"I have observed in the Western world a deeply changing pattern of human relations. The anchors of moral behaviour appear to have dragged to such depths that they no longer hold firm the ship of life: what was once wrong is now simply unconventional, and for the sake of individual freedom must be tolerated. What is tolerated soon becomes accepted. Contrarily, ...
"[T]he reality is that our world is pluralistic and multi-cultural, and destined to remain so. "Ought we not, then, to focus our attention on periods of history when pluralism was happily embraced? May we not learn thereby the need to nurture what I have recently called a cosmopolitan ethic? For this is the foundation of a merit-based civil society capable of ...
"When the Aga Khan Trust for Culture started its Historic Cities Support Programme, there was no agency that was committed to these goals. Academic know-ledge about how to restore and revive historic cities in the Islamic world and bring support to their populations was lacking, because this work had not been done earlier and was unknown to development agencies, teaching centres, ...
Pranay Gupte: How would you be liked to be remembered as on four counts: First, as the Imam, what would you have done to this community? Secondly, as a father, what would you have done to shape the life and sensibilities of your children? Third, sir, what would you have done during your lifetime to have shaped the secular societies around ...
"From the seventh century to the thirteenth century, the Muslim civilisations dominated world culture, accepting, adopting, using and preserving all preceding study of mathematics, philosophy, medicine and astronomy, among other areas of learning. The Islamic field of thought and knowledge included and added to much of the information on which all civilisations are founded. And yet this fact is seldom acknowledged ...
"I hope that the building and the spaces around it will be seen as the celebration of Light, and the mysteries of Light, that nature and the human soul illustrate to us at every moment in our lives. I have explained at the beginning of this letter why I think Light would be an appropriate design direction for the new museum ...
Philip Jodidio: Many of the projects selected for the Aga Khan Award for Architecture have put an emphasis on the well-being of people. Is the Award not more about the well-being of people than it is about architecture in the sense usually used by the professional community, particularly in the West? Aga Khan: Yes, I think that is correct. The Award ...
"People, who believe in speculation, search for knowledge on the basis of speculations and surmises. These speculations and surmises only take them further away from the truth. The Religion of God has nothing to do with surmises." -- Imam Jafar al-Sadiq (p) Usul al-Kafi, Book 2, Chapter 19, Tradition 7 "Abu Hanifa (an Islamic jurist of the Sunni sect) came to ...
"Once when he heard someone finding fault with the world, Hadrat Ali said: 'O you who revile the world, blinded by its deceit, duped by its falsehood! Do you rebuke the world after having been deluded by it? Are you accusing it, or IS It accusing you? When did it seduce you, when did it beguile you? Was it by the ...
"[A]t the end of the 17th century and beginning of the 18th, the European Renaissance rapidly advanced in knowledge of nature, namely all those very Ayats of God to which the Qur'an refers when Muslims forgot the Ayats, namely natural phenomenon, its law and order which are the proofs of divine guidance used in the Qur'an, but we stuck to our ...
"To someone who asked for counsel, Hadrat Ali said: 'Do not be one of those who hope for the Hereafter without work, and postpone repentance by exaggeration of hope; who speak in this world the speech of the abstemious, but work therein the work of the covetous; who when given anything from it are not satisfied, and when forbidden anything from ...
Mildred F. Schmertz: You founded the Award twenty years ago, and have sustained it without interruption right up to now. In today's architectural world, new ideas and agendas often have a very short life. At the beginning some observers thought that at best, your architectural award programme would last about six years. Instead, in two decades it has become and remained ...
"Faith rests on four pillars: patience, certitude, justice, and struggle. "Patience, furthermore, is based on four disciplines: yearning, apprehension, abstinence, and expectation. So one who yearns for Paradise forgets desires, and one who is on guard against Hellfire turns aside from forbidden things. One who is abstinent in this world thinks lightly of misfortunes, and one who expects death hastens to ...
"It is scarcely necessary to say that under my dictatorship compulsory education would be world-wide and kept up till, say, eighteen or twenty years of age. I should give to education a wider meaning than that which it now has in the public mind. The system would include teaching on health, on the laws of sex and parenthood, and on art ...
"I told our [Karachi hospital] architect, who is American and who has specialised in hospital design, that his idiom should reflect the spirit of Islam. How was this to be done? I did not want him to succumb, through nostalgia, to mimicry of the past, adding minarets and domes to his renderings -- the sort of bogus orientalism that has produced ...
"Against every deviation from or innovation in the authentic framework of Islam which spreads after my demise, intended to weaken the faith, a defender from my descendants will rise to the occasion who will be entrusted to defend the original values of religion. He will speak on behalf of the weak. Therefore, all of you who have eyes be careful and ...
"A believer approached Imam Zainul Abideen (p) and asked certain questions. The Imam answered every question. The believer came again and asked similar questions. The Imam then said: 'It is written in the Injeel (Bible): "Do not seek knowledge of what you do not know until you have acted on what you have already learnt, because the knowledge which is not ...
"Once Hadrat Ali took Kumail ibn Ziyad to a graveyard; when it was deserted, he heaved a deep sigh and said, 'Kumail, these hearts are containers, and the best of them are the most heedful of them. So remember what I am going to tell you. There are three kinds of people. One is the learned one who is godly, another ...
Times of India: Architecture in the Muslim world is both enriched by the past and in some ways burdened by it. A bit like being the child of a famous parent. Aga Khan: The past cannot be repeated. By copying it, it proves that one cannot do better. By repeating the past, by designing the same thing is not the solution. ...
"In the past I had a brother in God: the insignificance of the world in his eyes made him great in my eyes. He was not ruled by his stomach, he did not wish for what he did not have, and he did not seek more of what he did have. He used to keep silent much of the time, and ...
"There is one last topic about which I would like to say a few words. Building capacity for moral reasoning and moral judgement is a goal that appears in the foundation documents of many of the world's oldest and most prestigious universities. For a number of reasons, I worry that insufficient attention is being paid to the development of these important ...
"God does not approve the action of any one without his insight and mere insight means nothing without action. Insight leads a person to proper action. Insight means nothing without proper action. Lo, the conviction of one interacts with the conviction of the other." -- Imam Jafar al-Sadiq (p) Usul al-Kafi, Book 2, Chapter 12, Tradition 2 "Knowledge goes with action. ...
"Whoever acts on the basis of faulty conclusions (in religious matters) is doomed and brings others to their doom and whoever issues a prescript (an edict) without any knowledge of the abrogated verses (of the Noble Quran) and of those verses that have abrogated them and without any knowledge of those verses which are precise in meaning and of (those that ...
"If people knew the worth of acquiring knowledge, they would have done so even at the cost of a bleeding heart and by diving in stormy waves. Verily, God, the Glorious and the Elevated One, revealed to Prophet Daniyal (Daniel) (p): 'The most detestable of My servants is the ignorant one, who underrates the learned men and ceases to follow their ...
"My words are the words of my father and the words of my father are the words of my grandfather, and the words of my grandfather are the words of my great-grandfathers, Imam al-Hasan (p) and Imam al-Husayn (p), and their words are the words of Imam Ali (p), and the words of Imam Ali are the words of Prophet Muhammad ...
"In this seminar, the Award strives to look to the fountainhead of inspiration on which Muslims and non-Muslims draw to create the spaces and buildings we admire. What aspects of the social or religious backgrounds transpire into their creation? Is it their interpretation of their faith? Is it the ethic of their faith? Is it the rules of social conduct of ...
Aftab Ahmad Khan: How do you visualise the political future of the Islamic world and how could it find a proper place in the international power balance? Aga Khan: At the present time the Islamic world is exposed to a multitude of pressures, solicitations and, personally, I think that the Islamic world has got to set itself realistic, pragmatic objectives and ...
Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation: [Y]ou yourself are, one has to say, you are cosmopolitan. Aga Khan: I am Muslim. LBC: You do not have another identity? None whatsoever? Aga Khan: No, none, none! LBC: You do not have an attachment to your country of origin? Aga Khan: You tell me my 'country of origin'. I wouldn't even be able to define it ...
"God prescribes: faith unadulterated by idolatry, prayer unblemished by pride, poor tax produced to provide livelihood, fasting as a test of sincerity of character, pilgrimage to facilitate the understanding of religion, struggle for the honor of surrender to God, enjoining good for the improvement of the people, forbidding evil to deter the foolish, keeping relations with kinfolk to increase number, retaliatory ...
Hazrat Ali said to his son Hasan, "My son, remember four things from me, and four more; you will come to no harm as long as you act in accord with them: "The richest of riches is intelligence, and the greatest poverty is stupidity. The loneliest isolation is conceit, and the most noble value is goodness of character. My son, do ...
"[E]ach of us can help enhance pluralism in our own personal, professional and institutional domains. We could play our role in favour of pluralism as public opinion makers. We could participate in and support the efforts of groups and NGOs that promote that cause. We could volunteer our professional competences in a variety of fields, such as academic, technical or managerial. ...
"Whether any other religion accepts such a definite (and, if I may say so, materialistic) conception of life eternal and immortality, I am not sure. The Buddhists and Brahmans certainly believe in some kind of survival, but that is very often allied to the idea of if transmigration of souls from animals to men and angels or still higher beings in ...
"One of the challenges that has concerned me over many years, and which I have discussed with leading Muslim thinkers, is how education for Muslims can reclaim the inherent strengths that, at the height of their civilisations, equipped Muslim societies to excel in diverse areas of human endeavour. Clearly the intellectual development of the Ummah, is, and should remain, a central ...
"The background to this initiative [of cultural revitalisation] is very simple. The background is to illustrate to the peoples of our world the history of the civilisations of the Ummah. We don't do enough to illustrate to the peoples of our world the greatness of the Islamic civilisations, of the cultures of the past. And because they don't know, they don't ...
Pranay Gupte: You've been characterised variously as a "Renaissance Man" and "visionary." Would you add other characteristics that would be needed for your successor? Aga Khan: Well, that is very kind and very generous of the people who said those sorts of things. They often think that when you inherit an office, which is a life office, you are simply a ...
"I would like to thank Cartier for the prize that has been given to Zarkava and just share with you what she means to me. "When my father was killed, there was a filly in training called Petite Etoile. She was my first Classic contact with racing. She was trained here in England by Noel Murless and ridden by Lester Piggott. ...
"As the young men and women from this Aga Khan Academy, and over time from its sister schools, grow and assume leadership in their societies, it is my hope that it will be members of this new generation who, driven by their own wide knowledge and inspiration, will change their societies; that they will gradually replace many of the external forces ...
"The Qur'an, the Hadith, the sayings of Hazrat Ali, and many scholarly sources make numerous references to the forms and purposes of philanthropy. Human dignity -- restoring it, and sustaining it -- is a central theme. Enabling individuals to recover and maintain their dignity as befitting their status as Allah's greatest creation, is one of the main reasons for charitable action. ...
"When I invited Professor Maki, a master of form and light, to design this building, I made a suggestion to him -- one that I hoped would help connect this place symbolically to the Faith of Islam. The suggestion I made focused on creating a certain mystique, centred around the beautiful mysteries of rock crystal.... It is because of these qualities ...
"In the face of this changing world, which was once a universe to us and is now no more than an overcrowded island, confronted with a fundamental challenge to our understanding of time, surrounded by a foreign fleet of cultural and ideological ships which have broken loose, I ask, do we have a clear, firm and precise understanding of what Muslim ...
