Peter Mansbridge Interviews The Aga Khan

Words of wisdom. I can also see a realistic appraisal of the roots to present day tumultous situation in a book titled "After the Prophet" by Lesley Hazelton published 2009 - A book towards reducing the "Clash of Ignorance".

AKU Commencement December 2013: Islamic Quest for Intellectual ExcellenceIN HONOR OF MAWLANA HAZAR IMAM'S UPCOMING SPEECH AT HARVARD (http://wcfia.harvard.edu/event/jodidi-2015)  let us view this short clip of Mawlana Hazar Imam's address at Aga Khan University Commencement in December 2013 in which he talks about the Islamic Quest for Intellectual Excellence!"On a day like this, we can also take renewed strength from our past, and from a great legacy of Islamic accomplishment in pursuing educational excellence. That legacy has long (and it has) been an inspiration to me, even from the time when I succeeded my (late) grandfather as Imam in 1957, when I was a university student at Harvard. That’s some time ago!My grandfather, Sir Sultan Muhammed Shah Aga Khan, was deeply aware of Islam’s rich intellectual heritage. Of equal significance, he was also convinced of the enormous importance of higher education for the future of the Ummah around the world. He had engaged personally in developing educational opportunities for Muslims in pre-partition India and was largely responsible for creating Aligarh University. He saw that effort as fulfilling a tradition going back one thousand years, to the role of his predecessors, the Fatimids, in founding the Azhar university and the Dar ul-Ilm in Cairo, known through the ages as the 'House of Knowledge.'He knew as well about other great Muslim institutions of scholarship and culture which flourished over many centuries, serving the whole of the Ummah and much of the known world, engaging the most advanced thinking from many cultures, ethnic groups and faith communities.It was true of the Fatimids 1,000 years ago and of the Abbasids in Baghdad even earlier. It was true of the Mughal Emperor Akbar in the 16th century as well as the Ottoman Sultans, including Mehmed the Conqueror and Sulayman the Magnificent. And there were many others; the Safavid ruler Shah Abbasin Sifahan in Iran, and the great Timurid Sultan, Ulugh Beg, who built the world’s greatest observatory in Samarkand. You have just heard about some of the great intellects who flourished under these auspices.Whenever and wherever it may have been, in the Middle East, or South or Central Asia, or Northern Africa, the most brilliant periods in Islamic history were marked by an expansive quest for intellectual excellence. It was this tradition that I inherited from my grandfather — and it was not a static tradition, but one that was built around the power of new knowledge and the great adventure of learning how to go on learning."- Mawlana Hazar Imam2013 Aga Khan University Convocation Ceremony (Karachi, Pakistan)19 December 2013http://www.nanowisdoms.org/nwblog/10686/
Posted by Ismaili Gnosis on Friday, October 16, 2015