Ismaili.NET - Heritage F.I.E.L.D.

Our aim is not only to mitigate the carbon emissions for our hotels but to become carbon negative. Hence we have partnered with WWF-Pakistan and AKRSP for the effective implementation and widening of scope for our mission, and to link it with the Ten Billion Tree Tsunami Pakistan (TBTTP) and Clean and Green Environment Movement (CGP) of Prime Minister Imran Khan,”

While its Charter is new, AKU is a firmly established institution in Kenya: It has been operating here since 2002, under a letter of interim authority from the Government. Moreover, as an agency of the Aga Khan Development Network, the University is part of a wide-ranging effort to improve quality of life in East Africa, and that dates back more than 100 years, to the schools founded by my grandfather, Sir Sultan Mahomed Shah Aga Khan, in the early 20th century.

The Charter details AKU’s functions, powers, obligations, and governance. But it is more than a legal document. It is a vote of confidence in AKU and all those who are part of it – our faculty, our staff, administration, students, alumni, friends, and supporters.

I should also mention here the headlines of this past week—which chart the widening gulf between Islamic and Western societies. Here the culprit has not been military action or diplomatic failure but the power of media images----deeply offensive caricatures -- which have profoundly offended one billion four hundred million Muslims around the world— including myself.

But as the joys of human love surpass all that riches and power may bring a man, so does that greater spiritual love and enlightenment, the fruit of that sublime experience of the direct vision of reality which is God's gift and grace, surpass all that the finest, truest human love can offer. For that gift we must ever pray.

t is said that we live, move and have our being in God. We find this concept expressed often in the Koran, not in those words of course, but just as beautifully and more tersely. But when we realize the meaning of this saying, we are already preparing ourselves for the gift of the power of direct experience

I want to say also that in the next months Toronto will come up on our radar screen of great cities around the world (applause). Today I have in front of me the best of civil society. And I want you to know how happy and proud I am that in a few months time, we will open a new Ismaili Centre here in Toronto and a new Museum.......And I hope today that all the people of Toronto will feel that the park that will be around these buildings - is their park.

There are undoubtedly many lessons that we need to learn from this crisis, including re-evaluate a more sustainable way of living with the sea, and in particular the sea of Sardinia. The resumption of activities at the YCCS will be governed by respect for the environment and, obviously, our passion for sailing.

We must briefly take a look back at history. In pre-Islamic Arabia, women were no more than chattels, sold at the market like cattle. The earliest followers of Islam decided that this situation was unjust. In Islam, men must respect women and women must respect men

Microfinance relies on the honesty of the borrower because he or she is not asked for any guarantee. But as the accounts were checked and discussed in public each week, a kind of public morality came to light in a most remarkable way! Men repaid 98% of their debts, women 99%.

At this difficult time, I applaud, with the highest admiration and gratefulness, the selfless services of all my Jamati volunteers, as well as the doctors, nurses, paramedics and support workers in the AKDN and other health facilities and related programmes. Their exemplary courage, commitment and dedication in extending care and comfort to my Jamat and others,

AKU’s contributions represent another chapter in the long story of great universities that have helped guide the world through the turbulence of history. The global pandemic response has been built on decades of earnest research, often conducted in relative obscurity, but making possible the development of new tests, tracing strategies, therapies, and vaccines. While we should regret the unequal distribution of these achievements, we must also appreciate the intellectual triumph that their development represents.

AKU aims to be as relevant for the next global health crisis as it has been for this one. Today, AKU is building its capacity for cutting-edge research applicable to the distinctive health risks for populations in Asia and Africa. It will seek to harness the enormous potential of advances in artificial intelligence, genomic medicine and stem cell science to address tomorrow’s challenges, as well as today’s.

The free social and intellectual part played in the life of Arabia by Imam Hussain’s daughter, Sakina, and by the daughter of Talha and the great grand daughters of Khalifa Abu Baker can be contrasted with the position of women in the 19th century. Again, we know what high standard of music and art had been attained in Mecca and Medina as early as the Khilafat of the early Omaiyyads and compare it with the disdain with which art is looked upon by some misguided Muslims today.

I cannot emphasize too strongly that this network could neither have been created nor been managed and improved without the boards, the committees, and the other volunteers, young and old, who contribute their time and effort, unpaid, for the benefit of society. The voluntary worker is the lifeblood of our institutions, both in education and in health.

If we, the people of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan are to remain loyal and obedient to the commandments of our faith, we have no choice but to cast away all thoughts of East and West, of Asian, American or European and of all those barriers which alienate man from man, and people from people, so that we may join together to promote universal brotherhood under God.

In the early centuries of Islam, the great schools of Islamic jurisprudence were built upon the above principles. Basic to all their legal systems they developed the doctrine that liberty is the fundamental basis of law. The science of law was defined as: “The knowledge of rights and duties whereby man is enabled to observe right conduct in the world

Portugal has been a country in which the Jamat and its institutions and the Imamat have been experimenting with new initiatives to see whether it would be possible, in the western world, in a strongly Catholic country, to establish new initiatives which would bring together people of Christian backgrounds and Muslim backgrounds to work together

I must say that, as a Muslim, I stand here in front of you in amazement that the Western world had to experience the revolution in Iran to learn about Shia Islam, or the civil war in Afghanistan to learn about Wahhabi Islam. Please remember that we are talking about a religion followed by one-fifth of the world's population! This is the equivalent of Muslims being unaware of the distinction between Catholics and Protestants within Christianity.

Perhaps the most common of these ingredients has been the failure of those involved to recognise the fact that human society is essentially pluralist, and that peace and development require that we seek, by every means possible, to invest in and enhance, that pluralism. Those groups that seek to standardise, homogenise, or if you will allow me, to normatise all that and those around them must be actively resisted through countervailing activities.