349)Latest 2008 USA quotes and speech excerpts of Mawlana Hazar Imam, His Highness Aga Khan IV, on the subjects of knowledge, learning and education.

For those who reach this post through the Google or other search engines, know that this post contains quotes and excerpts extracted from Blogpost Four Hundred:
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/09/400blogpost-four-hundred-knowledge.html


1)"As we move into that future, we would like to collaborate with the International Baccalaureate movement in a challenging, but inspiring new educational adventure. Together, we can help reshape the very definition of a well educated global citizen. And we can begin that process by bridging the learning gap which lies at the heart of what some have called a Clash of Civilizations, but which I have always felt was rather a Clash of Ignorances.

In the years ahead, should we not expect a student at an IB school in Atlanta to know as much about Jomo Kenyatta or Muhammad Ali Jinnah as a student in Mombasa or Lahore knows about Atlanta's great son, the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr.? Should a Bangladeshi IB student reading the poems of Tagore at the Aga Khan Academy in Dhaka not also encounter the works of other Nobel Laureates in Literature such as the Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk or America's William Faulkner or Toni Morrison?Should the study of medieval architecture not include both the Chartres Cathedral in France and the Mosque of Djenne in Mali? And shouldn't IB science students not learn about Ibn al-Haytham, the Muslim scholar who developed modern optics, as well as his predecessors Euclid and Ptolemy, whose ideas he challenged.

As we work together to bridge the gulf between East and West, between North and South, between developing and developed economies, between urban and rural settings, we will be redefining what it means to be well educated."(Aga Khan IV, "The Peterson Lecture" on the International Baccalaureate, Atlanta, Georgia, USA, 18 April 2008)

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http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/01/296one-mega-post-encompassing-four.html



2)"As you may know, the developing world has been at the centre of my thinking and my work throughout my lifetime. And I inherited a tradition of educational commitment from my grandfather. It was a century ago that he began to build a network of some 300 schools in the developing world through the Aga Khan Education Services - in addition to founding Aligarh University in India.

The legacy which I am describing actually goes back more than a thousand years, to the time when our forefathers, the Fatimid Imam-Caliphs of Egypt, founded Al-Azhar University and the Academy of Knowledge in Cairo. For many centuries, a commitment to learning was a central element in far-flung Islamic cultures. That commitment has continued in my own Imamat through the founding of the Aga Khan University and the University of Central Asia and through the recent establishment of a new Aga Khan Academies Program."(Aga Khan IV, "The Peterson Lecture" on the International Baccalaureate, Atlanta, Georgia, USA, 18 April 2008)

Read the full account here:
http://www.akdn.org/speeches/2008april18.html

Related post:
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/01/306the-uninterrupted-thread-of-search.html





3)"The United States' position as a world leader, in my view, grows directly out of its accomplishments as a Knowledge Society - and this Knowledge - rightly applied - can continue to be a resource of enormous global value"(Aga Khan IV, Austin, Texas, USA, 12 April 2008)

Read the full account here:
http://www.akdn.org/speeches/2008april12.html

Related quote from 1983:
About the United States of America: "I'm less hypnotized by this country's material wealth than by its wealth of knowledge. This country today represents, without any doubt in my mind, the greatest intensity of human knowledge on the face of the earth. And that is an exhilarating thought, one perhaps not perceived by Americans as much as by non-Americans"(Aga Khan IV, LIFE magazine interview, December 1983)



Related posts:
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/04/344knowledge-society-by-aga-khan-iv.html
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/04/347quotes-and-excerpts-from-aga-khan-iv.html
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/04/348quotes-and-speech-excerpts-of-aga.html
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/02/327comprehensive-quotes-of-aga-khan-iv.html



Easy Nash

The Qur'an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
The Quran tells us that signs of Allah's Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives: Aga Khan IV(2007)
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2006)