be thought of, in sum, as a center for cross-cultural education. And the City of Hyderabad, with its rich history as a meeting point for different cultures, including the Christian, Hindu and Muslim traditions, will provide a particularly appropriate setting.
The spirit of pluralism will be further enhanced by the fact that each Academy will be part of a larger network. All of them will be linked electronically and will serve students and faculty throughout the system through video-conferencing and other distance learning technology--as well as through programs whereby teachers and students will work for a time in a distant setting.
Building a global network of Academies will enable us to pursue simultaneously two sometimes divergent goals. On the one hand we want our students to understand and appreciate the variety of the world and the diversity of its peoples. On the other hand, we want to ensure a certain consistency in the quality of instruction and in the pursuit of core values. Building a wide network of schools around the same fundamental principles will allow us to pursue both of these objectives.
There will be one teacher for about every seven students at our Academies, and the teachers will not only be actively recruited, carefully selected and equitably compensated, but they will also be expertly trained and continually retrained. World class standards are ever-evolving standardsstaying on the cutting edge is a not a static process. Not only will we need highly professional instructors, but we must also be sure that our instructors are well-instructed. State-of-the art teaching technologies will help our faculties as they reach for this goal.
In short, we seek not only to train the next generation of expert leaders, but also to develop a professional corps of world-class teachers. Emblematic of this commitment is the fact that a Professional Development Center, focused on the improvement of teaching, will be part of the central Academic Building on each of our campuses. If all goes well, teachers at the Aga Khan Academies will become role models not only for their students, but for other teachers in their communities.
We also realize, as I have already suggested, that much of what our students will learn over time they will learn from one another not only in formal classroom settings but in residential and social contexts, in a wide range of extracurricular activities and in community service projects, as well. The Academies will be concerned with the whole of the human being mind, body and spirit and with the broad range of human aspiration intellectual, moral, artistic, physical and spiritual. The fact that these are residential academies will contribute enormously to these broad objectives, encouraging students to identify more completely with the school, to help lead it and shape its environment.
We envision that our graduates will emerge as well rounded men and women, enriched by their participation not only in rich learning communities but in rich living communities as well.
All of these commitments imply a special emphasis on the quality of our physical resources on the built environment, as it is often called including the quality of architectural design. As it has so often been said, we first shape our buildings, and then they shape us.
In sum, the Academies will be serious, focused, rigorous environments but at the same time they will be spacious and joyous places. They will operate on the cutting edge of knowledge and pedagogy, but they will be rooted in history and steeped in tradition.
It is such an institution that I hope to bring to the city of Hyderabad.
Thank you.
Your Excellency the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh,
Honorable Ministers,
Distinguished Guests,
Ladies And Gentlemen:
Bismillah-ir-Rahman-ir-Rahim
Let me begin by thanking all of you for honoring us by joining in this celebration at this truly magnificent site. We are most deeply grateful to all who helped to make this site available to our Academy program. Your generosity will be a continuing inspiration to us all.
Our celebration today is part of a long, unfolding story. It is, for me, a highly personal story growing out of my familys active involvement through the years in the field of education especially in the developing world.
It was just about a century ago that my grandfather, Sir Sultan Mohammed Shah Aga Khan, began to build a network of educational institutions in places where the Ismaili community had settled. This network would eventually include some 300 schools 200 of which my grandfather opened personally.
In addition, he was the founding figure of Aligarh University, and I have continued that tradition through the establishment of the Aga Khan University and the University of Central Asia.
The tradition I am describing, however, goes back much further than one hundred years. For it was some one thousand years ago that my forefathers, the Fatimid Imam-Caliphs of Egypt, founded Al-Azhar University and the Academy of Knowledge in Cairo. For well over a millennium, the pursuit of knowledge has been a central element in our tradition.
Against this background, you can understand why this new educational beginning means so much to us.
But even while we renew a rich tradition inherited from the past, we are also looking deeply into the future. What we begin here may not have its full impact in any of our lifetimes. But the beginnings we undertake today may well be among the most important things we will ever do.
I would like to speak initially about the logic behind the Aga Khan Academies program to look at its philosophical underpinnings. For unless those foundations are sound, whatever we build will be inherently vulnerable.
We are taking our time in laying those foundations. We are designing for the long-range future and we have thought long and hard about our goals and how to achieve them. We have launched research projects and surveys. We have done our homework.
At the very heart of our conclusions is one, central conviction: the key to future progress in the developing world will be its ability to identify, to develop, and to retain expert and effective home-grown leadership.
In our lifetimes, the developing world has looked in various directions for the key to progress. For a while, it was thought to be enough that indigenous peoples simply throw off the yoke of colonialism which for some was the most important barrier to fulfillment and progress. This viewpoint often evolved into a hope that reasserting cultural identity would unlock the future and education sometimes became mainly a matter of tapping into ancient wisdom, expressed in distinctive languages. In many places, the promises of a charismatic ruler also captured the public imagination the mystique of the romantic hero and public education sometimes slipped into relative insignificance.
Over time, as frustration mounted, other cures were entertained in parts of the developing world. Ideologies of the left and the right came into vogue ranging from the siren songs of state socialism on one side to the allure of unrestrained capitalism on the other. The demands of dogma came to replace the disciplines of reason and education too often turned into indoctrination.
But none of these approaches proved adequate to the demands of their times and all of them seem increasingly inadequate to the demands of the present. A different approach has been needed. I would note that the people of this city and this region were among those who first came to realize this fact and to respond impressively to the challenge.
That response here and elsewhere has had, as its centerpiece, a distinctive intellectual style and a creative approach to leadership. As the pace of history has accelerated, agility and adaptability have become more important qualities than mere size or strength, and the race of life has gone increasingly to the nimble and the knowledgeable.
As the economic arena has been globalizing, openness and flexibility have become prerequisites for progress, and success has gone more and more to those who can connect and respond.
Specialized expertise, pragmatic temperament, mental resourcefulness these are increasingly the keys to effective leadership along with a capacity for intellectual humility which keeps ones mind constantly open to a variety of viewpoints and welcomes pluralistic exchange.
In such a world, the most important thing a student can learn is the ability to keep on learning.
What these developments mean is human resources have become more important than natural resources in determining the wealth of a society. And yet, there are still too many communities in which the true potential of the human resource base is sadly underdeveloped.
Too many of those who ought to be leading their communities in the hopeful world of tomorrow, are being left behind in the real world of today. Because good schools are not available to them early in life, they are often blocked from such opportunities as they grow older. And even those who do break through, into a world of wider educational opportunity, too often also break out and leave their home regions. The result is a widening gap between the expert and effective leadership these communities need and the leadership their educational systems are likely to deliver.
Am I saying that we should focus only on educating a leadership elite? Not by any means. Broad public education is still an essential obligation of a just society. But I also believe that the best interests of every society will be best served if its future leaders can be adequately prepared for an unusually demanding future if its outstanding students, in short, can be given an outstanding education.
Every society develops and depends on some set of leaders but the great question is how those leaders are developed and chosen. For much of human history, leaders were born into their roles, or they fought their way in or they bought their way in. Elites were normally based on physical power, or accumulated wealth, or inherited claims to authority.
But social progress can be greatest when aristocracies of class give way to aristocracies of talent or to use an even better term to meritocracies.
The well-led society of the future, in my view, will be a meritocracy where leadership roles are based on personal and intellectual excellence.
Our goal, then, is not to provide special education for a privileged elite but to provide an exceptional education for the truly exceptional.
This is the fundamental philosophy undergirding our Academies program.
How, then, will these goals be realized in practice? In all candor, some of our plans may have few precedents in this country and may strike some observers here as new and distinctive. But we have seen them tested in other contexts and believe they represent worthwhile challenges.
Our plans begin with the realization that governments alone cannot meet the educational challenges of the 21st century. Nor can private institutions which are constrained by the necessity to earn a profit. The answer lies in the expanding role of civil society in voluntary institutions which are not governmental but which are nonetheless dedicated to community values and the public good. We hope that the Aga Khan Academies will become leading exemplars of civil societys potential role.
Access to these schools (each of which will enroll 700 to 1200 young men and women) will thus be based solely on merit not on financial resources. Intellectual capacity and intrinsic character will determine not only who is admitted, but who is actively recruited for matriculation at these schools must go beyond passive selection and include an active outreach effort.
Once admitted, students will pursue a diverse and balanced curriculum, one which will evolve constantly as learning expands at an unprecedented pace. The best schools of the future will be those which select wisely just what learning will best help prepare students for an unpredictable future.
Our curriculum will be designed to qualify students for the widely-respected International Baccalaureate degree and beyond that, for admission to the very best university programs that may interest them in India and in every part of the world.
The International Baccalaureate program will help us prepare students to meet world-class standards joining a community of some 1800 other schools who use the IB framework, including highly respected institutions here in India. Using that framework, we can ensure that the education we provide will be tied to global concerns and keep pace with global developments.
But the Aga Khan Academies will also have their own areas of special emphasis, including: an explicit concern for the value of pluralism, a strong emphasis on the ethical dimensions of life, a more specialized knowledge of how global economics work, and a focus on comparative political systems.
We are often told these days that tension and violence in much of the world grows out of some fundamental clash of civilizations especially a clash between the Islamic world and the West. I disagree with that assessment. In my view, it is a clash of ignorances which is to blame. The Academies will seek to remedy such ignorances through the broad study of a variety of world cultures, including the Study of Muslim Civilizations, a subject which is often overlooked in some parts of the world today.
The principal language of instruction will be English todays primary language of global connection. But connectedness will also be enhanced in other ways. Every graduate will at least be bilingual, for example, and many will be trilingual. In his or her home Academy, a student will not only meet other students from a variety of cultural, ethnic and religious backgrounds but they will get to know one another as friends and neighbors something that residential schools are well-equipped to foster. And many will study for at least a year outside their home cultures, as well.
Each of our Academies can be thought of, in sum, as a center for cross-cultural education. And the City of Hyderabad, with its rich history as a meeting point for different cultures, including the Christian, Hindu and Muslim traditions, will provide a particularly appropriate setting.
The spirit of pluralism will be further enhanced by the fact that each Academy will be part of a larger network. All of them will be linked electronically and will serve students and faculty throughout the system through video-conferencing and other distance learning technology--as well as through programs whereby teachers and students will work for a time in a distant setting.
Building a global network of Academies will enable us to pursue simultaneously two sometimes divergent goals. On the one hand we want our students to understand and appreciate the variety of the world and the diversity of its peoples. On the other hand, we want to ensure a certain consistency in the quality of instruction and in the pursuit of core values. Building a wide network of schools around the same fundamental principles will allow us to pursue both of these objectives.
There will be one teacher for about every seven students at our Academies, and the teachers will not only be actively recruited, carefully selected and equitably compensated, but they will also be expertly trained and continually retrained. World class standards are ever-evolving standardsstaying on the cutting edge is a not a static process. Not only will we need highly professional instructors, but we must also be sure that our instructors are well-instructed. State-of-the art teaching technologies will help our faculties as they reach for this goal.
In short, we seek not only to train the next generation of expert leaders, but also to develop a professional corps of world-class teachers. Emblematic of this commitment is the fact that a Professional Development Center, focused on the improvement of teaching, will be part of the central Academic Building on each of our campuses. If all goes well, teachers at the Aga Khan Academies will become role models not only for their students, but for other teachers in their communities.
We also realize, as I have already suggested, that much of what our students will learn over time they will learn from one another not only in formal classroom settings but in residential and social contexts, in a wide range of extracurricular activities and in community service projects, as well. The Academies will be concerned with the whole of the human being mind, body and spirit and with the broad range of human aspiration intellectual, moral, artistic, physical and spiritual. The fact that these are residential academies will contribute enormously to these broad objectives, encouraging students to identify more completely with the school, to help lead it and shape its environment.
We envision that our graduates will emerge as well rounded men and women, enriched by their participation not only in rich learning communities but in rich living communities as well.
All of these commitments imply a special emphasis on the quality of our physical resources on the built environment, as it is often called including the quality of architectural design. As it has so often been said, we first shape our buildings, and then they shape us.
In sum, the Academies will be serious, focused, rigorous environments but at the same time they will be spacious and joyous places. They will operate on the cutting edge of knowledge and pedagogy, but they will be rooted in history and steeped in tradition.
It is such an institution that I hope to bring to the city of Hyderabad.
Thank you.
Address by His Highness the Aga Khan at the Commencement Ceremony of the American University (Cairo, Egypt)
15 June 2006
President Arnold,
Members of the Board of Trustees,
Members of the Faculty and Administration,
Parents and Families,
Distinguished guests,
And, most importantly, the Graduating Class
Congratulations
I deeply appreciate your warm welcome and I am most grateful for the wonderful honor you are conferring upon me through this honorary degree. I have long been a great admirer of the American University in Cairo - and I am proud that I can now count myself among your alumni.
This is a very special University. For 87 years, it has been a place for creative and constructive interaction between East and West. Its success has inspired those who see the future as one of intercultural cooperation and collaboration, rather than intercultural clash.
The new campus you are building will be a splendid physical manifestation of that vision. But it is even more important that this vision be manifested in the years ahead in your own, individual lives.
Most of you share with me a common cultural background. I was born into a Muslim family, educated as a Muslim and spent many years studying Muslim history. Then, almost fifty years ago, I became Imam of the Shia Imami Ismaili Muslims, responsible both for interpreting the faith to the community, and for helping improve the quality and security of the communitys daily life. From that day to this, my dominant preoccupation has been with the developing world, and particularly the countries of South and Central Asia, Africa and the Middle East, where Ismailis are concentrated among other Muslim populations.
Over these five decades, I have watched that world oscillate constantly, between hope and disappointment.
Too often, disappointment has been the dominant story. And too often the dominant response to disappointment has been to embrace false hopes - from dogmatic socialism to romantic nationalism, from irrational tribalism to runaway individualism.
Another response has been to revisit past glories - contrasting them with contemporary setbacks. Many Muslims in particular, recall a time when Islamic civilizations were on the cutting edge of world progress. They dream of renewing that heritage. But they are not sure how to do so.
For some, renewal means recovering old forms of the faith - while for others it means rejecting faith itself. For some, recovering glory means opposition to the West, its cultures and its economic systems - while for others it means partnering with non-Islamic societies.
As university graduates, you will be fashioning your own visions for the future and your own ways of fulfilling them. But as you do, I hope you will honor the values of this University. For the one ingredient which holds particular promise in the search for fulfillment, is the search for knowledge.
From the very beginnings of Islam, the search for knowledge has been central to our cultures. I think of the words of Hazrat Ali ibn Abi Talib, the first hereditary Imam of the Shia Muslims, and the last of the four rightly-guided Caliphs after the passing away of the Prophet (may peace be upon Him). In his teachings, Hazrat Ali emphasized that No honour is like knowledge. And then he added that No belief is like modesty and patience, no attainment is like humility, no power is like forbearance, and no support is more reliable than consultation.
Notice that the virtues endorsed by Hazrat Ali are qualities which subordinate the self and emphasize others - modesty, patience, humility, forbearance and consultation. What he thus is telling us, is that we find knowledge best by admitting first what it is we do not know, and by opening our minds to what others can teach us.
At various times in world history, the locus of knowledge has moved from one centre of learning to another. Europe once came to the Islamic world for intellectual enrichment - and even rediscovered its own classical roots by searching in Arabic texts.
Astronomy, the so-called Science of the Universe was a field of particular distinction in Islamic civilization - in sharp contrast to the weakness of Islamic countries in the field of Space research today. In this field, as in others, intellectual leadership is never a static condition, but something which is always shifting and always dynamic.
Indeed, Islamic culture in past centuries was distinctly dynamic - constantly reaching out - both to India and the East and to Europe and the West - for enrichment. Throughout history, confident cultures from every part of the world have been eager to seek new learning, not to dilute inherited traditions but to amplify and extend them. The great civilizations of Islam were prime examples.
More than a millennium ago, as early as the 8th century, the original Abbasids, ruling as Caliphs in Baghdad, set up academies and libraries where new knowledge was honored - independent of its source. The Fatimids continued this tradition - reaching out from their base in Cairo - established in the 10th century - to welcome learned figures from distant lands. A bit later, Ghazni, in Afghanistan, became another center of learning - again by reaching out.
By the time of the Safavid era - halfway through the second millennium - cultural leaders of all types - mathematicians, scientists, painters, musicians, and writers - were moving constantly from country to country and court to court - from the Safavid centers in Iran to the Mughal courts of India, and the Uzbek court at Bukhara in what is now Uzbekistan.
The Ottoman Caliphs in Turkey continued in this proactive tradition in the 19th century, borrowing now from primarily western models. The Ottomans paved the way for the immense modernizations associated with Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in the twentieth century. Ataturks reforms brought opposition from ulama and others. Nonetheless, scholars have concluded that a great part of the population did not see Ataturk and his reforms as hostile to Islam. Many saw them as extending a well-established pattern.
I believe that same pattern must be our model today. In keeping with our past traditions, and in response to our present needs, we must to go out and find the best of the worlds knowledge - wherever it exists.
But accessing knowledge, is only the first step. The second step - the application of knowledge, is also demanding. Knowledge, after all, can be used well or poorly - for good or evil purposes.
Once we have acquired knowledge, it is important that the ethical guidelines of faith be invoked, helping us apply what we have learned to the highest possible ends. And it is also important that those ends be related to the practical needs of our peoples.
Throughout history, the application of knowledge has often been determined by a few powerful rulersor by highly dominant governments. But I believe the hour is passing for these outmoded, top-heavy ways of deciding how knowledge should be utilized.
Governments role will not disappear, of course. But a variety of new factors are at play--the vast complexity of economic life, the growing pluralism of society, the splintering and decentralization of information media, and the fragmentation of cultural identity. And all of these factors argue for a more diverse approach.
The great effort of humankind to organize itself for the common good must change with changing environments. For thousands of years our environment was largely agricultural, where value attached primarily to land. Three centuries ago, agriculture began to yield to industry, as machines took center stage, along with standardized processes and the efficiencies of scale.
But in the last few decades, Agricultural Society and Industrial Society have gradually been displaced by what has been called the Knowledge Society, propelled by new digital technology and the expansion of cyberspace.
As a result, enormous social influence has been transferred from the owners and workers of farms and factories, to those whom we now call Knowledge Workers, people who create and exchange information. For them, power attaches more to ideas and values than to money or physical force. Among them, power itself is widely dispersed.
In such a time, we need to depend less on government and more on what I call the institutions of civil society. These civil institutions are normally private and voluntary - but they are committed to the public good. They include entities dedicated to education and research, labour and commerce, health and the environment, culture and religion.
Civil institutions can thrive even when governments falter. But they cannot thrive unless governments and citizens also place a high value on diversity, and create a supportive environment for non-governmental initiatives. The graduates of the American University in Cairo can play a critical role in that process.
To do this however, will mean confronting the knowledge deficit which now plagues too many Islamic societies. Happily, technology has given us wonderful new ways of sharing knowledge. Rather than sending scholars over thousands of miles and scores of years, from library to library and academy to academy, today we can simply click in a matter of seconds onto a wide variety of appropriate websites. But, first, we must acknowledge what it is that we do not yet know - committing ourselves to continued learning and accepting the fact that useful knowledge will often be found by reaching beyond the traditional barriers of both geography and culture.
The most valuable part of your University education may not lie merely in the content of what you have learned here, but in your improved ability to go on learning for the rest of your lives.
One certain contributor to the knowledge deficit in large parts of the Islamic world has been the disconnect between weak universities, and the requirements of modern economies. We must understand the intimate connection between the economy of any country and the research agenda of its universities - the fact that research requires the intimate involvement of economic institutions, and that economic development requires the support and the stimulus of cutting edge research.
All of this will help explain why our Aga Khan Development Network has placed such a high priority on the development of Aga Khan supported Universities and Academies in parts of the developing world. And it will also explain my admiration for the work of this University. Along with similar, sister institutions, AUC has effectively combined values and requirements of the Islamic world with educational resources from the Western world. In doing so, it marks a promising pathway to the future.
As graduates of this university, you have already begun your journey down that path - and you are ideally placed to lead others along it. This calling is your special responsibility. But you can take up this obligation knowing that you are well equipped for the road ahead.
In the long sweep of human history, Egypt has been among the first and most distinguished centers of world learning. Building on those traditions, this country and this region can again play a central role in the Knowledge Society of the future - and each of you can be a vital part of that exciting process.
May Allah accompany you.
Thank You.
President Arnold,
Members of the Board of Trustees,
Members of the Faculty and Administration,
Parents and Families,
Distinguished guests,
And, most importantly, the Graduating Class
Congratulations
I deeply appreciate your warm welcome and I am most grateful for the wonderful honor you are conferring upon me through this honorary degree. I have long been a great admirer of the American University in Cairo - and I am proud that I can now count myself among your alumni.
This is a very special University. For 87 years, it has been a place for creative and constructive interaction between East and West. Its success has inspired those who see the future as one of intercultural cooperation and collaboration, rather than intercultural clash.
The new campus you are building will be a splendid physical manifestation of that vision. But it is even more important that this vision be manifested in the years ahead in your own, individual lives.
Most of you share with me a common cultural background. I was born into a Muslim family, educated as a Muslim and spent many years studying Muslim history. Then, almost fifty years ago, I became Imam of the Shia Imami Ismaili Muslims, responsible both for interpreting the faith to the community, and for helping improve the quality and security of the communitys daily life. From that day to this, my dominant preoccupation has been with the developing world, and particularly the countries of South and Central Asia, Africa and the Middle East, where Ismailis are concentrated among other Muslim populations.
Over these five decades, I have watched that world oscillate constantly, between hope and disappointment.
Too often, disappointment has been the dominant story. And too often the dominant response to disappointment has been to embrace false hopes - from dogmatic socialism to romantic nationalism, from irrational tribalism to runaway individualism.
Another response has been to revisit past glories - contrasting them with contemporary setbacks. Many Muslims in particular, recall a time when Islamic civilizations were on the cutting edge of world progress. They dream of renewing that heritage. But they are not sure how to do so.
For some, renewal means recovering old forms of the faith - while for others it means rejecting faith itself. For some, recovering glory means opposition to the West, its cultures and its economic systems - while for others it means partnering with non-Islamic societies.
As university graduates, you will be fashioning your own visions for the future and your own ways of fulfilling them. But as you do, I hope you will honor the values of this University. For the one ingredient which holds particular promise in the search for fulfillment, is the search for knowledge.
From the very beginnings of Islam, the search for knowledge has been central to our cultures. I think of the words of Hazrat Ali ibn Abi Talib, the first hereditary Imam of the Shia Muslims, and the last of the four rightly-guided Caliphs after the passing away of the Prophet (may peace be upon Him). In his teachings, Hazrat Ali emphasized that No honour is like knowledge. And then he added that No belief is like modesty and patience, no attainment is like humility, no power is like forbearance, and no support is more reliable than consultation.
Notice that the virtues endorsed by Hazrat Ali are qualities which subordinate the self and emphasize others - modesty, patience, humility, forbearance and consultation. What he thus is telling us, is that we find knowledge best by admitting first what it is we do not know, and by opening our minds to what others can teach us.
At various times in world history, the locus of knowledge has moved from one centre of learning to another. Europe once came to the Islamic world for intellectual enrichment - and even rediscovered its own classical roots by searching in Arabic texts.
Astronomy, the so-called Science of the Universe was a field of particular distinction in Islamic civilization - in sharp contrast to the weakness of Islamic countries in the field of Space research today. In this field, as in others, intellectual leadership is never a static condition, but something which is always shifting and always dynamic.
Indeed, Islamic culture in past centuries was distinctly dynamic - constantly reaching out - both to India and the East and to Europe and the West - for enrichment. Throughout history, confident cultures from every part of the world have been eager to seek new learning, not to dilute inherited traditions but to amplify and extend them. The great civilizations of Islam were prime examples.
More than a millennium ago, as early as the 8th century, the original Abbasids, ruling as Caliphs in Baghdad, set up academies and libraries where new knowledge was honored - independent of its source. The Fatimids continued this tradition - reaching out from their base in Cairo - established in the 10th century - to welcome learned figures from distant lands. A bit later, Ghazni, in Afghanistan, became another center of learning - again by reaching out.
By the time of the Safavid era - halfway through the second millennium - cultural leaders of all types - mathematicians, scientists, painters, musicians, and writers - were moving constantly from country to country and court to court - from the Safavid centers in Iran to the Mughal courts of India, and the Uzbek court at Bukhara in what is now Uzbekistan.
The Ottoman Caliphs in Turkey continued in this proactive tradition in the 19th century, borrowing now from primarily western models. The Ottomans paved the way for the immense modernizations associated with Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in the twentieth century. Ataturks reforms brought opposition from ulama and others. Nonetheless, scholars have concluded that a great part of the population did not see Ataturk and his reforms as hostile to Islam. Many saw them as extending a well-established pattern.
I believe that same pattern must be our model today. In keeping with our past traditions, and in response to our present needs, we must to go out and find the best of the worlds knowledge - wherever it exists.
But accessing knowledge, is only the first step. The second step - the application of knowledge, is also demanding. Knowledge, after all, can be used well or poorly - for good or evil purposes.
Once we have acquired knowledge, it is important that the ethical guidelines of faith be invoked, helping us apply what we have learned to the highest possible ends. And it is also important that those ends be related to the practical needs of our peoples.
Throughout history, the application of knowledge has often been determined by a few powerful rulersor by highly dominant governments. But I believe the hour is passing for these outmoded, top-heavy ways of deciding how knowledge should be utilized.
Governments role will not disappear, of course. But a variety of new factors are at play--the vast complexity of economic life, the growing pluralism of society, the splintering and decentralization of information media, and the fragmentation of cultural identity. And all of these factors argue for a more diverse approach.
The great effort of humankind to organize itself for the common good must change with changing environments. For thousands of years our environment was largely agricultural, where value attached primarily to land. Three centuries ago, agriculture began to yield to industry, as machines took center stage, along with standardized processes and the efficiencies of scale.
But in the last few decades, Agricultural Society and Industrial Society have gradually been displaced by what has been called the Knowledge Society, propelled by new digital technology and the expansion of cyberspace.
As a result, enormous social influence has been transferred from the owners and workers of farms and factories, to those whom we now call Knowledge Workers, people who create and exchange information. For them, power attaches more to ideas and values than to money or physical force. Among them, power itself is widely dispersed.
In such a time, we need to depend less on government and more on what I call the institutions of civil society. These civil institutions are normally private and voluntary - but they are committed to the public good. They include entities dedicated to education and research, labour and commerce, health and the environment, culture and religion.
Civil institutions can thrive even when governments falter. But they cannot thrive unless governments and citizens also place a high value on diversity, and create a supportive environment for non-governmental initiatives. The graduates of the American University in Cairo can play a critical role in that process.
To do this however, will mean confronting the knowledge deficit which now plagues too many Islamic societies. Happily, technology has given us wonderful new ways of sharing knowledge. Rather than sending scholars over thousands of miles and scores of years, from library to library and academy to academy, today we can simply click in a matter of seconds onto a wide variety of appropriate websites. But, first, we must acknowledge what it is that we do not yet know - committing ourselves to continued learning and accepting the fact that useful knowledge will often be found by reaching beyond the traditional barriers of both geography and culture.
The most valuable part of your University education may not lie merely in the content of what you have learned here, but in your improved ability to go on learning for the rest of your lives.
One certain contributor to the knowledge deficit in large parts of the Islamic world has been the disconnect between weak universities, and the requirements of modern economies. We must understand the intimate connection between the economy of any country and the research agenda of its universities - the fact that research requires the intimate involvement of economic institutions, and that economic development requires the support and the stimulus of cutting edge research.
All of this will help explain why our Aga Khan Development Network has placed such a high priority on the development of Aga Khan supported Universities and Academies in parts of the developing world. And it will also explain my admiration for the work of this University. Along with similar, sister institutions, AUC has effectively combined values and requirements of the Islamic world with educational resources from the Western world. In doing so, it marks a promising pathway to the future.
As graduates of this university, you have already begun your journey down that path - and you are ideally placed to lead others along it. This calling is your special responsibility. But you can take up this obligation knowing that you are well equipped for the road ahead.
In the long sweep of human history, Egypt has been among the first and most distinguished centers of world learning. Building on those traditions, this country and this region can again play a central role in the Knowledge Society of the future - and each of you can be a vital part of that exciting process.
May Allah accompany you.
Thank You.
Address by His Highness the Aga Khan to the School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University (Columbia, USA)
15 May 2006
Bismillah-ir-Rahman-ir-Rahim
Dean Anderson,
Faculty Members,
Graduating Students and Parents,
Distinguished Guests,
Ladies and Gentlemen
I am deeply honoured to be here and deeply grateful for your invitation. This is a memorable day both in your personal lives and in the life of this Schooland I am pleased to share in it.
They say that a good graduation speaker is someone who can talk in someone elses sleep. I hope we can break that pattern today.
An opinion poll reported recently that what American graduates want as their graduation speaker more than anyone is someone they could relate to. But that test, says the poll, showed the most popular university speaker in recent years was the Sesame street character, Kermit the Frog. I found it a bit intimidating to wonder just where the Imam of the Shia Ismaili Muslims would rank on the relating scale in comparison to Kermit the Frog.
Ceremonies of the sort we observe today are valuable because they help us to bridge the past and the future to see ourselves as players in larger narratives. This Schools narrative is now sixty years old embracing the whole of the postwar period. In that time you have dramatically broadened both the communities you serve and the programs through which you serve them.
Your history reflects a continuing conviction that the challenges of our times are fundamentally global ones calling both for multi-disciplinary and multi-national responses.
Even as SIPA marks its 60th anniversary, I am approaching an anniversary of my own the 50th anniversary next year of my role as Imam of the Shia Imami Ismaili Muslims.
While I was educated in the West, my perspective over these fifty years has been profoundly shaped by the countries of South and Central Asia, the Middle East and Africa, where the Ismaili people live and where they are largely concentrated. For five decades, that has been my world my virtually permanent preoccupation. And it is out of that experience that I speak today.
For the developing world, the past half-century has been a time of recurring hope and frequent disappointment. Great waves of change have washed over the landscape from the crumbling of colonial hegemonies in mid century to the recent collapse of communist empires. But too often, what rushed in to replace the old order were empty hopesnot only the false allure of state socialism, non-alignment, and single-party rule, but also the false glories of romantic nationalism and narrow tribalism, and the false dawn of runaway individualism.
There have been welcome exceptions to this pattern, of course. But too often, one step forward has been accompanied by two steps back. Hope for the future has often meant hope for survival, not hope for progress. The old order yielded its place, but a new world was not ready to be born.
Today, this sense of frustration is compounded both in rich and poor nations by a host of new challenges. They range from changing weather patterns to mutating viruses, from new digital and bio-genetic technologies to new patterns of family life and a new intermingling of cultures.
As the world economy integrates, global migrations are reaching record levels. Immigrants now account for two thirds of the population growth in the 30 developed countries of the OECD. Once homogenous societies are becoming distinctly multi-cultural.
Meanwhile, the gap widens between rich countries and poor. Populations explode and the environment deteriorates. The nation-state itself is newly challenged by the influence of non-state forcesincluding global crime and terrorism.
Whenever I sit down with leading thinkers and policy makers I come away with a haunting question. Why is it, given the scope of our collective learning unprecedented in human history that we have such difficulty in controlling these developments? Why is our growing intellectual mastery of the world so often accompanied in practice by a growing sense of drift?
My response to that question focuses increasingly on the fact that democratic institutions have not lived up to their potential. In both the developed and the developing world, the promise of democracy has too often been disappointed.
For many centuries, enlightened people have argued that democracy was the key to social progress. But today, that contention is in dispute.
In countries where I am directly involved, the 21st century has already experienced at least a half-dozen constitutional crises. The sad fact hard to swallow and difficult to deny is that nearly forty percent of UN member nations are now categorized not merely as failed states but as failed democracies.
Our central challenge in this new century as leaders and future leaders of our world is to renew the democratic promise.
The saving grace which democratic systems are most likely to possess, after all, is that they are self-correcting. A system of public accountability still provides the best hope for change without violence. And that virtue alone redeems the entire concept. It explains Churchills famous view that democracy is the worst form of government, except for all others.
Our challenge is not to find alternatives to democracy, but to find more and better ways to make democracy work.
In responding to that challenge today, I would like to make four observations four suggestions for addressing our democratic disappointments and advancing our democratic hopes.
My comments involve, first, the need for greater flexibility in defining the paths to democracy; secondly, the need for greater diversity in the institutions which participate in democratic life; thirdly, the need to expand the publics capacity for democracy; and finally, the need to strengthen public integrity-- on which democracy rests. Let me say a few words about each.
My first concern is that we must define the paths to democracy more flexibly. We like to say that democracy involves a pluralistic approach to life but too seldom do we take a pluralistic approach to democracy. Too often, we insist that democracies must all follow a similar script evolving at a similar pace without recognizing that different circumstances may call for different constructs.
The ultimate recourse in any democracy must be to the concept of popular sovereignty. But within that concept there is room for variation. One size need not fit all and trying to make one size fit all can be a recipe for failure.
The worlds most successful democracies have had widely differing histories each taking its own shape according to its own timetable.
How is power best divided and balanced? How should secular and spiritual allegiances interact? How can traditional authority even monarchical authority relate to democratic frameworks? How is the integrity of minority cultures and faith systems best reconciled with majority rule?
It is simplistic to wish that our democratic destinations should be similar that they cannot be reached by many paths. The democratic spirit of freedom and flexibility must begin with our definitions of democracy itself.
Even as we think more flexibly about democracy, we should also consider a second goal: diversifying the institutions of democratic life.
One of the reasons that governments often fail is that we depend too much on them. We invest too many hopes in political promises and we entrust too many tasks to political regimes.
Governments alone do not make democracy work. The most successful democracies are those in which the non-governmental institutions of civil society also play a vital role.
Civil society is powered by private voluntary energies, but it is committed to the public good. It includes institutions of education, health, science and research. It embraces professional, commercial, labour, ethnic and arts organizations, and others devoted to religion, communication, and the environment.
Sometimes, in our preoccupation with government, we discount the impact of civil society, including the potential of constructive NGOs. But we can no longer afford that outlook. Meeting the realities of a complex world will require a strengthened array of civic institutions. They spur social progress even when governments falter, and because they are so intimately connected to the public, they can predict new patterns and identify new problems with particular sensitivity.
But such developments cannot be coerced. They require an encouraging, enabling environment, supported by a broad public enthusiasm for social goals. And let me be clear: I am here because I believe SIPA, with its annual outpouring of able graduates, can make an enormous worldwide contribution to such a response.
The development of civil society can also help meet the rising challenge of cultural diversity. As communities become more pluralistic in fact, they must also become more pluralistic in spirit. A vibrant civil society can give diverse constituencies effective ways to express and preserve their distinct identities, even as they interact with new neighbours.
We are often told that increased contact among cultures will inevitably produce a Clash of Civilizations, particularly between Islam and the West. Such predictions could become self-fulfilling prophecies if enough people believe them. But that need not, and must not, be the case.
The true problem we face is what I would call a Clash of Ignorance on both sides one which neglects, for example, a long history of respect and cooperation between Islamic and Western peoples, and their respective civilisations.
This is an appropriate place to recall how North American history was shaped over the centuries by diverse cultural groups. In the future as in the past, such diversity can be an engine of enormous creativity if it is sustained by what I would call a new cosmopolitan ethic. To encourage that process, the Aga Khan Development Network has recently formed a partnership with the Government of Canada to create a new Global Centre for Pluralism in Ottawa. Drawing on both the Ismaili experience and the pluralistic model of Canada itself, the Centre recognizes that we cannot make the world safe for democracy unless we also make the world safe for diversity and that strengthening can be achieved by the institutions of civil society. They can contribute significantly to that goal.
My third point involves the public capacity for democratic government. This is a problem we too often treat with too much sentimentality, reluctant to acknowledge that democratic publics are not always all-wise.
Inadequate public communication is part of the problem. Driven by short-term circulation and profit goals, media increasingly tell audiences what they want to hear rather than what they ought to hear. And what too many people want is not to be informed, but to be entertained.
One result is the inadequacy of international news. I am told that world news now represents a substantially lower percentage of mainstream American news than it did a generation ago. Thanks to the Internet, specialists can get more information from more places than ever before. But for the general public, in America and elsewhere, global information has declined, while global involvements have expanded.
If better communication is one part of the answer, better education is another. This means, above all, developing new curricula which will meet new demands especially in developing countries. We must do more to prepare the leaders of the 21st century for economic life in a global marketplace, for cultural life in pluralistic societies, for political life in complex democracies. Our system of Aga Khan-sponsored universities and academies is working throughout the developing world to create new educational models. But the scale of our work only begins to address the enormity of the challenge.
Improved communication and education can be helpful, but we also must be realistic about public capabilities. I believe, for example, that publics are too often asked to vote on issues that bewilder them. In recent months, both in Africa and in Asia new national constitutions have been left to the mercies of mass public referenda posing complex, theoretical issues well beyond the ability of politicians to explain, and publics to master. Nor is this matter unique to the developing world. We saw a similar pattern last year when the French public rejected a new European constitutional treaty that was 474 pages long.
Democracies need to distinguish responsibly between the prerogatives of the people and the obligations of their leaders. And leaders must meet their obligations. When democracies fail, it is usually because publics have grown impatient with ineffectual leaders and governments.
When parliaments lack the structure or expertise to grapple with complex problems or when a system of checks and balances stymies action rather than refining it then disenchanted publics will often turn to autocrats. The UN Development Program recently reported, for example, that 55 percent of those surveyed in 18 Latin American countries would support authoritarian rule if it brought economic progress. There, in too many cases progress and democracy have not gone hand in hand.
The best way to redeem the concept of democracy around the world is to improve the results it delivers. Developed countries, rather than talking so much about democracy on the conceptual level, must do more much more to help democracy work on a practical level. Our goal must be fully functioning democracies which bring genuine improvements in the quality of life for their peoples. We must not force publics to choose between democratic government and competent government.
This brings me to my final topic: the need for a sense of greater public integrity.
Expanding the number of people who share social power is only half the battle. The critical question is how such power is used. How can we inspire people to reach beyond rampant materialism, self-indulgent individualism, and unprincipled relativism.
One answer is to augment our focus on personal prerogatives and individual rights, with an expanded concern for personal responsibilities and communal goals. A passion for justice, the quest for equality, a respect for tolerance, a dedication to human dignity these are universal human values which are broadly shared across divisions of class, race, language, faith and geography. They constitute what classical philosophers in the East and West alike have described as human virtue not merely the absence of negative restraints on individual freedom, but also a set of positive responsibilities, moral disciplines which prevent liberty from turning into license.
Historically, one of the most powerful resources for any culture has been the sense that it is heading somewhere, that tomorrow will be better than today, that there is reason to embrace what I would call a narrative of progress.
The right of individuals to look for a better quality of life within their own life-spans and to build toward a better life for their children these are personal aspirations which must become public values.
But a healthy sense of public integrity, in my view, will be difficult to nurture over time without a strong religious underpinning. In the Islamic tradition, the conduct of ones worldly life is inseparably intertwined with the concerns of ones spiritual life and one cannot talk about integrity without also talking about faith.
For Islam, the importance of this intersection is an item of faith, such a profound melding of worldly concerns and spiritual ideals that one cannot imagine one without the other. The two belong together. They constitute a way of life.
From that perspective, I would put high among our priorities, both within and outside the Islamic world, the need to renew our spiritual traditions. To be sure, religious freedom is a critical value in a pluralistic society. But if freedom of religion deteriorates into freedom from religion then I fear we will soon be lost on a bleak and barren landscape with no compass or roadmap, no sense of ultimate direction.
I fully understand the Wests historic commitment to separating the secular from the religious. But for many non-Westerners, including most Muslims, the realms of faith and of worldly affairs cannot be antithetical. If modernism lacks a spiritual dimension, it will look like materialism. And if the modernizing influence of the West is insistently and exclusively a secularising influence, then much of the Islamic world will be somewhat distanced from it.
A deeply rooted sense of public integrity means more than integrity in government, important as that must be. Ethical lapses in medicine and education, malfeasance in business and banking, dishonesty among journalists, scientists, engineers, or scholars all of these weaknesses can undermine the most promising democracies.
Let me finally emphasize my strong conviction that public integrity cannot grow out of authoritarian pronouncements. It must be rooted in the human heart and conscience. As the Holy Quran says: There is no compulsion in religion. The resurgence of spirituality potentially such a positive force can become a negative influence when it turns into self-righteousness and imposes itself on others. Like all of the worlds great religions, Islam warns against the danger of comparing oneself with God, and places primary emphasis on the qualities of generosity, mercy and humility.
A central element in any religious outlook, it seems to me, is a sense of human limitation, a recognition of our own creature-hood a posture of profound humility before the Divine. In that sensibility lies our best protection against divisive dogmatism and our best hope for creative pluralism.
In conclusion, then, I would ask as you move out from this University into a diverse and demanding world that you think about four considerations for renewing the promise of democracy: defining democratic paths more flexibly; expanding the role of civil society; increasing public capacities for self-governance; and strengthening our commitment to public integrity.
In all these ways, I believe we can help restore confidence in the promise of democratic life, affirming with pride our distinct cultural identities, while embracing with enthusiasm our new global potentials.
To the graduants, my prayer is that God may guide you and accompany you as you fulfil your destinies.
Thank You.
Bismillah-ir-Rahman-ir-Rahim
Dean Anderson,
Faculty Members,
Graduating Students and Parents,
Distinguished Guests,
Ladies and Gentlemen
I am deeply honoured to be here and deeply grateful for your invitation. This is a memorable day both in your personal lives and in the life of this Schooland I am pleased to share in it.
They say that a good graduation speaker is someone who can talk in someone elses sleep. I hope we can break that pattern today.
An opinion poll reported recently that what American graduates want as their graduation speaker more than anyone is someone they could relate to. But that test, says the poll, showed the most popular university speaker in recent years was the Sesame street character, Kermit the Frog. I found it a bit intimidating to wonder just where the Imam of the Shia Ismaili Muslims would rank on the relating scale in comparison to Kermit the Frog.
Ceremonies of the sort we observe today are valuable because they help us to bridge the past and the future to see ourselves as players in larger narratives. This Schools narrative is now sixty years old embracing the whole of the postwar period. In that time you have dramatically broadened both the communities you serve and the programs through which you serve them.
Your history reflects a continuing conviction that the challenges of our times are fundamentally global ones calling both for multi-disciplinary and multi-national responses.
Even as SIPA marks its 60th anniversary, I am approaching an anniversary of my own the 50th anniversary next year of my role as Imam of the Shia Imami Ismaili Muslims.
While I was educated in the West, my perspective over these fifty years has been profoundly shaped by the countries of South and Central Asia, the Middle East and Africa, where the Ismaili people live and where they are largely concentrated. For five decades, that has been my world my virtually permanent preoccupation. And it is out of that experience that I speak today.
For the developing world, the past half-century has been a time of recurring hope and frequent disappointment. Great waves of change have washed over the landscape from the crumbling of colonial hegemonies in mid century to the recent collapse of communist empires. But too often, what rushed in to replace the old order were empty hopesnot only the false allure of state socialism, non-alignment, and single-party rule, but also the false glories of romantic nationalism and narrow tribalism, and the false dawn of runaway individualism.
There have been welcome exceptions to this pattern, of course. But too often, one step forward has been accompanied by two steps back. Hope for the future has often meant hope for survival, not hope for progress. The old order yielded its place, but a new world was not ready to be born.
Today, this sense of frustration is compounded both in rich and poor nations by a host of new challenges. They range from changing weather patterns to mutating viruses, from new digital and bio-genetic technologies to new patterns of family life and a new intermingling of cultures.
As the world economy integrates, global migrations are reaching record levels. Immigrants now account for two thirds of the population growth in the 30 developed countries of the OECD. Once homogenous societies are becoming distinctly multi-cultural.
Meanwhile, the gap widens between rich countries and poor. Populations explode and the environment deteriorates. The nation-state itself is newly challenged by the influence of non-state forcesincluding global crime and terrorism.
Whenever I sit down with leading thinkers and policy makers I come away with a haunting question. Why is it, given the scope of our collective learning unprecedented in human history that we have such difficulty in controlling these developments? Why is our growing intellectual mastery of the world so often accompanied in practice by a growing sense of drift?
My response to that question focuses increasingly on the fact that democratic institutions have not lived up to their potential. In both the developed and the developing world, the promise of democracy has too often been disappointed.
For many centuries, enlightened people have argued that democracy was the key to social progress. But today, that contention is in dispute.
In countries where I am directly involved, the 21st century has already experienced at least a half-dozen constitutional crises. The sad fact hard to swallow and difficult to deny is that nearly forty percent of UN member nations are now categorized not merely as failed states but as failed democracies.
Our central challenge in this new century as leaders and future leaders of our world is to renew the democratic promise.
The saving grace which democratic systems are most likely to possess, after all, is that they are self-correcting. A system of public accountability still provides the best hope for change without violence. And that virtue alone redeems the entire concept. It explains Churchills famous view that democracy is the worst form of government, except for all others.
Our challenge is not to find alternatives to democracy, but to find more and better ways to make democracy work.
In responding to that challenge today, I would like to make four observations four suggestions for addressing our democratic disappointments and advancing our democratic hopes.
My comments involve, first, the need for greater flexibility in defining the paths to democracy; secondly, the need for greater diversity in the institutions which participate in democratic life; thirdly, the need to expand the publics capacity for democracy; and finally, the need to strengthen public integrity-- on which democracy rests. Let me say a few words about each.
My first concern is that we must define the paths to democracy more flexibly. We like to say that democracy involves a pluralistic approach to life but too seldom do we take a pluralistic approach to democracy. Too often, we insist that democracies must all follow a similar script evolving at a similar pace without recognizing that different circumstances may call for different constructs.
The ultimate recourse in any democracy must be to the concept of popular sovereignty. But within that concept there is room for variation. One size need not fit all and trying to make one size fit all can be a recipe for failure.
The worlds most successful democracies have had widely differing histories each taking its own shape according to its own timetable.
How is power best divided and balanced? How should secular and spiritual allegiances interact? How can traditional authority even monarchical authority relate to democratic frameworks? How is the integrity of minority cultures and faith systems best reconciled with majority rule?
It is simplistic to wish that our democratic destinations should be similar that they cannot be reached by many paths. The democratic spirit of freedom and flexibility must begin with our definitions of democracy itself.
Even as we think more flexibly about democracy, we should also consider a second goal: diversifying the institutions of democratic life.
One of the reasons that governments often fail is that we depend too much on them. We invest too many hopes in political promises and we entrust too many tasks to political regimes.
Governments alone do not make democracy work. The most successful democracies are those in which the non-governmental institutions of civil society also play a vital role.
Civil society is powered by private voluntary energies, but it is committed to the public good. It includes institutions of education, health, science and research. It embraces professional, commercial, labour, ethnic and arts organizations, and others devoted to religion, communication, and the environment.
Sometimes, in our preoccupation with government, we discount the impact of civil society, including the potential of constructive NGOs. But we can no longer afford that outlook. Meeting the realities of a complex world will require a strengthened array of civic institutions. They spur social progress even when governments falter, and because they are so intimately connected to the public, they can predict new patterns and identify new problems with particular sensitivity.
But such developments cannot be coerced. They require an encouraging, enabling environment, supported by a broad public enthusiasm for social goals. And let me be clear: I am here because I believe SIPA, with its annual outpouring of able graduates, can make an enormous worldwide contribution to such a response.
The development of civil society can also help meet the rising challenge of cultural diversity. As communities become more pluralistic in fact, they must also become more pluralistic in spirit. A vibrant civil society can give diverse constituencies effective ways to express and preserve their distinct identities, even as they interact with new neighbours.
We are often told that increased contact among cultures will inevitably produce a Clash of Civilizations, particularly between Islam and the West. Such predictions could become self-fulfilling prophecies if enough people believe them. But that need not, and must not, be the case.
The true problem we face is what I would call a Clash of Ignorance on both sides one which neglects, for example, a long history of respect and cooperation between Islamic and Western peoples, and their respective civilisations.
This is an appropriate place to recall how North American history was shaped over the centuries by diverse cultural groups. In the future as in the past, such diversity can be an engine of enormous creativity if it is sustained by what I would call a new cosmopolitan ethic. To encourage that process, the Aga Khan Development Network has recently formed a partnership with the Government of Canada to create a new Global Centre for Pluralism in Ottawa. Drawing on both the Ismaili experience and the pluralistic model of Canada itself, the Centre recognizes that we cannot make the world safe for democracy unless we also make the world safe for diversity and that strengthening can be achieved by the institutions of civil society. They can contribute significantly to that goal.
My third point involves the public capacity for democratic government. This is a problem we too often treat with too much sentimentality, reluctant to acknowledge that democratic publics are not always all-wise.
Inadequate public communication is part of the problem. Driven by short-term circulation and profit goals, media increasingly tell audiences what they want to hear rather than what they ought to hear. And what too many people want is not to be informed, but to be entertained.
One result is the inadequacy of international news. I am told that world news now represents a substantially lower percentage of mainstream American news than it did a generation ago. Thanks to the Internet, specialists can get more information from more places than ever before. But for the general public, in America and elsewhere, global information has declined, while global involvements have expanded.
If better communication is one part of the answer, better education is another. This means, above all, developing new curricula which will meet new demands especially in developing countries. We must do more to prepare the leaders of the 21st century for economic life in a global marketplace, for cultural life in pluralistic societies, for political life in complex democracies. Our system of Aga Khan-sponsored universities and academies is working throughout the developing world to create new educational models. But the scale of our work only begins to address the enormity of the challenge.
Improved communication and education can be helpful, but we also must be realistic about public capabilities. I believe, for example, that publics are too often asked to vote on issues that bewilder them. In recent months, both in Africa and in Asia new national constitutions have been left to the mercies of mass public referenda posing complex, theoretical issues well beyond the ability of politicians to explain, and publics to master. Nor is this matter unique to the developing world. We saw a similar pattern last year when the French public rejected a new European constitutional treaty that was 474 pages long.
Democracies need to distinguish responsibly between the prerogatives of the people and the obligations of their leaders. And leaders must meet their obligations. When democracies fail, it is usually because publics have grown impatient with ineffectual leaders and governments.
When parliaments lack the structure or expertise to grapple with complex problems or when a system of checks and balances stymies action rather than refining it then disenchanted publics will often turn to autocrats. The UN Development Program recently reported, for example, that 55 percent of those surveyed in 18 Latin American countries would support authoritarian rule if it brought economic progress. There, in too many cases progress and democracy have not gone hand in hand.
The best way to redeem the concept of democracy around the world is to improve the results it delivers. Developed countries, rather than talking so much about democracy on the conceptual level, must do more much more to help democracy work on a practical level. Our goal must be fully functioning democracies which bring genuine improvements in the quality of life for their peoples. We must not force publics to choose between democratic government and competent government.
This brings me to my final topic: the need for a sense of greater public integrity.
Expanding the number of people who share social power is only half the battle. The critical question is how such power is used. How can we inspire people to reach beyond rampant materialism, self-indulgent individualism, and unprincipled relativism.
One answer is to augment our focus on personal prerogatives and individual rights, with an expanded concern for personal responsibilities and communal goals. A passion for justice, the quest for equality, a respect for tolerance, a dedication to human dignity these are universal human values which are broadly shared across divisions of class, race, language, faith and geography. They constitute what classical philosophers in the East and West alike have described as human virtue not merely the absence of negative restraints on individual freedom, but also a set of positive responsibilities, moral disciplines which prevent liberty from turning into license.
Historically, one of the most powerful resources for any culture has been the sense that it is heading somewhere, that tomorrow will be better than today, that there is reason to embrace what I would call a narrative of progress.
The right of individuals to look for a better quality of life within their own life-spans and to build toward a better life for their children these are personal aspirations which must become public values.
But a healthy sense of public integrity, in my view, will be difficult to nurture over time without a strong religious underpinning. In the Islamic tradition, the conduct of ones worldly life is inseparably intertwined with the concerns of ones spiritual life and one cannot talk about integrity without also talking about faith.
For Islam, the importance of this intersection is an item of faith, such a profound melding of worldly concerns and spiritual ideals that one cannot imagine one without the other. The two belong together. They constitute a way of life.
From that perspective, I would put high among our priorities, both within and outside the Islamic world, the need to renew our spiritual traditions. To be sure, religious freedom is a critical value in a pluralistic society. But if freedom of religion deteriorates into freedom from religion then I fear we will soon be lost on a bleak and barren landscape with no compass or roadmap, no sense of ultimate direction.
I fully understand the Wests historic commitment to separating the secular from the religious. But for many non-Westerners, including most Muslims, the realms of faith and of worldly affairs cannot be antithetical. If modernism lacks a spiritual dimension, it will look like materialism. And if the modernizing influence of the West is insistently and exclusively a secularising influence, then much of the Islamic world will be somewhat distanced from it.
A deeply rooted sense of public integrity means more than integrity in government, important as that must be. Ethical lapses in medicine and education, malfeasance in business and banking, dishonesty among journalists, scientists, engineers, or scholars all of these weaknesses can undermine the most promising democracies.
Let me finally emphasize my strong conviction that public integrity cannot grow out of authoritarian pronouncements. It must be rooted in the human heart and conscience. As the Holy Quran says: There is no compulsion in religion. The resurgence of spirituality potentially such a positive force can become a negative influence when it turns into self-righteousness and imposes itself on others. Like all of the worlds great religions, Islam warns against the danger of comparing oneself with God, and places primary emphasis on the qualities of generosity, mercy and humility.
A central element in any religious outlook, it seems to me, is a sense of human limitation, a recognition of our own creature-hood a posture of profound humility before the Divine. In that sensibility lies our best protection against divisive dogmatism and our best hope for creative pluralism.
In conclusion, then, I would ask as you move out from this University into a diverse and demanding world that you think about four considerations for renewing the promise of democracy: defining democratic paths more flexibly; expanding the role of civil society; increasing public capacities for self-governance; and strengthening our commitment to public integrity.
In all these ways, I believe we can help restore confidence in the promise of democratic life, affirming with pride our distinct cultural identities, while embracing with enthusiasm our new global potentials.
To the graduants, my prayer is that God may guide you and accompany you as you fulfil your destinies.
Thank You.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Inauguration of the French Medical Institute for Children in Kabul
08 April 2006
Mr. President,
Madame Chirac,
Excellencies,
Ladies and Gentlemen:
I am delighted and touched that Madame Chirac has joined us today for the inauguration of the French Medical Institute for Children in the presence of His Excellency President Hamid Karzai. Despite a very heavy schedule, President Karzai has chosen to be with us today, which underlines his personal unwavering commitment and that of his Government to the reconstruction of this proud land of the great Afghan people. The partnership of the Government of Afghanistan will remain essential for the future of this Institute.
The presence of the First Lady of France is far from being simply symbolic because Mme Chirac is actively involved in the medical and social field, in particular as President, since 1994, of the Foundation of Paris Hospitals and French Hospitals. All of us here appreciate her engagement and her strong support of this medical initiative in Kabul. Moreover, the new Institute we are inaugurating today represents French medicine in Afghanistan, medicine which is of worldwide renown. In the future, this Institute will permanently represent the engagement of French medicine in the national medical services of Afghanistan.
We are here today thanks to the generosity of large French enterprises, and of French men and women who have understood the critical situation of medical care in Afghanistan after 25 years of war, and who wish to urgently try to re-establish medical institutions capable of serving the population who no longer have access to satisfactory medical treatment.
I also welcome the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Philippe Douste-Blazy who, while leading French international affairs, is himself a medical doctor, ex-Head of Department at the Regional Hospital of Toulouse, and therefore extremely well qualified in the medical field.
I acknowledge the presence of Dr. Abdullah, the Afghan Minster of Foreign Affairs whose Ministry has been instrumental in negotiating the agreement for this partnership.
Indeed, I should especially emphasise the significance of this Institute in the reconstruction of Afghanistan. This Institute was created through a Public-Private Partnership to establish a new medical institute through a strategic collaboration: The support of the French Government, that of the Afghan Government, the participation of the French Non-Governmental Organisations La Chaine de lEspoir, and Afghan Children, and the Aga Khan University. This collaboration is today unique in Afghanistan and will bring to the Afghan population a new high quality hospital that will be accessible to the underprivileged.
I particularly wish to congratulate also the two French philanthropic associations La Chaine de lEspoir and Enfant Afghans whose President and Founder Prof. Alain Deloche, and President Dr. Eric Cheysson, of Enfants Afghans, are with us here today. I warmly congratulate them as well as the members of their team. Without them, this Institute would not exist.
The health condition of Afghan children is extremely poor. Neo-natal and infant mortality are among the highest in the world: one child in four does not reach the age of five years.
Out of one million children born each year in Afghanistan, 165,000 die within the first 30 days. Nineteen out of 20 births are outside a medical establishment. Out of one million future mothers, 17,000 will die of complications linked to their pregnancy. In Western countries this figure is 100, even less, for the same million births.
This infinitely serious situation justifies in itself the support of the Aga Khan University and the Aga Khan Health Services, but three additional reasons have prompted our engagement in the future management of this institution.
The first is that the Non-Governmental Organisations and the French and foreign enterprises who have contributed to the creation of this project have done so in a particularly sophisticated manner, bringing to Afghanistan, an institution and buildings comprising a very elaborate complex whose components were conceived with a vision of the future clearly in mind.
Therefore, for example, the plans of the hospital have been established in a manner which allows for development and expansion, and of course the buildings are constructed according to anti-seismic norms.
The second reason is that France has engaged to continue its support by making available the necessary human resources to assure the provision of high quality medical treatment.
Finally, the third reason is that the Aga Khan Health Services have, at the regional level, a significant hospital network comprising the Faculty of Health Sciences and the Aga Khan University Hospital in Karachi; a hospital in Bombay in India; our engagement in the hospital in Khorog in the East of Tajikistan; and the management of the hospital in Bamyan. In fact, it was logical that our desire to help in the reconstruction of Afghanistan qualifies us to manage the French Medical Institute for Children in Kabul, known earlier as the Mother and Child Hospital.
Allow me to close on a vision of the future for this Institute, a vision which I know is already shared by the Afghan Government and the French Government, the French philanthropic associations La Chaine de lEspoir and Enfants Afghans, the Aga Khan University and the Aga Khan Health Services.
We are all convinced that Afghanistan today and for a number of years to come has a great need of men and women qualified in the medical and para-medical domain. The lack of human resources is in fact dramatic, because there is, according to the World Bank statistics of 2004, only one doctor for 5000 inhabitants. In comparison, France has 15.
As a result, it is clear that we must envisage training for nurses and doctors within this Institute. There too, we will engage in strategic reflection with the Afghan Government and the French medical institutions in order to conceive and put in place these training programmes, so critical for the future.
We therefore are highly desirous that this hospital develops into a high level university hospital tertiary care centre which will offer new specialisations essential for Afghanistan such as neuroscience, cardiology, oncology and many other fields of medicine, which best meet the needs of the country.
Thank you.
Mr. President,
Madame Chirac,
Excellencies,
Ladies and Gentlemen:
I am delighted and touched that Madame Chirac has joined us today for the inauguration of the French Medical Institute for Children in the presence of His Excellency President Hamid Karzai. Despite a very heavy schedule, President Karzai has chosen to be with us today, which underlines his personal unwavering commitment and that of his Government to the reconstruction of this proud land of the great Afghan people. The partnership of the Government of Afghanistan will remain essential for the future of this Institute.
The presence of the First Lady of France is far from being simply symbolic because Mme Chirac is actively involved in the medical and social field, in particular as President, since 1994, of the Foundation of Paris Hospitals and French Hospitals. All of us here appreciate her engagement and her strong support of this medical initiative in Kabul. Moreover, the new Institute we are inaugurating today represents French medicine in Afghanistan, medicine which is of worldwide renown. In the future, this Institute will permanently represent the engagement of French medicine in the national medical services of Afghanistan.
We are here today thanks to the generosity of large French enterprises, and of French men and women who have understood the critical situation of medical care in Afghanistan after 25 years of war, and who wish to urgently try to re-establish medical institutions capable of serving the population who no longer have access to satisfactory medical treatment.
I also welcome the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Philippe Douste-Blazy who, while leading French international affairs, is himself a medical doctor, ex-Head of Department at the Regional Hospital of Toulouse, and therefore extremely well qualified in the medical field.
I acknowledge the presence of Dr. Abdullah, the Afghan Minster of Foreign Affairs whose Ministry has been instrumental in negotiating the agreement for this partnership.
Indeed, I should especially emphasise the significance of this Institute in the reconstruction of Afghanistan. This Institute was created through a Public-Private Partnership to establish a new medical institute through a strategic collaboration: The support of the French Government, that of the Afghan Government, the participation of the French Non-Governmental Organisations La Chaine de lEspoir, and Afghan Children, and the Aga Khan University. This collaboration is today unique in Afghanistan and will bring to the Afghan population a new high quality hospital that will be accessible to the underprivileged.
I particularly wish to congratulate also the two French philanthropic associations La Chaine de lEspoir and Enfant Afghans whose President and Founder Prof. Alain Deloche, and President Dr. Eric Cheysson, of Enfants Afghans, are with us here today. I warmly congratulate them as well as the members of their team. Without them, this Institute would not exist.
The health condition of Afghan children is extremely poor. Neo-natal and infant mortality are among the highest in the world: one child in four does not reach the age of five years.
Out of one million children born each year in Afghanistan, 165,000 die within the first 30 days. Nineteen out of 20 births are outside a medical establishment. Out of one million future mothers, 17,000 will die of complications linked to their pregnancy. In Western countries this figure is 100, even less, for the same million births.
This infinitely serious situation justifies in itself the support of the Aga Khan University and the Aga Khan Health Services, but three additional reasons have prompted our engagement in the future management of this institution.
The first is that the Non-Governmental Organisations and the French and foreign enterprises who have contributed to the creation of this project have done so in a particularly sophisticated manner, bringing to Afghanistan, an institution and buildings comprising a very elaborate complex whose components were conceived with a vision of the future clearly in mind.
Therefore, for example, the plans of the hospital have been established in a manner which allows for development and expansion, and of course the buildings are constructed according to anti-seismic norms.
The second reason is that France has engaged to continue its support by making available the necessary human resources to assure the provision of high quality medical treatment.
Finally, the third reason is that the Aga Khan Health Services have, at the regional level, a significant hospital network comprising the Faculty of Health Sciences and the Aga Khan University Hospital in Karachi; a hospital in Bombay in India; our engagement in the hospital in Khorog in the East of Tajikistan; and the management of the hospital in Bamyan. In fact, it was logical that our desire to help in the reconstruction of Afghanistan qualifies us to manage the French Medical Institute for Children in Kabul, known earlier as the Mother and Child Hospital.
Allow me to close on a vision of the future for this Institute, a vision which I know is already shared by the Afghan Government and the French Government, the French philanthropic associations La Chaine de lEspoir and Enfants Afghans, the Aga Khan University and the Aga Khan Health Services.
We are all convinced that Afghanistan today and for a number of years to come has a great need of men and women qualified in the medical and para-medical domain. The lack of human resources is in fact dramatic, because there is, according to the World Bank statistics of 2004, only one doctor for 5000 inhabitants. In comparison, France has 15.
As a result, it is clear that we must envisage training for nurses and doctors within this Institute. There too, we will engage in strategic reflection with the Afghan Government and the French medical institutions in order to conceive and put in place these training programmes, so critical for the future.
We therefore are highly desirous that this hospital develops into a high level university hospital tertiary care centre which will offer new specialisations essential for Afghanistan such as neuroscience, cardiology, oncology and many other fields of medicine, which best meet the needs of the country.
Thank you.
Ismaili Journalism
"Journalism in the modern usage is one of the younger professions. The first prototype of the modern newspaper was the series of public announcements, known during the Roman empire as Acta Diurna published daily from 59 B.C., and later in Venice as the Gazette. Similar official reports were made in China, where the earliest newspaper, the Tehing-Pao appeared in Peking in the middle of 8th century. The invention of printing from movable type by Johann Gutenberg in Minz about 1450 revolutionized the spreading of news. Mercurius gallobelgicus (1594) was perhaps the earliest magazine issued from Cologne.
The journal of a community whether a daily, a weekly, a fortnightly or a monthly is its mirror. It is like a sun which not shines everywhere at the same time, but advances slowly but surely dispersing the darkness. Journalistic expression is far from being an appendix to other, generally accepted and well-organized undertaking of the community. It is a vital expression in self-expression, a basic mode of interpreting the ethos of the community on a more articulate and self-conscious level.
In a community, the journal commands a very significant place. The Ismaili journalism has played a very important and contributive role in the affairs of the community. Before the migration of Imam Hasan Ali Shah in India, some learned Ismailis known as the Akhund came from Iran and settled in Kutchh and spread gradually in Sind, Kathiawar and Gujrat. They were economically very poor; therefore, they began to copy the ginans (religious hymns) and the farmans of the Imams and sold them in different jamats. Sometimes, they organized local gathering to communicate latest news of the different jamats. These courier Akhunds had created the spirit of reading and were the early bricks of the modern Ismaili Journalism. In sum, the awakening in the field of journalism arose in India, and gradually, the Ismaili writers began to creep into the field.
The contribution of Alauddin Ghulam Hussain in the field of journalism was highly outstanding. He was working in the Oriental Press in Bombay in 1864. He also started his profession to transcribe the Ismaili literature in Khojki character since 1867. He also established his own printing press in 1880 and received orders from Ibrahim Ismail (d. 1897) of Junagadh every year to print the book of dua and the ginans for making free distribution among the Ismailis.
It is to be noted that between 1900 and 1940, there were numerous unsavoury and harsh allegations from other communities on Ismailism in India, and numerous journals sprouted out to counter and present the facts. Though these journals short-lived, they served to reveal the potency of the Ismaili writing, journalists and poets.
The first monthly Ismaili journal, "Ismaili Sitaro" came out on Sunday, August 21, 1908, published by the Ismaili Religious Library, Khadak, Bombay.
The journal of a community whether a daily, a weekly, a fortnightly or a monthly is its mirror. It is like a sun which not shines everywhere at the same time, but advances slowly but surely dispersing the darkness. Journalistic expression is far from being an appendix to other, generally accepted and well-organized undertaking of the community. It is a vital expression in self-expression, a basic mode of interpreting the ethos of the community on a more articulate and self-conscious level.
In a community, the journal commands a very significant place. The Ismaili journalism has played a very important and contributive role in the affairs of the community. Before the migration of Imam Hasan Ali Shah in India, some learned Ismailis known as the Akhund came from Iran and settled in Kutchh and spread gradually in Sind, Kathiawar and Gujrat. They were economically very poor; therefore, they began to copy the ginans (religious hymns) and the farmans of the Imams and sold them in different jamats. Sometimes, they organized local gathering to communicate latest news of the different jamats. These courier Akhunds had created the spirit of reading and were the early bricks of the modern Ismaili Journalism. In sum, the awakening in the field of journalism arose in India, and gradually, the Ismaili writers began to creep into the field.
The contribution of Alauddin Ghulam Hussain in the field of journalism was highly outstanding. He was working in the Oriental Press in Bombay in 1864. He also started his profession to transcribe the Ismaili literature in Khojki character since 1867. He also established his own printing press in 1880 and received orders from Ibrahim Ismail (d. 1897) of Junagadh every year to print the book of dua and the ginans for making free distribution among the Ismailis.
It is to be noted that between 1900 and 1940, there were numerous unsavoury and harsh allegations from other communities on Ismailism in India, and numerous journals sprouted out to counter and present the facts. Though these journals short-lived, they served to reveal the potency of the Ismaili writing, journalists and poets.
The first monthly Ismaili journal, "Ismaili Sitaro" came out on Sunday, August 21, 1908, published by the Ismaili Religious Library, Khadak, Bombay.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Geographies of Islam: Islamic Art Museum Aga Khan
Aga Khan's collection is one of the most important collections of Islamic art in the world. Abarca mil años de historia y ofrece una buena muestra de los logros artísticos de las civilizaciones islámicas desde la Península Ibérica hasta China. Covering a thousand years of history and offers a good example of the artistic achievements of Islamic civilization from Spain to China.
Esta exposición, organizada por el Aga Khan Trust for Culture y la Real Fundación de Toledo, llegará en octubre por primera vez a España y se exhibirá en la sede de la Real Fundación de Toledo, después de visitar destacados museo de ciudades europeas, Parma, Londres, París y Lisboa. This exhibition, organized by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture and the Royal Foundation of Toledo, will arrive in October for the first time to Spain and will be exhibited at the Royal Foundation of Toledo, after visiting prominent museum of European cities, Parma, London, Paris and Lisbon. A continuación viajará a Berlin y al Museo del Ermitage y terminará su periplo en el año 2011, en que se instalará como exposición permanente en el nuevo Museo Aga Khan que se está construyendo en Toronto. He then will travel to Berlin and the Hermitage Museum and will end his trip in 2011, which will be installed as a permanent exhibit in the new Aga Khan Museum being built in Toronto.
En su versión para Toledo, única en España, y bajo el título "Geografías del Islam. Obras de arte islámico del Museo Aga Khan", se mostrará una cuidada selección de piezas de los siglos VIII al XVIII, procedentes de muy distantes países. In the version for Toledo, unique in Spain, and under the title "Geographies of Islam. Works of Islamic art from Aga Khan Museum", will show a careful selection of pieces from the eighteenth century VIII, from very distant countries. El objetivo no es sólo mostrar bellas piezas, sino contribuir a la comprensión del arte islámico, demostrando su homogeneidad cultural en el tiempo y en el espacio a la vez que se enriquece con nuevos elementos, propios de cada región y de cada tradición local. The goal is not only beautiful display pieces, but to contribute to the understanding of Islamic art, demonstrating their cultural homogeneity in time and space at a time that is enriched with new elements specific to each region and each local tradition.
Los visitantes tendrán ocasión de conocer una pieza excepcional, el astrolabio del siglo XIV con inscripciones en latín, árabe y hebreo, posiblemente fabricado en Toledo. Visitors will have the opportunity to learn a unique piece, the astrolabe of the fourteenth century with inscriptions in Latin, Arabic and Hebrew, possibly manufactured in Toledo. También podrán contemplarse miniaturas del Yemen y Afganistán, manuscritos de Irán y Samarcanda, cerámicas de Siria y Egipto, coranes de Túnez e Indonesia y sedas de Turquía y Mongolia. They may also include miniatures of Yemen and Afghanistan, manuscripts from Iran and Samarkand, ceramics from Syria and Egypt, Tunisia and Indonesia Korans and silks from Turkey and Mongolia.
Esta exposición, organizada por el Aga Khan Trust for Culture y la Real Fundación de Toledo, llegará en octubre por primera vez a España y se exhibirá en la sede de la Real Fundación de Toledo, después de visitar destacados museo de ciudades europeas, Parma, Londres, París y Lisboa. This exhibition, organized by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture and the Royal Foundation of Toledo, will arrive in October for the first time to Spain and will be exhibited at the Royal Foundation of Toledo, after visiting prominent museum of European cities, Parma, London, Paris and Lisbon. A continuación viajará a Berlin y al Museo del Ermitage y terminará su periplo en el año 2011, en que se instalará como exposición permanente en el nuevo Museo Aga Khan que se está construyendo en Toronto. He then will travel to Berlin and the Hermitage Museum and will end his trip in 2011, which will be installed as a permanent exhibit in the new Aga Khan Museum being built in Toronto.
En su versión para Toledo, única en España, y bajo el título "Geografías del Islam. Obras de arte islámico del Museo Aga Khan", se mostrará una cuidada selección de piezas de los siglos VIII al XVIII, procedentes de muy distantes países. In the version for Toledo, unique in Spain, and under the title "Geographies of Islam. Works of Islamic art from Aga Khan Museum", will show a careful selection of pieces from the eighteenth century VIII, from very distant countries. El objetivo no es sólo mostrar bellas piezas, sino contribuir a la comprensión del arte islámico, demostrando su homogeneidad cultural en el tiempo y en el espacio a la vez que se enriquece con nuevos elementos, propios de cada región y de cada tradición local. The goal is not only beautiful display pieces, but to contribute to the understanding of Islamic art, demonstrating their cultural homogeneity in time and space at a time that is enriched with new elements specific to each region and each local tradition.
Los visitantes tendrán ocasión de conocer una pieza excepcional, el astrolabio del siglo XIV con inscripciones en latín, árabe y hebreo, posiblemente fabricado en Toledo. Visitors will have the opportunity to learn a unique piece, the astrolabe of the fourteenth century with inscriptions in Latin, Arabic and Hebrew, possibly manufactured in Toledo. También podrán contemplarse miniaturas del Yemen y Afganistán, manuscritos de Irán y Samarcanda, cerámicas de Siria y Egipto, coranes de Túnez e Indonesia y sedas de Turquía y Mongolia. They may also include miniatures of Yemen and Afghanistan, manuscripts from Iran and Samarkand, ceramics from Syria and Egypt, Tunisia and Indonesia Korans and silks from Turkey and Mongolia.
Ismaili Flag - Significant Features Of Both Colors
"We have described above the features of green and red colours. We will briefly proceed to discuss significant characteristics of these two colours together.
Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406) writes in Muqaddimah (1:186) that Khadija asked, what garment he liked best to wear during revelation, and the Prophet replied, "White and green ones", whereupon she said that it was an angel, meaning that green and white, are the colours of goodness and of the angels." Imam Ahmed bin Hanbal (d. 855) writes that when the revelation came, the Prophet covered his head with almost green mantle, his face grew red, he snored as one asleep, or rattled like a young camel; after some time he recovered (Masnad, Cairo, 1949, 4:222).
Ibn Athir (2:83) writes that when the Prophet handed over his green banner to Ali bin Abu Talib during the battle of Khaibar, he proceeded towards the fort. On that occasion, Ali had worn a red sheet on his body.
The famous tradition has it that once Imam Hussain and Hasan mounted on the shoulders of the Prophet when they were yet small boys. Imam Hussain wore red garment, while his elder brother was in green dress. Being asked why both brothers were in different dresses, the Prophet said, "This Hasan will fight for restoring peace in religion, while Hussain will sacrifice for the cause of Islam." It ensues from this tradition that the agency of peace and sacrifice is symbolized in green and red colours in Islam.
Ibn Jubayr, who went on a pilgrimage to Mecca on August 22, 1183, described the cover of the Kaba that, "The outside of the Kaba, on all its four sides, is clothed in coverings of green silk with cotton warps; and on their upper parts is a band of red silk on which is written the verse (3:96): "Verily, the first House founded for mankind was that at Bakkah i.e., Mecca." (vide The Travels of Ibn Zubayr tr. By R.J.C. Broadhurst, London, 1952, p. 79)
Kubrawiyya, one of the Sufi orders developed an elaborate colour symbolism. Najmuddin Kubra (d. 1220), one of the saints speaks green with tranquility (itmi'nan) and red with gnosis (irfan). Furthermore, Prophet Abraham is symbolized as the red colour, the aspect of the heart and the Prophet of Islam as the green colour, the point connected with the divine reality (haqqiyya).
Imam Sultan Muhammad Shah ascended on the throne of Imamate at the age of 7 years, 9 months and 16 days on August 17, 1885. His enthronement ceremony was solemnized at Bombay Darkhana Jamatkhana on Friday, September 1, 1885. On that historic occasion, he sat on the oblong wooden throne surrounded by the elder persons of the community. The most striking feature was that the oblong cushion inside the throne was absolutely green, and the Imam sat in the centre in red attire. It explicitly depicted an image of the present design of the Ismaili flag.
It must be known that both ruby (yakut) and pearl (marjan) are the Koranic terms, having natural colours of red and green respectively. Ruby is a transplant red gemstone variety of the mineral corundum. Rubbies vary in colour from pale to deep red, also called the pigeon blood. On the other hand, the pearl is a substance forming the inner layers of the shells of nacreous mollusks, as pearl-oyster, abalones, etc., having rich green colour. The Koran contains following mention of yakut (ruby, i.e., the red) and marjan (pearl, i.e., the green) that:- Ka anahunal yakut wal marjan "As though they were rubies and pearls" (55:58) and Both yakut and marjan, therefore denote the celestial emblems.
The notion of green and red emerges in addition while pondering minutely over the following Koranic verses:- "And the herbs and the trees do adore" (55:6), "Therein (earth) is fruit and palms having sheathed clusters" (55:11), "And when the heaven is rent asunder then it becomes red like red hide" (55:37), "And for him who fears to stand before his Lord are two gardens" (55:46), "Dark-green in colour" (55:64) and "In both are fruits and palms and pomegranates" (55:68).
The essential features of green and red colours have been mentioned above in the historical context. In sum, the green colour in Ismaili flag symbolizes joy, gaiety, prosperity and peace; while the broad red diagonal on it connotes sacrifice.
Wazir Dr. Pir Muhammad Hoodbhoy (1905-1956), the then President of the Ismailia Association for Pakistan had made a humble submission to the Imam in his letter of October 8, 1954, asking the interpretation of green and red colours of the Ismaili flag. In reply, the Imam sent the following letter that:-
16TH OCTOBER, 1954
My Dear Hoodbhoy,
In reply to your letter of 8th october, the colours of our family are, as you know, red and green, the reason being that we represent both the (offices of) shah and the peer.
The shah was hussein, the peer was hasan. Hasan had the peer's colour of green, but hussein's martyrdom was so enormous in events and was so opposed to even the smallest laws of war that the colour of his holy blood, namely red, was accepted with the green of the prophet's flag as a souvenir and remembrance of that terrible day.
Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406) writes in Muqaddimah (1:186) that Khadija asked, what garment he liked best to wear during revelation, and the Prophet replied, "White and green ones", whereupon she said that it was an angel, meaning that green and white, are the colours of goodness and of the angels." Imam Ahmed bin Hanbal (d. 855) writes that when the revelation came, the Prophet covered his head with almost green mantle, his face grew red, he snored as one asleep, or rattled like a young camel; after some time he recovered (Masnad, Cairo, 1949, 4:222).
Ibn Athir (2:83) writes that when the Prophet handed over his green banner to Ali bin Abu Talib during the battle of Khaibar, he proceeded towards the fort. On that occasion, Ali had worn a red sheet on his body.
The famous tradition has it that once Imam Hussain and Hasan mounted on the shoulders of the Prophet when they were yet small boys. Imam Hussain wore red garment, while his elder brother was in green dress. Being asked why both brothers were in different dresses, the Prophet said, "This Hasan will fight for restoring peace in religion, while Hussain will sacrifice for the cause of Islam." It ensues from this tradition that the agency of peace and sacrifice is symbolized in green and red colours in Islam.
Ibn Jubayr, who went on a pilgrimage to Mecca on August 22, 1183, described the cover of the Kaba that, "The outside of the Kaba, on all its four sides, is clothed in coverings of green silk with cotton warps; and on their upper parts is a band of red silk on which is written the verse (3:96): "Verily, the first House founded for mankind was that at Bakkah i.e., Mecca." (vide The Travels of Ibn Zubayr tr. By R.J.C. Broadhurst, London, 1952, p. 79)
Kubrawiyya, one of the Sufi orders developed an elaborate colour symbolism. Najmuddin Kubra (d. 1220), one of the saints speaks green with tranquility (itmi'nan) and red with gnosis (irfan). Furthermore, Prophet Abraham is symbolized as the red colour, the aspect of the heart and the Prophet of Islam as the green colour, the point connected with the divine reality (haqqiyya).
Imam Sultan Muhammad Shah ascended on the throne of Imamate at the age of 7 years, 9 months and 16 days on August 17, 1885. His enthronement ceremony was solemnized at Bombay Darkhana Jamatkhana on Friday, September 1, 1885. On that historic occasion, he sat on the oblong wooden throne surrounded by the elder persons of the community. The most striking feature was that the oblong cushion inside the throne was absolutely green, and the Imam sat in the centre in red attire. It explicitly depicted an image of the present design of the Ismaili flag.
It must be known that both ruby (yakut) and pearl (marjan) are the Koranic terms, having natural colours of red and green respectively. Ruby is a transplant red gemstone variety of the mineral corundum. Rubbies vary in colour from pale to deep red, also called the pigeon blood. On the other hand, the pearl is a substance forming the inner layers of the shells of nacreous mollusks, as pearl-oyster, abalones, etc., having rich green colour. The Koran contains following mention of yakut (ruby, i.e., the red) and marjan (pearl, i.e., the green) that:- Ka anahunal yakut wal marjan "As though they were rubies and pearls" (55:58) and Both yakut and marjan, therefore denote the celestial emblems.
The notion of green and red emerges in addition while pondering minutely over the following Koranic verses:- "And the herbs and the trees do adore" (55:6), "Therein (earth) is fruit and palms having sheathed clusters" (55:11), "And when the heaven is rent asunder then it becomes red like red hide" (55:37), "And for him who fears to stand before his Lord are two gardens" (55:46), "Dark-green in colour" (55:64) and "In both are fruits and palms and pomegranates" (55:68).
The essential features of green and red colours have been mentioned above in the historical context. In sum, the green colour in Ismaili flag symbolizes joy, gaiety, prosperity and peace; while the broad red diagonal on it connotes sacrifice.
Wazir Dr. Pir Muhammad Hoodbhoy (1905-1956), the then President of the Ismailia Association for Pakistan had made a humble submission to the Imam in his letter of October 8, 1954, asking the interpretation of green and red colours of the Ismaili flag. In reply, the Imam sent the following letter that:-
16TH OCTOBER, 1954
My Dear Hoodbhoy,
In reply to your letter of 8th october, the colours of our family are, as you know, red and green, the reason being that we represent both the (offices of) shah and the peer.
The shah was hussein, the peer was hasan. Hasan had the peer's colour of green, but hussein's martyrdom was so enormous in events and was so opposed to even the smallest laws of war that the colour of his holy blood, namely red, was accepted with the green of the prophet's flag as a souvenir and remembrance of that terrible day.
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