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Mowlana Hazar Imam spoke at a banquet held in his honor by the National Council of USA in New York. Hazar Imam said, '. . . and the point I am making is that this is really an international Jamat'.

There is a very current expression in English which is to behave like an ostrich. So I don't know why the English seem to think that the ostriches, when they have problems, bury their heads in the sand. I have never seen them do that but any how, well, this is apparently what London believes happens. In any event, this is something that perhaps in some parts of the Islamic world has occurred, is occurring may continue to occur, believing that you can return to the past, and bury today's problems under the dust of the past. That's not our belief. That's not why there is an Imam of the Time to guide the Jamat and I will certainly during My lifetime never wish that to happen, to any of our Jamat in any part of the world.

Therefore the ostrich policy is not for us and I would like to feel therefore, that in dealing with the issues that lie ahead of us, we will look at them straight in the face, we will ask the hard questions. If we cannot find immediate answers, we will go on asking the same questions until Inshallah, we are inspired to find the answers, but we will not give up. We will not go back to an obscurantism, to a form of intellectual retreat into something which is neither beneficial for the present and certainly not constructive for the future.