426)New Series for my Blog: Week-In-Review; A Weekly Summary of News from the Much-Visited and Wildly Popular ISMAILI MAIL website.

My Blog on the link between Science and Religion in Islam deals in general with a narrowly focussed topic and I felt that a weekly post that gives us an up-to-date big picture of the world of Shia Ismaili Islam would balance things out. Fortunately the much-visited and wildly popular ISMAILI MAIL website publishes just such a weekly summary with internet links to all the articles they have posted for that week:

http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/



http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2008/12/01/week-in-review-nov-23-and-nov-30-2008/

Week-in-Review — Nov 16, 2008

November 18, 2008
Posted by ismailimail in Newsletter. trackback

We are pleased to bring you news and stories of His Highness the Aga Khan’s upcoming Golden Jubilee visit to Canada. His Highness will be in Canada for a 10-day visit from November 18 to November 26, 2008 and returning on December 6 to officially open the Delegation of the Ismaili Imamat located on Sussex Drive in Ottawa. The Aga Khan will visit Calgary on Nov 25, and Vancouver on Nov. 25 for a Golden Jubilee anniversary meeting with members of the Shia Ismaili Muslim community. We have pictures of the Golden Jubilee banners on the streets of Vancouver and a video tour of Vancouver City showing Golden Jubilee flags and banners everywhere.

Thanks to one of the many readers/fans of Ismaili Mail blog who sent us the scanned article titled ‘Prince with a Purpose’ from the Globe and Mail editorial. The article was published in honour of His Highness the Aga Khan and his role in the world in the world- on Tuesday May 3, 1983, approx 1 week after the Silver Jubilee Darbar.

The Ismaili website has updates on His Highness the Aga Khan’s Visit to Central Asia, and pictures from the Kyrgyzstan visit. And we bring you pictures of our Jamat in Tajikistan awaiting the arrival of Hazar Imam, courtesy of Pamir Times.

We have a video about Aga Khan Foundation’s early childhood and primary education work in Kyrgyzstan. It was shot by BBC, as a contender for the annual “World Challenge” competition, a global competition aimed at finding projects or small businesses from around the world that have shown enterprise and innovation at a grass roots level. And we have another video, titled ‘First Steps - Confidence’ of AKF’s ECD work in East Africa, with the Madrasa Resource Centre. These Early Childhood Education Centres give a different view of the common misinterpretation of the word ‘Madrasa’.

Our Ismaili Muslims in the News this week features Naseem Jiwanjee, and other alumni of the Karimjee Secondary School, Tanga, who gathered in Toronto to raise funds for the Tanzanian school. 12-year-old Bilaal Rajan is a child ambassador for UNICEF, runs his own website - and is now an author of a book, ‘Making Change, Tips from an Underage Overachiever’. TED Prize winner Karen Armstrong’s wish to change the world led to the writing of the Charter for Compassion, an inspiring global endeavor to celebrate compassion and to promote a new collaboration between the world’s religions. Professor Ali Asani is in the Charter’s Council. Alykhan Velshi, former director of Parliamentary affairs to Mr. Baird has moved back to the office of the newly minted Minister of Citizenship and Immigration Minister Hon. Jason Kenney (Calgary Southeast, Alta.) as Director of Communications and Parliamentary affairs.

In this week’s Ismaili Muslim Authors, we have featured a review on Eboo Patel’s book ‘Ponderings on a Faith Journey: Acts of Faith. Mansoor Ladha, an author and journalist, is one of 36 other writers, novelists, poets, journalists and scholars invited to write about how they came to Canada in a book entitled, ‘The Story That Brought Me Here: To Alberta from Everywhere’. Liaquat Ahamed, author of ‘Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World’ talks about Lessons of the Great Depression.

We are pleased to introduce and highlight works of our Ismaili Muslim Artists under the Art and Culture category. This week we introduce you to Irfaan Manji and his on going production, ‘Bliss My Soul‘, a new generation for Ismaili music and Dr Zulficar Rahim who has written an inspiring poem for the Deedar. We have Drawings and Calligraphy by Jalal Gilani. There’s updated information and new drawings available at his blog. We have a Geet: Mitha Lage hai Naam by Imtiaz Fazalbhoy (Faiz).

From Central Asia, in Pakistan, the Karachi Press Club (KPC), a heritage building is undergoing a process of cleansing and “beautification” these days. The club is proud to have luminaries such as Prince Karim Aga Khan among the first members on this roll of honour. In Bangladesh, the Aga Khan Award for Architecture is holding a seminar on Monday to present the 2007 winning projects to the professional community and architectural students in Bangladesh,
In other news, Firoz Rasul, President of the Aga Khan University was one of the speakers at an event held to discuss the Wealth creation in the developing world: Is Africa a lost cause?
From Flickr, we have pictures of the AKF Partnership Walk 2008 in Houston and pictures of the Passu Village in Northern Pakistan. An Australian journalist talks about how Aziz Mehboob, a friendly official in the local Aga Khan development office, which promotes Wakhan tourism, assisted him to get permits to visit the Wakhan.

Al Azhar Park, created by Aga Khan Foundation, will host an outstanding exhibition from November 21st to 30th, lining up Cairo, Paris and Athens on the axis ‘Mediterranean Line’ and displaying artworks by several renoun Egyptian, French and Greek artists to illustrate common values that makes these three civilizations resemble one another.

One of the earliest event, which shaped the development of music in the Muslim world, was the introduction of scholars of the Islam to ancient Greek treatises,initiated during the ninth century under the Abbasid Caliph al-Ma’mun. An outcome of this exposure, music emerged as a speculative discipline and as one of “the mathematical sciences,” which paralleled the Quatrivium (arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy) in the Latin West.

We have various articles written by Dr Shafique Virani, Professor of Islamic Studies.
That is all from this week, hope you will be looking forward to more exciting and interesting news and stories next week. Click here for last week’s review. All previously archived weekly reviews are available here.

Earlier Week-In-Reviews from Ismaili Mail:

http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2008/11/11/week-in-review-nov-9-2008/

http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2008/11/03/week-in-review-nov-2-2008/

http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2008/10/27/week-in-review-october-26-2008/

http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2008/10/20/week-in-review-october-19-2008/

http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2008/10/13/week-in-review-october-12-2008/

http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2008/10/06/week-in-review-october-5-2008/



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)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql): Prophet Muhammad(circa 632CE)