NanoWisdoms

The variety of the world is not only more available, it is nearly inescapable. Human difference is more proximate and more intense. What was once beyond our view is now at our side and, indeed, to use the popular expression, "in our face." ... The challenge of diversity is now a global challenge and how we address it will have global ...

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Today, parks meet the needs of many city-dwellers wanting to relax in a natural environment. This explains the success among local communities of parks already created by AKTC. Experience shows that these urban parks are a vital public facility, frequented by city-dwellers in their hundreds of thousands. The Cairo park, for example, now receives more than 2 million visitors a year.... ...

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AKDN is of the view that investing in the institutions of civil society and in their capacity to deliver services deserves far greater priority, attention, support and resources than has hitherto been the case, even as investments in rebuilding the State's institutions continue. Civil society institutions are best able to take into consideration, to reflect, specific provincial or local political situations ...

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The idea of entering into an activity that was in no way central to the Ismaili Imamat, an activity in which no member of my family -- neither my brother nor my sister nor I -- had any understanding, in itself raised a major question mark. Would I have the time, and the capacity, to learn something about an activity with ...

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[M]y sense is we are looking to the future for a massive increase in nuclear use around the world. To me, that's on the cards. And it's on the cards in the industrialised world, it's on the cards in the Third World.... (1) I think we have to make the intellectual effort to jump ahead of that issue and ten or ...

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As our plans began to take shape, we came to realise that the Museum's focus on the arts of Islam will make it a unique institution in North America, contributing to a better understanding of Islamic civilisations -- and especially of the plurality within Islam and of Islam's relationship to other traditions. It will be a place for sharing a story, ...

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I am convinced that the best way for media, in Africa and elsewhere, to maintain their independence is to prove their indispensability. This is not an easy task. Information flows more quickly, over longer distances at lower cost than ever before. But sometimes more information, in and of itself, can also mean more misinformation, more confusion, more manipulation, more superficial snapshots ...

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My own role in the Nation Media Group has also evolved considerably. Seven years ago I gave my personal shares in NMG to the Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development (AKFED) -- the economic development arm of the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN). The move not only gave NMG a new source of corporate strength but it also anchored the company ...

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No one can deny that today, there are distressing and even dangerous tensions between the Muslim world and the West. With its history and cultures, and indeed its different interpretations of Islam, the Muslim world is still little known in the West, as are its contributions to global cultural heritage and patrimony. This lack of knowledge is a dramatic reality which ...

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I would underscore the growing potential of what some call PPP's -- public-private partnerships. Such collaborations can tap the unique strengths of both sectors, overcoming outmoded dogmas which depreciate the role of the market-driven enterprises on the one hand, or which denigrate the capacities of publicly supported agencies on the other. Effective public-private partnerships must be genuinely participative, as committed leaders ...

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It seems to me that rules of non-proliferation are now applied to all nuclear technology for both civilian and military purposes. In fact, the conditions for the sale of civilian nuclear energy is like some kind of technological colonisation, insofar that the most advanced nations make a point of holding on to all the "keys." From this point of view, we ...

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Much focus over the years has centred heavily on the capital, Kabul, and the central government. Insufficient attention has been paid to the real impact of the generous investments made by donor countries. Do enough Afghans perceive these investments as improving their quality of their life? It is vitally important to demonstrate that local governments and local actors working together with ...

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Interviewer: Gael Tchakaloff Google translation -- Portrait of a descendant of Muhammad, became the philanthropic entrepreneur of modern Islam. Too close to the gods to tame. Too quiet for the reveal. Too mythical to popularise it. Prince Karim Aga Khan is not a man like any other. And yet. Far from the romantic passions, the spiritual guide is primarily a citizen ...

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[Google translation] It is difficult to talk about political Islam in the world today. The vast majority of conflict is political in origin or socio-economic, not religious. Subsequently, different communities have modelled a religious bond widening the conflict. Islam is not a faith nourished in politics. This is no more the case with other religions. Interviewer: Gael Tchakaloff Google translation -- ...

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The goal [of AKDN's strategy] is clear: the aim is to create or strengthen civil society in developing countries. This single goal, when it is achieved, is in fact necessary and sufficient to ensure peaceful and stable development over the long term, even when governance is problematic.... The essence of our development strategy is thus to create these where they are ...

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We have seen over the developing world in Africa and Asia, that when politics are fragile, what continues to sustain development is civil society. If you build a strong civil society, then you have a country that continues to progress even if governments are unstable. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger of California and His Highness the Aga Khan, 49th hereditary Imam (spiritual leader) ...

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The agreement that we are signing today opens for us the opportunity to build bridges to the best of civil society in Texas and in the United States and in that sense it is a partnership which we want to now translate into effective action in various parts of the world. (akdn.org) In order to bridge [the gap between the developed ...

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The Tajik Ismaili community has roots in this region that extend back more than a thousand years, as long ago as the second century of Islam. The community holds a recognised and admired position in the history of human endeavour here, contributing some of the greatest names in the fields of theology, philosophy, poetry and the sciences. This new Centre will ...

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Access to green spaces is clearly an important value for the residents of Khorog. Our vision for the Park is that visitors will truly think of the time they spend here as "quality time" -- in the fullest sense of that word -- moments in their lives during which their spirits will be deeply enriched, hours filled with experiences that they ...

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The accomplishments we celebrate today, then, are a part of an ongoing story -- and it is a story which has counterparts in many places around the world. In Cairo, in Damascus and Aleppo, in Delhi and Lahore, in Kabul and Bamako, in Mopti, Djenne and Timbuktu, and along the ancient Silk Route, the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, through its ...

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We are facing years and even decades of continued testing among various forms of democratic governance. At the present moment, we may well be seeing more failures than successes. I feel strongly that students of government from across the world can help address this situation, suggesting a creative range of constitutional options and best practices in places where governmental systems have ...

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People's horizons are governed by their own context, and what is not in their context is outside their notions of perception. Unfortunately, I would say it is crisis-driven situations which are still dominating people's attention. What we need to do is go into areas of high risk before they become critical. If you go in after they are critical, it's too ...

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When we talk about the ethical realm, when we attack corruption, we are inclined to think primarily about government and politics. I am one, however, who believes that corruption is just as acute, and perhaps even more damaging, when the ethics of the civil and private sectors deteriorate. We know from recent headlines about scoundrels from the American financial scene to ...

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The Umayyad Caliphate integrated the Peninsula to a vast transcontinental empire which, from Baghdad to Cordoba, was the focal point of human civilisation during a period of European obscurity. Muslim Spain transmitted to the West many of the literary and scientific works of antiquity, which had been lost at the fall of the Roman Empire. Classical texts, recuperated in the Alexandria ...

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[As] a Muslim we don't make the divide between faith and life in the same way as parts of the Christian world do, not all of it but there are large parts of the Christian world which make that divide. We don't make that divide. Islam doesn't allow you to make that divide. You reflect your belief, your faith in the ...

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[Google translation] For my part, beyond the affection for France as my family has expressed for generations, I want, personally being involved in this project, thank your beautiful country for welcoming me so warmly. In fact, my personal and institutional links with France are of such quality that over the years, France is becoming the centre of my activities, including policy ...

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[During the Golden Jubilee of my Imamat] I visited numerous countries in Africa, Asia and the Middle East and I came into contact with men and women who were intelligent, mature, responsible and who were seeking to build nation states ... but these builders were seeking to build on the basis of an enormous knowledge deficit.... [The] question is a deficit ...

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Nation-building may require centralised authority, but if that authority is not trusted by rural communities, then instability is inevitable. The building of successful nation states in many of the countries in which I work will depend -- as it did in the West -- on providing significantly greater access for rural populations, who are generally in the majority. If these reflections ...

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[Why have our development] efforts over five decades not borne greater fruit? Measured against history, where have things gone wrong? Given the progress we have made in so many fields, why have we been so relatively ineffective in sharing that progress more equitably, and in making it more permanent? My response centres on one principal observation: I believe the industrialised world ...

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Because our institutions are growing very quickly, it is my hope and prayer that, 10 or 15 years from now, the Jamat's capacity in most of the countries where it is living, will be very significant indeed, and that is what the Shia Ismaili Tariqah of Islam should achieve in the world. I will be calling upon you from time to ...

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What I want to say to finish this evening, and this wonderful year year which you have given me, is that I intend to build an Ismaili Centre in Paris. What I want to say to finish this evening, and this wonderful year year which you have given me, is that I intend to build an Ismaili Centre in Paris. His ...

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9 December 2008 (Quai d'Orsay): Aga Khan Development Network and Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs, France, Partnership Agreement Signing Ceremony.9 December 2008 (Quai d'Orsay): Dinner hosted by the Minister of Foreign and European Affairs. SOURCES POSSIBLY RELATED READINGS (GENERATED AUTOMATICALLY) ...

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One of the principal reasons, I believe, for the great rapport between the Ismaili and Canadian communities through the years is our shared commitment to a common ethical framework -- and especially to the ideals of pluralism. By this I mean not only social pluralism, which embraces a diversity of ethnic and religious groups, but also pluralism in our thinking about ...

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You can always achieve results over a long period of time, but every time you do that you damage a generation and every time you move more quickly you bring hope to an earlier generation. This is the reason for which, this notion of time, is so important in my mind and I believe now is well shared by the Jamati ...

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2 December 2008 (Singapore): Luncheon hosted by Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong.2 December 2008 (Singapore): Visit to Singapore's Asian Civilisations Museum.2 December 2008 (Singapore): Dinner hosted by the Minister-in-charge of Muslim Affairs. SOURCES POSSIBLY RELATED READINGS (GENERATED AUTOMATICALLY) ...

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So the risk of failure [of democracy] is that these parts of the world will remain fragile, ill-governed, with weak economies. Internal stresses will become external stresses. They will start gaining a global dimension. ... [R]isk management in foreign affairs seems to me to be one of the really necessary attitudes towards global affairs today.... An important thing is looking forward ...

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Knowledge in its purest form is often abrasive. When this knowledge comes into [developing countries'] societies it creates difficulties, creates reactions because the societies are not prepared for pure knowledge. What Canada has done is it has humanised that knowledge. cbc.ca, thestar.com The leader of the world's 15 million Ismaili Muslims says Canada's pluralism is a model to the world. The ...

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I am infinitely proud, infinitely proud of the leadership that is coming from Canada, or from communities that have left their homelands in difficult circumstances, built a new future for themselves here in Canada, empathised with Canadian values and are able today to bring back to their home countries not only new knowledge, new competencies, but also Canadian values. As I ...

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If you look at what has happened in the past decades in the developing world, there are a number of lessons you can draw. And I think one of them is the volatility of development. To stabilise development in most of these fragile parts of the world, one of the fundamental principles is to develop strong institutions. Canada.com The Aga Khan ...

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I view this as an agreement of a much wider spectrum of importance and outcome than you might think, simply by talking about the profession of nursing. In the past years we have seen a number of countries in the developing world enter into the dimension of what I call failure of competent democratic government. A number of countries have run ...

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