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

Today in the Occident, the Muslim world is deeply misunderstood by most. The West knows little about its diversity, about the religion or the principles which unite it, about its brilliant past or its recent trajectory through history. The Muslim world is noted in the West, North America and Europe, more for the violence of certain minorities than for the peacefulness of its faith and the vast majority of its people.

The wicked man thinks no good of any one; for how should he imagine that others have what he lacks himself?

Experience is knowledge gained.

While we must pay tribute to what has been achieved in much of the Third World during our lifetimes, the locomotive has run out of steam.

I am hopeful that, through interventions of this type, our youth will learn to recognize that, whilst true success must be determined largely by merit, meritocracy and competition must not be permitted to erode their traditions of compassion and care for the less fortunate -- for it is those traditions, rooted in our faith and history, that should temper the harshest consequences of free market economics

There are powerful reasons that we cannot overlook, for which the West and the Muslim world must seek a better mutual understanding.

A monarch is respected for his power; the scholar because of what he knows; the benefactor for his benfactions, and the patriarch for his age.

Unleash human potentials and make possible a whole that is greater than the sum of the parts.

But there is world change, and the role of the Imam of the time, amongst others, is to guide the murids to live in their time, hopefully ahead of their time, prepare future generations to live well in the world as it will be when they grow up.

it must be made utterly clear that in so far as Islam is concerned, this violence is not a function of the Faith itself, as much as the media would have you believe. This is a misperception which has become rampant, but which should not be endowed with any validity, nor should it be accepted and given credibility. It is wrong and damaging.

Do not hate what you do not know; for the greater part of knowledge consists of what you do not know.

Verily, God does not change man's condition unless they change that which is in themselves.

Meritocracy does not apply only to the individual. Meritocracy applies to institutions, to countries.

with a Muslim majority in some 44 countries and nearly a quarter of the globe's population, it should be evident that our world cannot be made up of identical people, sharing identical goals, motivations or interpretations of the Faith. It is a world in itself, vast and varied in its aspirations and in its concerns. Is there not something intellectually uncouth about those who choose to perceive one billion people of any faith as a standardised mass?

If you hide what you know, you will be supposed to know nothing.

Islam is not passive. It does not admit that man's spiritual needs should be isolated from his material daily activities.

Many centuries ago the non-Muslim world looked to the Muslim world for knowledge and intellectual leadership. And it was shared. It was shared by the Muslim world and its institutions and it was shared willingly and happily and without constraints

From the seventh century to the thirteenth century, the Muslim civilizations dominated world culture, accepting, adopting, using and preserving all preceding study of mathematics, philosophy, medicine and astronomy, among other areas of learning. The Islamic field of thought and knowledge included and added to much of the information on which all civilisations are founded. And yet this fact is seldom acknowledged today, be it in the West or in the Muslim world, and this amnesia has left a six hundred year gap in the history of human thought.

Islam does not deal in dichotomies but in all encompassing Unity. Spirit and body are one, man and nature are one. What is more, man is answerable to God for what man has created.

And while Canada may not be unique in welcoming the victimized to her shores, where she stands very nearly alone is in her encouragement to her new citizens to maintain their traditions and customs. An encouragement that is in my view a particularly wise and mature expression of democratic freedom.