Saturday Series

GOOGLE.COM -- How much is known about the activities of these "dai'is" whose main task was to spread and preach the Ismalli doctrines considered by the 'Abbasids and the Saljuqs as a threat to their domination? By whom were these "da'is" appointed, and what were the status and functions of their various ranks? Unfortunately most of the Isma'ili sources tend to give a rather ideal or Utopian picture of the Isma'ili organization, which they consider to be the embodiment of history; and all that is available to supplement them is very scrappy information provided by ...

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GOOGLE.COM -- Because previous great Prophets had "Asas" who succeeded them, as Ali succeeded Prophet Muhammed, the Ismailis held that no religion could claim a monopoly of truth. This basic doctrine is the doctrine of the universal divine order. However, the view of the Ismailis differed from that of the other Muslim philosophers, in that it sprang from their belief in a universal divine and moral law governing the universe. And, therefore, for Ismailis, philosophy's purpose was to not only work out the allegorical interpretation ("ta'wil") of the revelations of the stories of Prophets, but also a complete religious system which would make intelligible the "haqa'iq" (truth) of the missions of the Prophets and thereby open the only way to salvation. Having ...

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GOOGLE.COM -- The holy Qur'an again says: "Similarly (that is like Kaaba) I have made you the middle or just people, so that you may be the guardians of. the people, and that the Prophet shall be guardian over you." In connection with this Ayat, it is narrated by Salim Ibn Kais that Hazrat Ali declared, he (Ali) was meant by the "middle or just". Sufyan Suri quotes from Saddi that Hazrat Ali had asked the Prophet the meanings of the Ayat: "I sent down the Book to you, and made those selected by Me to be its inheritors", and the Prophet replied that from "I chose them and made them inheritors of the Book" are meant "my descendants". Imam Muhammad Baqir ...

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GOOGLE.COM -- Now the principles that we must always have are the principles of Islam and particularly of Ismailism and that is why I always want you not only to know your religion, but to understand the principles upon which it is based.... I want you to be able to understand your religion and if there are any questions, do not hesitate to ask. It is much better to ask and receive an answer than to have a feeling of frustration inside you. When you are studying Quran, when you are studying the history of Imams, when you are studying the history of pre-Islamic Arabia, I would like you to take ...

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GOOGLE.COM -- Cosmology is that aspect of metaphysics which deals with the origin, creation and evolution of the universe. The doctrine of creation occupies a significant position in all religious and philosophical thought. That it has excited the imagination of man throughout the ages is apparent from the universality of creation and solar myths in all traditions of folklore. However, it is in the context of classical philosophy and religious doctrines that cosmology has entered the stream of modern thought. The dissemination of cosmological knowledge in traditional civilisation was largely confined to esoteric societies. In contrast to the 'descending' scale of both creation and revelation, esoteric doctrines ...

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GOOGLE.COM -- One of the most radical transformations brought about by the rise of science in the West is the weakening of conventional religion. Through the contact between the West and the East through trade, colonialism and, last but not least, improved communications, a similar tendency towards indifference to traditional religion has been observable in non-Western countries. In Islamic countries, the conflicts and strains resulting from this trend are generally considered as aspects of the so-called "Muslim Modernism." A very important factor in the controversy over the meaning and value of religion has been the rise of such academic disciplines as history, sociology, anthropology, psychology, etc. These disciplines have ...

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GOOGLE.COM -- Over the centuries, the delicate quatrains which made up the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, have undergone numerous translations of shich Edward FitzGerald's 19th-century effort has, to date, had no rival. FitzGerald has been Omar Khayyam. Robert Graves, the prominent English poet, was chosen by Omar Ali-Shah, a Persian scholar whose family owns a twelfth-century manuscript of the Rubaiyat, to render a new, more faithful, English translation which was published last year. Robert Graves has done away with rhymes, about which FitzGerald was meticulous enough to attempt an exact reproduction of the Omar Khayyam rhyme-scheme. I quote here Graves's rendering of the first quatrain to compare with FitzGerald's, which I quoted earlier ...

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GOOGLE.COM -- Muhy-ud-Din Ibn-al Arabi, described as Ismaili dai, was in fact a great sufi and is claimed by sunnis as their "Shaikh-alAkber". He was a contemporary of Mansur Hallaj and is said to have been influenced by Ikhwan-as-Safa and Ismaili teachings. Ibn-al-Arabi was a native of Spain and a contemporary of Faridud-din Attar, Shahab-ud-din Suhrawardi, Najmud-din Razi, Rumi and some other great sufis of the East. The generosity of his numerous patrons allowed him to devote his time to writing. He was the most prolific of all sufi authors, with over four hundred works to his credit. Ibn-al-Arabi's doctrine of "Wandat al-Wujud" or unityism influenced the whole Islamic society from top to bottom. "It affected its religious attitude, it affected its moral attitude, it affected its ...

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GOOGLE.COM -- Islam is the religion of unity (tawhid) and all aspects of Islamic doctrine and practice reflect this central principle. Sufism, being the marrow of the bone or the inner dimension of the Islamic revelation, is the means par excellence whereby tawhid is achieved. All Muslims believe in Unity as expressed by the Shahadah, La ilaha ill'Allah. But only the Sufi, has realized the mysteries of tawhid, who knows what this assertion means. Only he sees God everywhere. The whole programme of Sufism, is to cure man from hypocrisy and to make him whole. Many today would like to be sophisticated at all costs, even preferring to be sophisticated and enter hell rather than be simple and go to paradise, for as Christ said ...

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GOOGLE.COM -- Mawlana Sultan Muhammad Shah: "You ought to engage your mind in the teachings of Sufism. But remember that even Sufism is only a "Tariqat" (a path). You should reach "Haqiqat" (the Reality). There were many learned people before you who followed our religion such as Mansur. He could go to paradise (Jannat), but he aimed higher. He achieved the ultimate reality. Hazrat Ali has said "One who recognises one's 'Self', recognises Allah."" (Dar-es-Salaam, 1899) ~~ "Read Rumi's Mathanavi and Diwan of Shams Tabrez. You can also achieve the spiritual greatness of Pir Shams, Pir Sadar Din and Mowlana Rumi. You should study the philosophy of religion and try to understand the true meanings of Quran-e-Sharif." (Zanzibar, 1899) ...

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GOOGLE.COM -- While in Egypt, the Imam Al-Mustansir had informed Hassan that after him, Nizar was to be his successor as Caliph and Imam and commanded Hassan to spread the Ismailia da'wa in Iran. Worried about the state of affairs in Egypt, Hassan was convinced that he must build an Ismaili stronghold in Iran to propagate the Ismaili cause and focused on the mountainous regions. Within ten years Ismailis were firmly established in Alamut and the surrounding districts and considerable success was achieved in the Ismaili dawa in Syria and Eastern Iran. In fact, there was no town in Syria and Iran where Ismaili missionaries were not working either openly or secretly and, after another fourteen years, there were altogether more than two hundred castles under ...

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GOOGLE.COM -- Islam, as Mowlana Hazar Imam has explained in one of his farmans, means "creating a world in which you can practise your faith to the best of your ability". The Prophet's vision of life was based on creating an Ummah that would be based on those values that were revealed to him in the Quran; his whole mission was directed to developing such a society. Today, Mowlana Hazar Imam explains, "Your understanding of your faith will lead them (i.e. our children) to their understanding of theirs" -- first we must try to develop that understanding so that we have something to hand on to our children. For Ismailis, ...

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GOOGLE.COM -- On Tuesday, the 17th of Sha'ban, in the year 358 Hijri -- a day 1,000 years ago corresponding to July 6, 969 A.D. -- the victorious Fatimid General Jawhar, acting on the orders of the Caliph, Imam al-Muizz-li-din-Allah, laid the foundation of the city of alQahirah. This notable event, which also marked the opening of a glorious new chapter in the history of the Fatimid of North Africa, was attended by all the pomp and splendour of a dramatic moment in history. More than 100,000 panoplied soldiers, scores of noblemen in splendid garments and an uncounted number of the newly conquered people of nearby Fustat watched the historic ceremony as the lines of the new city were traced on the virgin earth. Cairo ...

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GOOGLE.COM -- The history of the Fatimids has suffered considerable distortion. This is perfectly understandable given the majority of our "historical" sources, stem from historians who were patronised by the Abbasids, or groups closely alied with them. Due to the impulse to abolish anything noteworthy about the Fatimids, historical facts about the Fatimids were both reduced and distorted. One particular aspect of the Fatimid Empire was its avid interest in learning. In particular, men of learning who did not subscribe to the Fatimid creed were given protection and encouraged to contribute to the intellectual life of the Empire. Cairo became the centre intellectuals of diverse views and persuasions. "There were study circles ... in the mosques or houses ...

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GOOGLE.COM -- Of all the subjects taught in universities, history is scarcely understood among intellectuals and lay people in any depth. This inadequacy is brought out in various ways. Some show, at best, a condescending tolerance for professional historians. Others worship them as men with "fantastic memories." In this article, I discuss the nature and uses of history and try to answer two essential questions: What is history? And how does the study of history benefit a group of people at a given moment of time? My examples will be drawn primarily from Islamic history. Finally, I will make a few general remarks why I think the study of history has a special place in our community at present. First, the nature ...

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GOOGLE.COM -- Mawlana Hazar Imam said to the Hon. Editor of Africa Ismaili: "I am very happy with your publication. You are doing very good work. Keep it up. I want to see this magazine to go on being published." ~~ Al Hajieh Her Highness Mata Salamat Begum Sultan Muhammad Aga Khan said: "I heartily congratulate you on the excellent quality of your magazine, the dynamic and modern outlook of your production. All the articles are most interesting, also your wide and up-to-date information about the Jamat in different countries makes a link in the chain of unity and brotherhood of our community all over the world." ~~ Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan: "sincerely hope that the Africa Ismaili may find ...

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GOOGLE.COM -- What we need today is NOT research but search. Search for missing links in the history of our Imams, search for our literature presumed lost, search for homes with such books, search for manuscripts lying in archives and museums and search for people who still hold treasures of our untold history. ~~ What of Religious textbooks? Textbooks are not written by committees. Textbook committees are usually appointed to APPROVE text books. But we have been thinking of the textbook committees in the terms of a group of writers who would write the textbooks. For four decades we have appointed such committees with no result. Appointing a person to write a textbook is not the same as appointing ...

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GOOGLE.COM -- The Honorary Secretary of the Council of Great Britain said "I felt that this publication is a very welcome step towards the ultimate goal of providing for the inquiring minds of our younger generation a logical foundation of our faith, a rational appraisal of our all too often confused history." We believe that an informative magazine of this type had to appear as such is the demand of the circumstances. But let us now consider the economics of such a magazine. All our workers are honorary and we lose Shs. 10,000/a month. Our revenue from advertisements is meagre. So we are asking the community, particularly businessmen, to come forward and prove by action that these words of praise are not ...

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GOOGLE.COM -- It is customary for a new magazine to publish its policy. Let us then put down today, in a few words, our aims and objects. The great reformer poet of the Indo-Pakistan continent, the late Maulana Hali, once said: "Let the reformers remember this, if they wish to remove a blot from the cloth they are welcome to wash it, but let them not rub and rub the cloth so much that at the end they destroy the fabric itself". The policy, therefore, will be to only publish constructive suggestions and criticisms. We also invite the writers to criticize US and tell us what they like about the Ismailia Association [now ITREB] and what they do not. Next, the major part of this magazine will be devoted to the promotion of research. Another serious aspect is ...

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GOOGLE.COM -- [ISMAILI DIGEST ED: Hazar Imam, 2003: "Education must also stimulate students to consider a variety of perspectives on some of the fundamental questions posed by the human condition: 'What is truth?' 'What is reality?' and 'What are my duties to my fellow man, to my country and to God?'"] ARTICLE: Today [1944] the whole world is convinced of the importance of teaching religion in schools. But this task can be made very difficult if our schools were dominated by non-Ismaili staff. As a Christian educationist warned: "We have had evidence that, in some instances, the attitude of individual administrators and educators may be aggressively opposed to religion in any form [and] lack of agreement on deeper questions makes the task of moral education immensely more difficult when members of the staff of the school entertain different views regarding the ultimate meaning and purpose of life." ... I cannot refrain from commenting on the tendency of the heads of the schools of treating religion as "just another subject." This attitude is most harmful especially if ...

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GOOGLE.COM -- Rai Sadaruddin said Ismailis ought not be ashamed of digging out from original sources things which are in their favour. While it was all very well to say that research had to be objective and impartial, most researchers in Ismailism seemed to have prejudiced views, and the "objectivity" and "impartiality" now lay in attempts to remove these prejudices. Ismaili scholars alone could do this ... This did not mean, however, that Ismaili scholars should twist points in their favour. All they needed to do was to discover more facts. Research students were led away by academic sentiments about being objective, which had been hammered into them, and no doubt quite correctly by their instructors. Rai Sadaruddin had no quarrel with that, but felt the time had come when Ismaili researchers should pause to think how they could, through no less objective research, remove the ...

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GOOGLE.COM -- Next to my mind comes an oral history department. It is high time that our research centres in India, Pakistan, Africa and Middle East should establish oral history departments. This means collecting the facts about the recent and not very remote history of our people orally from the elder generation which is fast disappearing. With them we shall lose a great heritage which has not been recorded. It is easy to understand that in the absence of organizations such as exist today, the history of our people has remained unrecorded particularly in the Middle East where we had practically no organizations and old traditions have passed from generation to generation by mouth. It is most essential that a batch of young ...

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GOOGLE.COM -- Mawlana Hazar Imam said to the Hon. Editor of Africa Ismaili: "I am very happy with your publication. You are doing very good work. Keep it up. I want to see this magazine to go on being published." ~~ Al Hajieh Her Highness Mata Salamat Begum Sultan Muhammad Aga Khan said: "I heartily congratulate you on the excellent quality of your magazine, the dynamic and modern outlook of your production. All the articles are most interesting, also your wide and up-to-date information about the Jamat in different countries makes a link in the chain of unity and brotherhood of our community all over the world." ~~ Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan: "sincerely hope that the Africa Ismaili may find ...

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GOOGLE.COM -- Be courteous with your enemy, and sincere with your friend. You will so uphold brotherliness, and preserve generosity. ~~ Anger is a species of madness, since repentance succeeds to it; or if it does not, it means that the madness is too firmly established. ~~ Anger is a raging fire. Whoever can subdue his anger, puts out the fire: who ever cannot, gets burnt himself. ~~ Everything must be according to reason, and reason itself must be polite. ~~ Be of so agreeable behaviour, that you will be mourned when you die, and ...

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