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

living in the context of the moral discipline of Islam, I think, is important. Because living in a society where freedom eventually becomes equated with license, is not what I would want.

Go back to the origins of Islam. It was a Faith practiced in a land with no physical frontiers. The concept of the modern state is not really an Islamic concept. Islam was a brotherhood, is a brotherhood.

The Seljuks proved unable to create a strong, durable and centralized Empire or to destroy the Fatimid Anti-Caliphate in Egypt. Their conceptions of government were primitive, and despite the efforts of Nizam al-Mulk to instruct them in the principles of ancient Persian despotism, which he regarded as the only satisfactory form of rule, they treated their realm as family property..

Countless cycles of manifestation and concealment succeed each other until the Great Resurrection (qiyamat al-qiyamat) which consummates the megacycle (al-kawr al-a'zam), sometimes specified to last 360,000 times 360,000 years.

It is from Islam that we in the West can extend a lot of gratitude towards, for preserving works of antiquity from being completely lost to us. This is not something to be passed over lightly, as so many people might tend to do, when considering the past. The implications here are great. Outside of the surviving schools of the Thebaid brethren, and the Jewish schools in France, Spain, and Southern Germany, intellectual culture did not exist, in the West during the so-called Dark Ages. The degradation brought upon society by the Church lasted until...

UNESCO has classified the hundred most important cities in the world. More than one-third of those one hundred cities around the world are within the Ummah.

How can credible leadership be nurtured in rural environments when rural children have nowhere to go after primary school? The experience of the Aga Khan Development Network is that secondary education for rural youth is a condition sine qua non for sustainable progress.

The essential goal of global development has been to create and sustain effective nation states – coherent societies that are well governed, economically self-sustaining, equitable in treating their peoples, peaceful amongst themselves, and sensitive to their impact on planetary sustainability.

People come together around competence, around ability, around knowledge. They don't like mediocrity.

I would like the non-Muslim societies to accept the values of Islam. If Islam says that we do not separate the world from faith, the Western world should accept that. I would go further and say: it is a wonderful way to live! It is an extraordinary blessing to be able to live our faith everyday! Making ethic the way in which you live your daily life, and not only in occasions such as death, a marriage or a birth.

Now that general liberty is given to all, the monopoly, or even the desire for the monopoly, of political power is both immoral and of no benefit. The just man does not even wish to possess privileges to the necessary exclusion of others.

Tonight, my purpose is really to listen and learn. And the Aga Khan, for instance, has dedicated much of his life to bridging differences between cultures and enhancing and preserving rich cultural legacies. Washington, D.C., March 15, 2000

Pardah, as now known, itself did not exist till long after the Prophet's death and is no part of Islam.

In the path of the hereafter, one should not walk on foot but with the soul and the intellect, and for provisions, you must fill the tablecloth of your heart with obedience and knowledge.

No society that accepted fatalism and carried it to its logical conclusion could possibly succeed.

"Philosopher Abu Ali Sina [Avicenna] was an Ismaili"

It would be the greatest of all misfortunes if we now mistook instruction for education and the mere power of passing examination for learning.

Volunteer Service to others is viewed as an integral and positive part of daily life, and never as a burdensome obligation or an elective activity

Confidence is the touchtone of commerce, whilst nothing is so easily frightened as capital.

A leader's function is to restrain any dangerous extremism and to enlighten the people as to what the good of the country requires and to instil in the minds of the public the influence and feelings of humanity and brotherhood.