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Aga Khan III Speaks at All India Mohammadan Educational Conference - 1902

Date: 
Wednesday, 1902, January 1
Location: 

Sir Sultan Mohamed Shah, Aga Khan III gave a Presidential Address to the All India Mohammadan Educational Conference in Delhi. He spoke about the advantages which the Muslims of India possess, and the necessity of schools to teach the youth, both male and female the Faith and modern secular science.
Further more, Mowlana Sultan Mohamed Shah also mentioned the high standards that the Muslim society held in history. He said ' ...A great, but silent, crisis has come in the fortunes of Islam, and unless this class wakes up to the altered conditions of life and to the necessity of superintending and educating the rising generation, the very existence of Islam is at stake.

This class of pious Moslems must understand that what Islam now demands of them is that they should surrender to the training of the young a portion of the time hitherto given to prayer and a portion of the money hitherto spent in pilgrimages or celebrations of martyrdoms, long since past, which only help to keep alive those terrible sectarian differences which are one of the misfortunes of Islam.

The example of the Prophet and of Abu Bakr and Omar and Ali should convince these pious people that the first duty of a Moslem is to give his time to the service of his nation and not merely to silent prayers.'

He continued, 'Gentlemen, these are the facts; if our ideal is not realized, it will be because the ape within has swallowed the angel; it will be because, though we profess veneration for the faith and for the Prophet, it is but a lip-loyalty that will not make this small sacrifice to revive in its purity the glorious faith of Islam.' (Aziz; 210)

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