FOCUS: Global pandemic preparedness guide
(Last updated 30 April 2009 13:27 GMT)
Focus Humanitarian Assistance, an AKDN affiliate, has issued a preparedness guide for a pandemic outbreak of swine flu. The guide answers basic questions and includes several useful links to the websites of international and national health institutions.
1)What is swine flu?
Swine influenza, or “swine flu”, is a contagious acute respiratory disease of pigs, caused by one of several swine influenza A viruses. People do not normally get swine flu, but cases of human infection with swine influenza A (H1N1) viruses have been reported and confirmed internationally.
2)Is this swine flu virus contagious?
The swine influenza A (H1N1) virus is contagious and is spreading from human to human. However, at this time, it is not known how easily the virus spreads between people.
This virus is thought to be spreading in the same way that seasonal flu spreads. Flu viruses are spread mainly from person to person through coughing or sneezing of people with influenza. Sometimes people may become infected by touching something with flu viruses on it and then touching their mouth or nose.
Swine influenza viruses are not spread by food.
3)How can transmission of the flu be avoided?
To protect yourself and others, practice general preventive measures for influenza:
Avoid close contact with people who appear unwell or who have fever and cough;
Wash your hands with soap and water frequently and thoroughly;
Practice good health habits including adequate sleep, eating nutritious food, and keeping physically active;
Clean hard surfaces (kitchen worktops, door handles) frequently using a normal cleaning product.
4)Do I need a face mask?
Although wearing a mask is unlikely to be effective in preventing the infection it may limit further spread of the virus.
5)What are the symptoms of swine flu in people?
The symptoms of swine flu are similar to those of ordinary flu, but may be more severe and cause serious complications. The typical symptoms are:
sudden fever;
sudden cough.
Other symptoms may include:
headache;
fatigue;
chills;
aching muscles;
limb or joint pain;
diarrhoea or vomiting;
sore throat;
runny nose;
sneezing;
loss of appetite.
If you have flu-like symptoms:
If you develop severe flu-like symptoms, contact your health care provider immediately, particularly if you have recently travelled to Mexico or another affected area.
If you are sick stay home and avoid contact with other people as much as possible to keep from spreading your illness to others.
6)What precautions should I take if I am travelling?
People using public transport are being reminded to observe good hygiene. In regard to international travel, please refer to your local transport authority for guidance and recommendations.
7)What is a pandemic?
A pandemic is a global outbreak of disease. An influenza pandemic occurs when a new virus emerges for which there is little or no immunity in the human population. It begins by causing serious illness and then spreads from person-to-person.
8)What are the different phases of a pandemic?
Copyright: World Health Organization
The above World Health Organisation (WHO) diagram describes the different pandemic influenza phases. Phases 1 – 3 correlate with preparedness, including capacity development and response planning activities, while Phases 4 – 6 signal the need for response and mitigation efforts.
The WHO has now raised the international alert level to Phase 5 on a six point scale and is urging all countries to intensify preparedness. Phase 5 is characterized by human-to-human spread of the virus into at least two countries in one WHO region. While most countries will not be affected at this stage, the declaration of Phase 5 is a strong signal that a pandemic is imminent. At this stage the time to finalise the organisation, communication, and implementation of the planned mitigation measures is short.
9)How can I prepare for a pandemic?
Confirm a network of ‘flu-friends’, such as friends and relatives, to help you if you fall ill. Keep all important emergency telephone numbers in a safe place.
Have a stock of food and other supplies available at home that will last for two weeks. Current recommendations for stockpiling measures are:
2-week supply of water per each family member;
2-week supply of non-perishable food for each family member;
Adequate supply of on going medication;
Soap / cleansing agents;
Torches and batteries;
Portable radio;
Manual can opener;
Bin bags;
Sanitary items (toilet tissue, diapers, etc.)
10)Where can I go for more information and updates on infection?
The World Health Organisation provides up-to-date information on swine influenza including information for travellers, information for the general public and FAQs:
http://www.who.int/csr/disease/swineflu/en/
Centres for Disease Control and Protection provides information about swine flu, the number of cases being reported in the US and key points on personal hygiene:
http://www.cdc.gov/swineflu/
CDC has also provided separate information on how to deal with the virus within the home:
http://www.cdc.gov/swineflu/guidance_homecare.htm
National Health Services provides medically related information:
http://www.nhs.uk/Pages/HomePage.aspx
NHS has also created a video which stresses personal hygiene and how to prevent the spread of infection titled
Catch It. Kill It. Bin It.
The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control has statistics, information and assessments on European cases:
http://ecdc.europa.eu/
Pandemic Flu contains information on preparing for a pandemic: http://www.pandemicflu.gov/plan/index.html
The US Department of Labour provides information on how to prepare the workplace:
http://www.osha.gov/dsg/guidance/stockpiling-facemasks-respirators.html
Sources: World Health Organisation (WHO), Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), National Health Service UK (NHS), European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC).
http://www.theismaili.org/cms/704/FOCUS-Global-pandemic-preparedness-guide
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2009/04/30/focus-humanitarian-assistance-issues-pandemic-preparedness-guide-akdn-development-blog/
http://www.akdn.org/blog.asp?id=738
Related: on the nature of viruses:
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/01/280no6-ayatssigns-in-universe-series.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)
The Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims: Aga Khan IV(1985)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql): Prophet Muhammad(circa 632CE)
Thursday, April 30, 2009
475)Canadian Conservative Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism Jason Kenney makes Courageous and Necessary Immigration Reforms
Macleans.ca
Canada’s only national weekly current affairs magazine.
Maclean’s Interview: Jason Kenney
Apr 29, 2009 by macleans.ca
Q: When you’re speaking at citizenship ceremonies, you tell new Canadians our history is now their history, that you don’t want Canada to be viewed as a hotel where people come and go with no abiding commitment to our past, or to citizenship. What is the meaning of our citizenship?
A: Legally speaking it gives people status in Canada and certain rights like voting, but I think we need to reclaim a deeper sense of citizenship, a sense of shared obligations to one another, to our past, as well as to the future. In that I mean a kind of civic nationalism where people understand the institutions, values and symbols that are rooted in our history.
Q: They don’t understand those things now?
A: Well, heck, if you look at polling data—there’s a massive historical amnesia about the Canadian past, and massive gaps of knowledge about our parliamentary institutions, our democratic procedures. There’s a massive civic illiteracy.
Q: For old Canadians as well as new Canadians.
A: Yeah, for younger Canadians in particular, whether they’re new or well-established.
Q: But if the problem is general, why are we doing it as an immigration program?
A: Because I’m not in charge of the schools, I am in charge of the citizenship process.
Q: There are questions about civic literacy on the citizenship test. Are they inadequate?
A: It’s pretty weak. We’re reviewing the materials with a mind to improving the test to ensure that it demonstrates a real knowledge of Canadian institutions, values, and symbols, and history. Right now, if you look at the preparatory booklet for the test, there’s three sentences, I think, on Confederation history, and not one single sentence about Canadian military history. It’s bizarre to think that someone could become a Canadian citizen without ever being told what the poppy represents. It doesn’t even show up in the book but it talks about food processing in New Brunswick and how you recycle.
Q: So if this is a general Canadian problem, does that mean there are no problems in terms of new Canadians integrating into society?
A: Look, I think the Canadian model of immigration, integration and pluralism has been pretty successful. However, the economic data suggests that economic outcomes for newcomers has declined over the past generation.
Q: As for all Canadians.
A: But particularly for immigrants. I think the unemployment rate for immigrants with university degrees is four times higher than that for native-born Canadians. What we don’t want to end up with is a kind of social fracturing and so-called ethnic enclaves that one sees in parts of western Europe. You can’t just maintain the highest level of immigration in the world in relative terms without being very deliberate about helping people to integrate successfully and quickly.
Q: We’ve done it for 150 years.
A: Not with the same kind of sustained levels of immigration relative to the overall population.
Q: At some points they’ve even been higher.
A: At some points, and at some points there was no immigration. What we have that’s dramatically different is nearly 80 per cent of newcomers settling in three metropolitan areas with a tendency to follow the natural route of all newcomers of associating with communities from their country or region of origin, which is not necessarily a bad thing.
Q: In many respects it’s a good thing .
A: Absolutely. My concern is, again, ensuring that, particularly in the second generation, it doesn’t find itself locked into a community that in some respects is more like their parents’ country of origin than like Canada.
Q: Do we have evidence that that happens?
A: Well, yes, there is increasing evidence. I’m not advocating a kind of assimilationist approach to integration; I’m an advocate of our inheritance of a kind of relaxed British liberal approach to integration, that is to say not forcing people to adopt a kind of ethnocultural identity or even a civic identity against their will. If Canadian pluralism means anything, it means unity and diversity, it means people getting to know one another. I take the example of a teenage boy who comes to Richmond, B.C., from mainland China. He’s probably going to a high school where 80 to 90 per cent of his peers speak their mother tongue—Mandarin or Cantonese. And now we allow the broadcast of 13 mainland Chinese Mandarin 24-hour TV programs. When does this kid have an opportunity to meet the children of Punjabi immigrants in Surrey or old-stock Canadians from Point Grey?
Q: In a liberal society why is it necessary he leave his cultural community in order to be considered successful?
A Because ultimately liberal society depends on a shared sense of liberal values, and hopefully a sense that we have a common enterprise here.
Q: But living in a community of like-minded people is not offensive to liberal values.
A: It’s not offensive but I think most people would agree—and I certainly can tell you most new Canadians with whom I speak agree—that we need to ensure that bridges of understanding are being built between people from different countries and regions of origin. It’s no secret that, for instance, many of the worst enmities exist between newcomers from the same region or country of origin.
Q: You think those are worse than the enmities that the older stock—for lack of a better term—has toward newcomers?
A: Yeah. I can tell you from experience that very frequently, when I’m at a particular community I’m pulled aside and I’m asked, “Why are you letting those people in the country?” and then when I’m with those people they’ll ask me, “Why are you letting the other guys in the country?”
Q: We’re about to publish an Ipsos-Reid poll that shows 45 per cent of Canadians believe that Islam is an inherently violent religion. There’s a lot of suspicion among the general population of ethnic minority communities within Canada. Is there not a concern that by setting up programs to encourage better integration of immigrant communities that you seem to be holding the immigrants accountable for our lack of social cohesion when in fact it’s a general problem?
A: No, I’m not blaming anyone.
Q: You’re putting the onus on them to fit in.
A: To quote Tony Blair, in our liberal society everyone has a right to be different but a duty to integrate, and I think old-stock Canadians have a duty to open doors of opportunity to newcomers and get to know them as well.
Q: Doesn’t that happen naturally? I mean, you go get a job for a big corporation, you’re thrown in with all kinds of people. If your kid goes out and plays soccer he’ll play with other people of other nationalities and races.
A: It should happen naturally, and sometimes it does, but too often it doesn’t, and if you look at the Parisian suburbs or the northern British cities, clearly that hasn’t been happening, and we don’t want to wake up sometime 15 years from now and find that we have allowed a similar situation to develop.
Q: Do you see those sorts of failures developing in Canadian communities?
A: I think we can’t exclude the possibility. And yeah, there are obviously anecdotal signs. I don’t need to point out the obvious.
Q: What are the obvious?
A: Well, if you talk to any of the victims of the Air India bombing they’ll tell you that there’s a problem.
Q: And how would your programs affect those radicals? A lot of the people suspected in that incident spoke English and presumably were capable of passing their citizenship tests. Some were well-educated.
A: Well, there’s nothing a government can do to completely exclude the possibility of that kind of extremism, but again we need to be deliberate about it. Case in point, right now as I speak, outside Parliament are people waving the flags of a banned illegal terrorist organization that invented suicide bombing as a tactic and has been condemned by the United Nations for recruiting child soldiers. It’s called the Tamil Tigers. One of the ways in which we’ve given concrete expression to what I’m talking about, the clear enunciation of Canadian values, is by not humouring extremists in any community, such as this one. Now, I often explain that this is nothing new, that the central question in a political issue in Upper Canada in the latter half of the 19th century was Orange versus Green. It was my Green ancestors having their homes burnt down. It was George Brown, the founder of the Globe newspaper, inciting Orangemen to burn down Catholic barns. So it isn’t anything new, but the worst thing we can do is to lower the bar and humour, if you will, those extreme elements.
Q: I’m not arguing in favour of lowering the bar or humouring extremists, I’m just wondering how a language requirement which probably both the Green and the Orange could have passed is going to help.
A: Well, there’s a lot more than that.
Q: You haven’t told me anything that’s really going to address these fundamental enmities.
A: Well, for starters, not funding extremist organizations is a good way to start.
Q: But we’re talking about not funding multicultural groups generally. That’s going to cause trouble for things like the Heritage Festival in Edmonton, which invites people of all different nationalities to come together.
A: Well, we don’t fund community-specific initiatives, and actually the multicultural program hasn’t done that for 15 years.
Q: Regardless of the specific funding, you’ve been skeptical of what you call the sari-and-samosa school of multiculturalism support.
A: Right. I think that’s totally passé. I think having a clear understanding of Canadian values won’t prevent people from importing ancient enmities but it can only help if you say, “Look, this is a liberal democracy, these are the rules by which we play, and we expect you to play by them.” With respect to the language requirement, it seems to me that a basic ability to speak one of the two official languages is the sine qua non of civic literacy. This is nothing new, by the way. I’m just simply suggesting that we should be applying it consistently. I hear anecdotes about people bringing translators in to do their citizenship test for them, or getting passes when they can’t speak a sentence of English or French. This is a knowledge economy, and I think we’re putting people at an enormous disadvantage if we don’t give them the tools, nor the expectation that they have some capacity in one of our two official languages.
Q: The Italian community could not immigrate today with the current point system, and these are people who integrated quite well.
A: Yeah, I agree.
Q: We want our immigrant populations to be as well-educated and productive as possible, but isn’t the greater need simply for more immigrants?
A: It’s both. Last year we welcomed to Canada 247,000 permanent residents and over half a million permanent and temporary residents. We are the only developed country I know of which is actually maintaining rather than cutting immigration levels. I agree with the premise that the point system created a profile of immigration intake which wasn’t necessarily linked to our economic and labour market needs, and we end up with the best-educated taxi drivers in the world; we end up with highly educated professionals coming from the top tiers of their countries of origin ending up working survival jobs here in Canada as they can’t get their credentials recognized. So we’re making changes to more closely align our immigration program to our economic and labour market needs.
Q: When you talk about these new programs in speeches, you talk about at-risk youth and combatting radicalization. I’m concerned that, first, it sounds like you’re selling these changes as a remedy for extremism, and second that it encourages people to think of immigrant communities as being unable to integrate.
A: I don’t think you’ll find anything I’ve said that supports that. To the contrary, I am a serious bona fide defender of our very open approach to immigration. If we ignore challenges that exist, I think that’s only inviting the breakdown of the pro-immigration and pro-diversity consensus that exists in Canada. Now, what I’m talking about, youth at risk and radicalization of criminality, is what people on the social left will talk about as well. Now, they’ll argue that the causes are social exclusion, and I in large part agree with them. That’s why I’m saying for kids who may never have a professional experience, let’s get them mentorship programs, let’s help—as we are—through our crime prevention initiatives. I’m not suggesting that the kids of any particular immigrant community are “a social problem.”
Q: When you say that you always point to the same two or three communities.
A: No, I don’t.
Q: The Tamils, the Sikhs and the Muslims.
A: That’s not true. When I’m up in Edmonton meeting at the invitation of the Somalicommunity, and they tell me about 13 murders that have happened, 13 young Somali kids—Somali-Canadian kids—who’ve been killed in Edmonton in the past year or so, they’re asking for help. To say that the cycle doesn’t exist isn’t responsible. It’s a broad social problem for which we all bear responsibility to find the solution.
Q: How’s the relationship with the Muslim community?
A: With many Canadian Muslims it’s great. With the small minority who claim to speak for the Muslim community but I think represent just a fringe, not so good. I don’t talk about the Muslim community in Canada, I talk about the Muslim communities, and I have spent a lot of time in the past three years with the diversity of Canada’s Muslim communities all the way from the Muslim school in Halifax to the Persian community in West Vancouver. Do I get along with Mohammed Al-Nasri, who said that any Israeli over the age of 18 can legitimately be killed? No, I don’t deal with people like that. I think that is the approach that the government should take, that we will engage anyone of any faith or any ethnicity but not those who advocate extremism, support terrorism, rhetorically or otherwise. I maintain that that characterizes a tiny minority of the Muslim communities.
Q: Are you concerned the Muslim community, or part of it, is in danger of being marginalized?
A: Obviously Muslim Canadians have a particular challenge, given current realities, to explain their faith to non-Muslims, and for many young Muslims I think there are probably bigger barriers to social inclusion than for other Canadians. I spoke very bluntly about this to the Islamic Society of North America in Mississauga recently where I said, “Look, it’s reality that people in your communities, particularly young people and young men, may feel frustrated because of misunderstandings about Islam because of negative stereotypes, and that means there are perhaps often bigger hurdles for people to overcome in this community, but you have to believe that in Canada still anything is possible.” And I used as my example my former colleague Rahim Jaffer, who arrived in Canada as a refugee, as an infant. Rahim Jaffer, at 25 years of age, was the first Muslim elected to the Canadian Parliament, and by 32 was the caucus chair of a government in a G8 country. So my message is: there are challenges, just like there were challenges for my Irish-Catholic ancestors that arrived in Orange Toronto in the mid-19th century,but you’ve got to believe in the promise of this country and stay focused, and not allow the challenges and the stereotypes to be an excuse for becoming bitter towards Canadian society.
Q: There is—I think—an unhealthily low level of tolerance toward immigrant communities in Canada still, and it’s borne out again in polls and in public hearings. How do you address the reluctance of the larger community to do its part to help these people?
A: We definitely don’t have the kind of institutionalized xenophobia that exists in certain other Western democracies. The easy and obvious thing to do, from a political calculus point of view, would be to follow the rest of the Western world and slash immigration levels, and blame immigrants for taking away Canadian jobs. We’re doing the exact opposite thing. What old-stock Canadians, if you will, owe new Canadians isn’t special treatment, they owe them an honest shot.
Q: Why not take advantage of this opportunity when other nations are closing doors? We have a long-term need for high immigration.
A: We are doing exactly that. We are finally, again, competitive for the best and the brightest with countries like Australia and New Zealand. If you were a brilliant software engineer from Bangalore who just graduated from one of the top Indian technology institutes, you wouldn’t even think about coming to Canada and waiting six years to do so; you would go to Australia or New Zealand in six months. We are making changes to better align the immigration intake with our economic and labour market needs, and that will in time—significantly, I think—improve economic outcomes. Which, at the end of day—all this abstract talk about social inclusion and integration—when I meet with new Canadians, they don’t get into abstract debates about pluralism and managing diversity. They’re here because they want a good job in the profession for which they are trained and they want their kids to get ahead.
http://www2.macleans.ca/2009/04/29/macleans-interview-jason-kenney/
Related:
Maclean's Editorial—Our weak identity isn’t an immigrant problem
http://www2.macleans.ca/2009/04/29/our-weak-identity-isn’t-an-immigrant-problem/
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/holy-post/archive/2009/04/28/barbara-kay-do-christian-canadians-hate-sikhs-muslims-and-jews-part-2.aspx
http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress/article/ALeqM5hVb10fTqwi7AwrJLXxPJ-X9PlE1w
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 Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims: Aga Khan IV(1985)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql): Prophet Muhammad(circa 632CE)
Canada’s only national weekly current affairs magazine.
Maclean’s Interview: Jason Kenney
Apr 29, 2009 by macleans.ca
Q: When you’re speaking at citizenship ceremonies, you tell new Canadians our history is now their history, that you don’t want Canada to be viewed as a hotel where people come and go with no abiding commitment to our past, or to citizenship. What is the meaning of our citizenship?
A: Legally speaking it gives people status in Canada and certain rights like voting, but I think we need to reclaim a deeper sense of citizenship, a sense of shared obligations to one another, to our past, as well as to the future. In that I mean a kind of civic nationalism where people understand the institutions, values and symbols that are rooted in our history.
Q: They don’t understand those things now?
A: Well, heck, if you look at polling data—there’s a massive historical amnesia about the Canadian past, and massive gaps of knowledge about our parliamentary institutions, our democratic procedures. There’s a massive civic illiteracy.
Q: For old Canadians as well as new Canadians.
A: Yeah, for younger Canadians in particular, whether they’re new or well-established.
Q: But if the problem is general, why are we doing it as an immigration program?
A: Because I’m not in charge of the schools, I am in charge of the citizenship process.
Q: There are questions about civic literacy on the citizenship test. Are they inadequate?
A: It’s pretty weak. We’re reviewing the materials with a mind to improving the test to ensure that it demonstrates a real knowledge of Canadian institutions, values, and symbols, and history. Right now, if you look at the preparatory booklet for the test, there’s three sentences, I think, on Confederation history, and not one single sentence about Canadian military history. It’s bizarre to think that someone could become a Canadian citizen without ever being told what the poppy represents. It doesn’t even show up in the book but it talks about food processing in New Brunswick and how you recycle.
Q: So if this is a general Canadian problem, does that mean there are no problems in terms of new Canadians integrating into society?
A: Look, I think the Canadian model of immigration, integration and pluralism has been pretty successful. However, the economic data suggests that economic outcomes for newcomers has declined over the past generation.
Q: As for all Canadians.
A: But particularly for immigrants. I think the unemployment rate for immigrants with university degrees is four times higher than that for native-born Canadians. What we don’t want to end up with is a kind of social fracturing and so-called ethnic enclaves that one sees in parts of western Europe. You can’t just maintain the highest level of immigration in the world in relative terms without being very deliberate about helping people to integrate successfully and quickly.
Q: We’ve done it for 150 years.
A: Not with the same kind of sustained levels of immigration relative to the overall population.
Q: At some points they’ve even been higher.
A: At some points, and at some points there was no immigration. What we have that’s dramatically different is nearly 80 per cent of newcomers settling in three metropolitan areas with a tendency to follow the natural route of all newcomers of associating with communities from their country or region of origin, which is not necessarily a bad thing.
Q: In many respects it’s a good thing .
A: Absolutely. My concern is, again, ensuring that, particularly in the second generation, it doesn’t find itself locked into a community that in some respects is more like their parents’ country of origin than like Canada.
Q: Do we have evidence that that happens?
A: Well, yes, there is increasing evidence. I’m not advocating a kind of assimilationist approach to integration; I’m an advocate of our inheritance of a kind of relaxed British liberal approach to integration, that is to say not forcing people to adopt a kind of ethnocultural identity or even a civic identity against their will. If Canadian pluralism means anything, it means unity and diversity, it means people getting to know one another. I take the example of a teenage boy who comes to Richmond, B.C., from mainland China. He’s probably going to a high school where 80 to 90 per cent of his peers speak their mother tongue—Mandarin or Cantonese. And now we allow the broadcast of 13 mainland Chinese Mandarin 24-hour TV programs. When does this kid have an opportunity to meet the children of Punjabi immigrants in Surrey or old-stock Canadians from Point Grey?
Q: In a liberal society why is it necessary he leave his cultural community in order to be considered successful?
A Because ultimately liberal society depends on a shared sense of liberal values, and hopefully a sense that we have a common enterprise here.
Q: But living in a community of like-minded people is not offensive to liberal values.
A: It’s not offensive but I think most people would agree—and I certainly can tell you most new Canadians with whom I speak agree—that we need to ensure that bridges of understanding are being built between people from different countries and regions of origin. It’s no secret that, for instance, many of the worst enmities exist between newcomers from the same region or country of origin.
Q: You think those are worse than the enmities that the older stock—for lack of a better term—has toward newcomers?
A: Yeah. I can tell you from experience that very frequently, when I’m at a particular community I’m pulled aside and I’m asked, “Why are you letting those people in the country?” and then when I’m with those people they’ll ask me, “Why are you letting the other guys in the country?”
Q: We’re about to publish an Ipsos-Reid poll that shows 45 per cent of Canadians believe that Islam is an inherently violent religion. There’s a lot of suspicion among the general population of ethnic minority communities within Canada. Is there not a concern that by setting up programs to encourage better integration of immigrant communities that you seem to be holding the immigrants accountable for our lack of social cohesion when in fact it’s a general problem?
A: No, I’m not blaming anyone.
Q: You’re putting the onus on them to fit in.
A: To quote Tony Blair, in our liberal society everyone has a right to be different but a duty to integrate, and I think old-stock Canadians have a duty to open doors of opportunity to newcomers and get to know them as well.
Q: Doesn’t that happen naturally? I mean, you go get a job for a big corporation, you’re thrown in with all kinds of people. If your kid goes out and plays soccer he’ll play with other people of other nationalities and races.
A: It should happen naturally, and sometimes it does, but too often it doesn’t, and if you look at the Parisian suburbs or the northern British cities, clearly that hasn’t been happening, and we don’t want to wake up sometime 15 years from now and find that we have allowed a similar situation to develop.
Q: Do you see those sorts of failures developing in Canadian communities?
A: I think we can’t exclude the possibility. And yeah, there are obviously anecdotal signs. I don’t need to point out the obvious.
Q: What are the obvious?
A: Well, if you talk to any of the victims of the Air India bombing they’ll tell you that there’s a problem.
Q: And how would your programs affect those radicals? A lot of the people suspected in that incident spoke English and presumably were capable of passing their citizenship tests. Some were well-educated.
A: Well, there’s nothing a government can do to completely exclude the possibility of that kind of extremism, but again we need to be deliberate about it. Case in point, right now as I speak, outside Parliament are people waving the flags of a banned illegal terrorist organization that invented suicide bombing as a tactic and has been condemned by the United Nations for recruiting child soldiers. It’s called the Tamil Tigers. One of the ways in which we’ve given concrete expression to what I’m talking about, the clear enunciation of Canadian values, is by not humouring extremists in any community, such as this one. Now, I often explain that this is nothing new, that the central question in a political issue in Upper Canada in the latter half of the 19th century was Orange versus Green. It was my Green ancestors having their homes burnt down. It was George Brown, the founder of the Globe newspaper, inciting Orangemen to burn down Catholic barns. So it isn’t anything new, but the worst thing we can do is to lower the bar and humour, if you will, those extreme elements.
Q: I’m not arguing in favour of lowering the bar or humouring extremists, I’m just wondering how a language requirement which probably both the Green and the Orange could have passed is going to help.
A: Well, there’s a lot more than that.
Q: You haven’t told me anything that’s really going to address these fundamental enmities.
A: Well, for starters, not funding extremist organizations is a good way to start.
Q: But we’re talking about not funding multicultural groups generally. That’s going to cause trouble for things like the Heritage Festival in Edmonton, which invites people of all different nationalities to come together.
A: Well, we don’t fund community-specific initiatives, and actually the multicultural program hasn’t done that for 15 years.
Q: Regardless of the specific funding, you’ve been skeptical of what you call the sari-and-samosa school of multiculturalism support.
A: Right. I think that’s totally passé. I think having a clear understanding of Canadian values won’t prevent people from importing ancient enmities but it can only help if you say, “Look, this is a liberal democracy, these are the rules by which we play, and we expect you to play by them.” With respect to the language requirement, it seems to me that a basic ability to speak one of the two official languages is the sine qua non of civic literacy. This is nothing new, by the way. I’m just simply suggesting that we should be applying it consistently. I hear anecdotes about people bringing translators in to do their citizenship test for them, or getting passes when they can’t speak a sentence of English or French. This is a knowledge economy, and I think we’re putting people at an enormous disadvantage if we don’t give them the tools, nor the expectation that they have some capacity in one of our two official languages.
Q: The Italian community could not immigrate today with the current point system, and these are people who integrated quite well.
A: Yeah, I agree.
Q: We want our immigrant populations to be as well-educated and productive as possible, but isn’t the greater need simply for more immigrants?
A: It’s both. Last year we welcomed to Canada 247,000 permanent residents and over half a million permanent and temporary residents. We are the only developed country I know of which is actually maintaining rather than cutting immigration levels. I agree with the premise that the point system created a profile of immigration intake which wasn’t necessarily linked to our economic and labour market needs, and we end up with the best-educated taxi drivers in the world; we end up with highly educated professionals coming from the top tiers of their countries of origin ending up working survival jobs here in Canada as they can’t get their credentials recognized. So we’re making changes to more closely align our immigration program to our economic and labour market needs.
Q: When you talk about these new programs in speeches, you talk about at-risk youth and combatting radicalization. I’m concerned that, first, it sounds like you’re selling these changes as a remedy for extremism, and second that it encourages people to think of immigrant communities as being unable to integrate.
A: I don’t think you’ll find anything I’ve said that supports that. To the contrary, I am a serious bona fide defender of our very open approach to immigration. If we ignore challenges that exist, I think that’s only inviting the breakdown of the pro-immigration and pro-diversity consensus that exists in Canada. Now, what I’m talking about, youth at risk and radicalization of criminality, is what people on the social left will talk about as well. Now, they’ll argue that the causes are social exclusion, and I in large part agree with them. That’s why I’m saying for kids who may never have a professional experience, let’s get them mentorship programs, let’s help—as we are—through our crime prevention initiatives. I’m not suggesting that the kids of any particular immigrant community are “a social problem.”
Q: When you say that you always point to the same two or three communities.
A: No, I don’t.
Q: The Tamils, the Sikhs and the Muslims.
A: That’s not true. When I’m up in Edmonton meeting at the invitation of the Somalicommunity, and they tell me about 13 murders that have happened, 13 young Somali kids—Somali-Canadian kids—who’ve been killed in Edmonton in the past year or so, they’re asking for help. To say that the cycle doesn’t exist isn’t responsible. It’s a broad social problem for which we all bear responsibility to find the solution.
Q: How’s the relationship with the Muslim community?
A: With many Canadian Muslims it’s great. With the small minority who claim to speak for the Muslim community but I think represent just a fringe, not so good. I don’t talk about the Muslim community in Canada, I talk about the Muslim communities, and I have spent a lot of time in the past three years with the diversity of Canada’s Muslim communities all the way from the Muslim school in Halifax to the Persian community in West Vancouver. Do I get along with Mohammed Al-Nasri, who said that any Israeli over the age of 18 can legitimately be killed? No, I don’t deal with people like that. I think that is the approach that the government should take, that we will engage anyone of any faith or any ethnicity but not those who advocate extremism, support terrorism, rhetorically or otherwise. I maintain that that characterizes a tiny minority of the Muslim communities.
Q: Are you concerned the Muslim community, or part of it, is in danger of being marginalized?
A: Obviously Muslim Canadians have a particular challenge, given current realities, to explain their faith to non-Muslims, and for many young Muslims I think there are probably bigger barriers to social inclusion than for other Canadians. I spoke very bluntly about this to the Islamic Society of North America in Mississauga recently where I said, “Look, it’s reality that people in your communities, particularly young people and young men, may feel frustrated because of misunderstandings about Islam because of negative stereotypes, and that means there are perhaps often bigger hurdles for people to overcome in this community, but you have to believe that in Canada still anything is possible.” And I used as my example my former colleague Rahim Jaffer, who arrived in Canada as a refugee, as an infant. Rahim Jaffer, at 25 years of age, was the first Muslim elected to the Canadian Parliament, and by 32 was the caucus chair of a government in a G8 country. So my message is: there are challenges, just like there were challenges for my Irish-Catholic ancestors that arrived in Orange Toronto in the mid-19th century,but you’ve got to believe in the promise of this country and stay focused, and not allow the challenges and the stereotypes to be an excuse for becoming bitter towards Canadian society.
Q: There is—I think—an unhealthily low level of tolerance toward immigrant communities in Canada still, and it’s borne out again in polls and in public hearings. How do you address the reluctance of the larger community to do its part to help these people?
A: We definitely don’t have the kind of institutionalized xenophobia that exists in certain other Western democracies. The easy and obvious thing to do, from a political calculus point of view, would be to follow the rest of the Western world and slash immigration levels, and blame immigrants for taking away Canadian jobs. We’re doing the exact opposite thing. What old-stock Canadians, if you will, owe new Canadians isn’t special treatment, they owe them an honest shot.
Q: Why not take advantage of this opportunity when other nations are closing doors? We have a long-term need for high immigration.
A: We are doing exactly that. We are finally, again, competitive for the best and the brightest with countries like Australia and New Zealand. If you were a brilliant software engineer from Bangalore who just graduated from one of the top Indian technology institutes, you wouldn’t even think about coming to Canada and waiting six years to do so; you would go to Australia or New Zealand in six months. We are making changes to better align the immigration intake with our economic and labour market needs, and that will in time—significantly, I think—improve economic outcomes. Which, at the end of day—all this abstract talk about social inclusion and integration—when I meet with new Canadians, they don’t get into abstract debates about pluralism and managing diversity. They’re here because they want a good job in the profession for which they are trained and they want their kids to get ahead.
http://www2.macleans.ca/2009/04/29/macleans-interview-jason-kenney/
Related:
Maclean's Editorial—Our weak identity isn’t an immigrant problem
http://www2.macleans.ca/2009/04/29/our-weak-identity-isn’t-an-immigrant-problem/
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/holy-post/archive/2009/04/28/barbara-kay-do-christian-canadians-hate-sikhs-muslims-and-jews-part-2.aspx
http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress/article/ALeqM5hVb10fTqwi7AwrJLXxPJ-X9PlE1w
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 Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims: Aga Khan IV(1985)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql): Prophet Muhammad(circa 632CE)
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
474)Humanistic Dimension of Islam Embodied By A Large Development Network In Action; Give Rural Communities And Societies A Fair Shake Says Aga Khan
Speech by His Highness the Aga Khan at the Global Philanthropy Forum
23 April 2009
Washington DC, USA
Please also see photos from His Highness the Aga Khan's Visit to Washington, DC
President Jane Wales, thank you for those very generous comments.
I’d like to say how happy I am to share in this year’s Global Philanthropy Forum.
Participants, Excellencies,Ladies and Gentlemen,
It is a special pleasure for me to be with you tonight, for I look upon you as particularly serious and informed partners in the work of global understanding and international development.
As you may know, I recently marked my 50th anniversary in my role as Imam of the Shia Imami Ismaili Muslims. This responsibility connects me intimately with the traditions of the Islamic faith and cultures, even while my education and a host of personal and professional associations have acquainted me with the non-Islamic West. The relationship of these two worlds is a subject of considerable importance for me – a relationship which some define, regrettably, as an inevitable Clash of Civilizations. My own observation, however – and my deep conviction – is that we can more accurately describe it as a Clash of Ignorances.
It is not my purpose tonight to detail the misunderstandings which have plagued this relationship. Let me only submit that educational systems on both sides have failed mightily in this regard – and so have some religious institutions. That – at this time in human history – the Judeo Christian and Muslim societies should know so little about one another never ceases to astonish – to stun – and to pain me.
As a Muslim leader speaking in Washington this evening, it seems appropriate that I cite the words of President Obama, in his recent speech in Ankara. As he put it, pledging a “broader engagement with the Muslim world, we will listen carefully, we will bridge misunderstandings, and we will seek common ground.” I know that the vast majority of the Islamic world shares these objectives.
Among the areas where we can find common ground is our mutual effort to address the problem of persistent global poverty, especially the endemic poverty of the developing world. Surely this is an area where we can listen and learn and grow together – establishing ever-stronger bonds of understanding. One of the great principles of Islam, in all its interpretations, is the elimination of poverty in society, and philanthropy's centrality in this duty.
When I succeeded my grandfather as Aga Khan in 1957, I was a student at Harvard – but speaking mostly French. I got extra English practice, however, from my new official routine of regular communication with Africa and Asia – and, in the bargain, was kept in great good humour by the amazing typographic errors which inevitably arose. But then computerized spell check programs came along - and all those charming idiosyncrasies disappeared!
I recently noticed, to my joy, however, that this new invention is not a fail safe protection. Consider this recent item in the publication “The Week: “Bad week for spell-check: Several Pennsylvania high school students had their last names changed in their yearbook by an automatic computer program, Alessandra Ippolito was listed as Alexandria Impolite, while Max Zupanovic was rechristened Max Supernova. And Kathy Carbaugh’s photo appeared next to the name Kathy Airbag.”
After reading this, I decided that maybe I should act prudently and spell check my own name. And I found that, while there was no “Aga Khan”, there was an “Aga” Cooker. It was defined as one of England’s oldest stoves and ovens – now somewhat outdated – but with a distinctive whistle every time it frizzled the food within!
But returning to a more serious topic let me submit this evening a few of my own reflections on the developing world that I know a central focus of my interests over fifty years. For, in coming to understand the life of widely dispersed Ismaili communities across the globe, I have also become immersed in their host societies.
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.
This is a complex objective, a moving target, and a humbling challenge. Sadly, the response in the places I know best has often been “one step forward and two steps back.“ Today, some forty percent of UN member nations are categorized as “failed democracies” – unable to meet popular aspirations for a better quality of life. The recent global economic crisis – along with the world food crisis – has sharply accentuated these problems.
But why have our efforts to change that picture over five decades not borne greater fruit? Measured against history, where have things gone wrong? Given the progress we have made in so many fields, why have we been so relatively ineffective in sharing that progress more equitably, and in making it more permanent?
My response centers on one principal observation: I believe the industrialized world has often expected developing societies to behave as if they were similar to the established nation states of the West, forgetting the centuries, and the processes which molded the Western democracies. Forgotten, for one thing, is the fact that economic development in Western nations was accompanied by massive urbanization. Yet today, in the countries of Asia and Africa where we work, over 70 percent of the population is rural. If you compare the two situations, they are one and a half to two and half centuries apart. Similarly, the profound diversity of these impoverished societies, infinitely greater than that among nascent European nation states, is too often unrecognized, or under-estimated, or misunderstood. Ethnic, religious, social, regional, economic, linguistic and political diversities are like a kaleidoscope that history shakes every day.
One symptom of this problem has been the high failure rate of constitutional structures in many developing countries, often because minority groups – who often make up the bulk of the population – fear they will be marginalized by any centralized authority. But did today’s developed countries not face similar challenges as they progressed toward nationhood?
If there is an historic misperception here, it has had several consequences for development activities.
The first concerns what I would call the dominant player fallacy – a tendency to place too much reliance in national governments and other institutions which may have relatively superficial connections to life at the grass-roots level.
Urban-based outsiders often look at these situations from the perspective of the city center looking out to a distant countryside, searching for quick and convenient levers of influence. Those who look from the bottom-up, however, see a much much more complex picture. The lines of force in these rural societies are often profoundly centrifugal, reflecting a highly fragmented array of influences. But was this not also true during the building of Western nation states?
Age old systems of religious, tribal or inherited family authority still have enormous influence in these societies. Local identities which often cross the artificial frontiers of the colonial past are more powerful than outsiders may assume. These values and traditions must be understood, embraced, and related to modern life, so that development can build on them. We have found that these age-old forces are among the best levers we have for improving the quality of life of rural peoples, even in cross frontier situations.
Nation building may require centralized authority, but if that authority is not trusted by rural communities, then instability is inevitable. The building of successful nation states in many of the countries in which I work will depend – as it did in the West – on providing significantly greater access for rural populations, who are generally in the majority.
If these reflections are well founded, then what is urgently needed is a massive, creative new development effort towards rural populations. Informed strategic thinking at the national level must be matched by a profound, engagement at the local level. Global philanthropy, public private partnerships and the best of human knowledge must be harnessed. As the World Bank recognized in its recent Poverty Study, local concerns must be targeted, providing roads and markets, sharpening the capacities of village governments, working to smooth social inequalities, and improving access to health and education services. The very definition of poverty is the absence of such quality of life indicators in civil society among rural populations.
It is in this context that I must share with you tonight my concern that too much of the developmental effort – especially in the fields of health and education - have been focused on urban environments.
I whole-heartedly support, for example, the goal of free and universal access to primary education. But I would just as whole-heartedly challenge this objective if it comes at the expense of secondary and higher education. 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.
Similarly despite various advances in preventive medicine, rural peoples – often 70% of the population – are badly served in the area of curative care. Comparisons show sharp rural disadvantages in fields such as trauma care and emergency medicine, curbing infant mortality, or diagnosing correctly the need for tertiary care. Building an effective nation state, today as in earlier centuries, requires that the quality of rural life must be a daily concern of government. Ideally, national progress should be as effective, as equitable, and as visible, over similar time-frames, in rural areas as in urban ones. Amongst other considerations, how else will we be able to slow, if not stop, the increasing trend of major cities of Asia and Africa to become ungovernable human slums?
From this general analysis, let me turn to our own experience. The Aga Khan Development Network, if only as a matter of scale, is incapable of massively redressing the rural-urban imbalances where we work. It is possible, however, to focus on areas of extreme isolation, extreme poverty and extreme potential risk - where human despair feeds the temptation to join criminal gangs or local militia or the drug economy. The World Bank refers to these areas as “lagging regions”. We have focused recently on three prototypical situations.
Badakhshan is a sensitive region of eastern Tajikistan and eastern Afghanistan where the same ethnic community is divided by a river which has now become a national border, and where both communities live in extreme poverty and are highly isolated from their respective capitals of Dushanbe and Kabul. There is a significant Shia Ismaili Muslim presence in both areas.
Southern Tanzania and Northern Mozambique is a region of eastern Africa where large numbers of rural Sunni Muslims live in extreme poverty. A third case, Rural Bihar, in India, involves six states where the Sachar Committee Report, commissioned by the Indian government, has courageously described how Muslim peoples have been distanced from the development story since 1947.
All three of these regions are works in progress. The first two are post conflict situations, relatively homogeneous, and sparsely populated, while the third is densely populated, and culturally diverse. All three have acute potential to become explosive, and our AKDN goal is to identify such areas as primary targets for philanthropy.
We have also developed a guiding concept in approaching these situations. We call it Multi-Input Area Development – or MIAD. An emphasis on multiple inputs is a crucial consequence of looking at the development arena from the bottom up. Singular inputs alone cannot generate, in the time available, and across the spectrum of needs, sufficient effective change to reverse trends towards famine or towards conflict.
Similarly, we want to measure outcomes in such cases by a more complex array of criteria. What we call our Quality of Life Assessments go beyond simple economic measurements – considering the broad array of conditions – quantitative and qualitative – which the poor themselves take into account when they assess their own well-being.
Secretary Clinton echoed the concern for multiple inputs and multiple assessments when she mentioned to you yesterday the need for diversified partnerships among governments, philanthropies, businesses, NGO’s, universities , unions, faith communities and individuals. The Aga Khan network includes partners from most of these categories – sustaining our Multi-Input strategy. I applaud her concern – and yours – for the importance of such alliances.
Northern Pakistan provides another example, in a challenging high mountain environment, of a complex approach to rural stabilization. Innovations in water and land management have been accompanied by a new focus on local choice through village organizations. A "productive public infrastructure" has emerged, including roads, irrigation channels, and small bridges, as well as improved health and education services. Historic palaces and forts along the old Silk Route have been restored and reused as tourism sites, reviving cultural pluralism and pride, diversifying the economy and enlarging the labor market. The provision of micro credit and the development of village savings funds have also played a key role.
For nearly 25 years, we have also worked in a large, once-degraded neighborhood, sprawling among and atop the ruins of old Islamic Cairo – built 1000 years ago by my ancestors, the Fatimid Caliphs. This is an urban location – but occupied by an essentially rural population, striving to become urbanized. The project was environmental and archaeological at the start – but it grew into a residential, recreational and cultural citiscape – which last year attracted 1.8 million visitors. The local population has new access to microcredit and has been trained and employed not only for restoring the complex, but also for maintaining it – as a new expression of civil society.
Because historic sites are often located among concentrations of destitute peoples, they can become a linchpin for development. We work now with such sites as Bagh-e-Babur in Kabul, the old Stone Town in Zanzibar, the Aleppo Citadel in Syria, the historic Moghal sites at New Delhi and Lahore, and the old mud mosques of Mopti and Djenne and Timbuktu, in northern Mali. Altogether, more than one million impoverished people will be touched by these projects. Such investments in restoring the world’s cultural patrimony do not compete with investing in its social and economic development. Indeed, they go hand in hand.
In all these cases, it is the interaction of many elements that creates a dynamic momentum, bringing together people from different classes, cultures, and disciplines, and welcoming partners who live across the street – and partners who live across the planet. Each case is singular, and each requires multiple inputs. And it is here that those present tonight can have such an important impact. Working together on programme development, on sharing specialized knowledge, and on competent implementation, we can all contribute more effectively to the reduction of global poverty.
Let me say in closing, how much I admire the work you are doing, the commitment you feel, and the dreams you have embraced. I hope and trust that we will have many opportunities to renew and extend our sense of partnership as we work toward building strong and healthy nation states around our globe.
If we are to succeed we will need, first, to readjust our orientation by focusing on the immense size and diversity of rural populations whether they are in peri-urban or rural environments. For no-one can dispute, I think, that a large number of the world’s recent problems have been born in the countrysides of the poorest continents.
Finally, we will need to address these problems with a much stronger sense of urgency. What we may have been content to achieve in 25 years, we must now aim to do in 10 years.
A mighty challenge, no doubt.
Thank you.
His Highness the Aga Khan
Global Philanthropy Forum
April 23 2009
Washington DC, USA
Related:
http://www.akdn.org/speeches_detail.asp?ID=736
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2009/04/25/speech-by-his-highness-the-aga-khan-at-the-global-philanthropy-forum/
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2009/04/24/global-philanthropy-forum-2009-speech-photographs-and-article-from-official-websites/
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2009/04/25/photographs-aga-khan-speaking-at-the-global-philanthropy-forum/
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 Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims: Aga Khan IV(1985)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql): Prophet Muhammad(circa 632CE)
23 April 2009
Washington DC, USA
Please also see photos from His Highness the Aga Khan's Visit to Washington, DC
President Jane Wales, thank you for those very generous comments.
I’d like to say how happy I am to share in this year’s Global Philanthropy Forum.
Participants, Excellencies,Ladies and Gentlemen,
It is a special pleasure for me to be with you tonight, for I look upon you as particularly serious and informed partners in the work of global understanding and international development.
As you may know, I recently marked my 50th anniversary in my role as Imam of the Shia Imami Ismaili Muslims. This responsibility connects me intimately with the traditions of the Islamic faith and cultures, even while my education and a host of personal and professional associations have acquainted me with the non-Islamic West. The relationship of these two worlds is a subject of considerable importance for me – a relationship which some define, regrettably, as an inevitable Clash of Civilizations. My own observation, however – and my deep conviction – is that we can more accurately describe it as a Clash of Ignorances.
It is not my purpose tonight to detail the misunderstandings which have plagued this relationship. Let me only submit that educational systems on both sides have failed mightily in this regard – and so have some religious institutions. That – at this time in human history – the Judeo Christian and Muslim societies should know so little about one another never ceases to astonish – to stun – and to pain me.
As a Muslim leader speaking in Washington this evening, it seems appropriate that I cite the words of President Obama, in his recent speech in Ankara. As he put it, pledging a “broader engagement with the Muslim world, we will listen carefully, we will bridge misunderstandings, and we will seek common ground.” I know that the vast majority of the Islamic world shares these objectives.
Among the areas where we can find common ground is our mutual effort to address the problem of persistent global poverty, especially the endemic poverty of the developing world. Surely this is an area where we can listen and learn and grow together – establishing ever-stronger bonds of understanding. One of the great principles of Islam, in all its interpretations, is the elimination of poverty in society, and philanthropy's centrality in this duty.
When I succeeded my grandfather as Aga Khan in 1957, I was a student at Harvard – but speaking mostly French. I got extra English practice, however, from my new official routine of regular communication with Africa and Asia – and, in the bargain, was kept in great good humour by the amazing typographic errors which inevitably arose. But then computerized spell check programs came along - and all those charming idiosyncrasies disappeared!
I recently noticed, to my joy, however, that this new invention is not a fail safe protection. Consider this recent item in the publication “The Week: “Bad week for spell-check: Several Pennsylvania high school students had their last names changed in their yearbook by an automatic computer program, Alessandra Ippolito was listed as Alexandria Impolite, while Max Zupanovic was rechristened Max Supernova. And Kathy Carbaugh’s photo appeared next to the name Kathy Airbag.”
After reading this, I decided that maybe I should act prudently and spell check my own name. And I found that, while there was no “Aga Khan”, there was an “Aga” Cooker. It was defined as one of England’s oldest stoves and ovens – now somewhat outdated – but with a distinctive whistle every time it frizzled the food within!
But returning to a more serious topic let me submit this evening a few of my own reflections on the developing world that I know a central focus of my interests over fifty years. For, in coming to understand the life of widely dispersed Ismaili communities across the globe, I have also become immersed in their host societies.
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.
This is a complex objective, a moving target, and a humbling challenge. Sadly, the response in the places I know best has often been “one step forward and two steps back.“ Today, some forty percent of UN member nations are categorized as “failed democracies” – unable to meet popular aspirations for a better quality of life. The recent global economic crisis – along with the world food crisis – has sharply accentuated these problems.
But why have our efforts to change that picture over five decades not borne greater fruit? Measured against history, where have things gone wrong? Given the progress we have made in so many fields, why have we been so relatively ineffective in sharing that progress more equitably, and in making it more permanent?
My response centers on one principal observation: I believe the industrialized world has often expected developing societies to behave as if they were similar to the established nation states of the West, forgetting the centuries, and the processes which molded the Western democracies. Forgotten, for one thing, is the fact that economic development in Western nations was accompanied by massive urbanization. Yet today, in the countries of Asia and Africa where we work, over 70 percent of the population is rural. If you compare the two situations, they are one and a half to two and half centuries apart. Similarly, the profound diversity of these impoverished societies, infinitely greater than that among nascent European nation states, is too often unrecognized, or under-estimated, or misunderstood. Ethnic, religious, social, regional, economic, linguistic and political diversities are like a kaleidoscope that history shakes every day.
One symptom of this problem has been the high failure rate of constitutional structures in many developing countries, often because minority groups – who often make up the bulk of the population – fear they will be marginalized by any centralized authority. But did today’s developed countries not face similar challenges as they progressed toward nationhood?
If there is an historic misperception here, it has had several consequences for development activities.
The first concerns what I would call the dominant player fallacy – a tendency to place too much reliance in national governments and other institutions which may have relatively superficial connections to life at the grass-roots level.
Urban-based outsiders often look at these situations from the perspective of the city center looking out to a distant countryside, searching for quick and convenient levers of influence. Those who look from the bottom-up, however, see a much much more complex picture. The lines of force in these rural societies are often profoundly centrifugal, reflecting a highly fragmented array of influences. But was this not also true during the building of Western nation states?
Age old systems of religious, tribal or inherited family authority still have enormous influence in these societies. Local identities which often cross the artificial frontiers of the colonial past are more powerful than outsiders may assume. These values and traditions must be understood, embraced, and related to modern life, so that development can build on them. We have found that these age-old forces are among the best levers we have for improving the quality of life of rural peoples, even in cross frontier situations.
Nation building may require centralized authority, but if that authority is not trusted by rural communities, then instability is inevitable. The building of successful nation states in many of the countries in which I work will depend – as it did in the West – on providing significantly greater access for rural populations, who are generally in the majority.
If these reflections are well founded, then what is urgently needed is a massive, creative new development effort towards rural populations. Informed strategic thinking at the national level must be matched by a profound, engagement at the local level. Global philanthropy, public private partnerships and the best of human knowledge must be harnessed. As the World Bank recognized in its recent Poverty Study, local concerns must be targeted, providing roads and markets, sharpening the capacities of village governments, working to smooth social inequalities, and improving access to health and education services. The very definition of poverty is the absence of such quality of life indicators in civil society among rural populations.
It is in this context that I must share with you tonight my concern that too much of the developmental effort – especially in the fields of health and education - have been focused on urban environments.
I whole-heartedly support, for example, the goal of free and universal access to primary education. But I would just as whole-heartedly challenge this objective if it comes at the expense of secondary and higher education. 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.
Similarly despite various advances in preventive medicine, rural peoples – often 70% of the population – are badly served in the area of curative care. Comparisons show sharp rural disadvantages in fields such as trauma care and emergency medicine, curbing infant mortality, or diagnosing correctly the need for tertiary care. Building an effective nation state, today as in earlier centuries, requires that the quality of rural life must be a daily concern of government. Ideally, national progress should be as effective, as equitable, and as visible, over similar time-frames, in rural areas as in urban ones. Amongst other considerations, how else will we be able to slow, if not stop, the increasing trend of major cities of Asia and Africa to become ungovernable human slums?
From this general analysis, let me turn to our own experience. The Aga Khan Development Network, if only as a matter of scale, is incapable of massively redressing the rural-urban imbalances where we work. It is possible, however, to focus on areas of extreme isolation, extreme poverty and extreme potential risk - where human despair feeds the temptation to join criminal gangs or local militia or the drug economy. The World Bank refers to these areas as “lagging regions”. We have focused recently on three prototypical situations.
Badakhshan is a sensitive region of eastern Tajikistan and eastern Afghanistan where the same ethnic community is divided by a river which has now become a national border, and where both communities live in extreme poverty and are highly isolated from their respective capitals of Dushanbe and Kabul. There is a significant Shia Ismaili Muslim presence in both areas.
Southern Tanzania and Northern Mozambique is a region of eastern Africa where large numbers of rural Sunni Muslims live in extreme poverty. A third case, Rural Bihar, in India, involves six states where the Sachar Committee Report, commissioned by the Indian government, has courageously described how Muslim peoples have been distanced from the development story since 1947.
All three of these regions are works in progress. The first two are post conflict situations, relatively homogeneous, and sparsely populated, while the third is densely populated, and culturally diverse. All three have acute potential to become explosive, and our AKDN goal is to identify such areas as primary targets for philanthropy.
We have also developed a guiding concept in approaching these situations. We call it Multi-Input Area Development – or MIAD. An emphasis on multiple inputs is a crucial consequence of looking at the development arena from the bottom up. Singular inputs alone cannot generate, in the time available, and across the spectrum of needs, sufficient effective change to reverse trends towards famine or towards conflict.
Similarly, we want to measure outcomes in such cases by a more complex array of criteria. What we call our Quality of Life Assessments go beyond simple economic measurements – considering the broad array of conditions – quantitative and qualitative – which the poor themselves take into account when they assess their own well-being.
Secretary Clinton echoed the concern for multiple inputs and multiple assessments when she mentioned to you yesterday the need for diversified partnerships among governments, philanthropies, businesses, NGO’s, universities , unions, faith communities and individuals. The Aga Khan network includes partners from most of these categories – sustaining our Multi-Input strategy. I applaud her concern – and yours – for the importance of such alliances.
Northern Pakistan provides another example, in a challenging high mountain environment, of a complex approach to rural stabilization. Innovations in water and land management have been accompanied by a new focus on local choice through village organizations. A "productive public infrastructure" has emerged, including roads, irrigation channels, and small bridges, as well as improved health and education services. Historic palaces and forts along the old Silk Route have been restored and reused as tourism sites, reviving cultural pluralism and pride, diversifying the economy and enlarging the labor market. The provision of micro credit and the development of village savings funds have also played a key role.
For nearly 25 years, we have also worked in a large, once-degraded neighborhood, sprawling among and atop the ruins of old Islamic Cairo – built 1000 years ago by my ancestors, the Fatimid Caliphs. This is an urban location – but occupied by an essentially rural population, striving to become urbanized. The project was environmental and archaeological at the start – but it grew into a residential, recreational and cultural citiscape – which last year attracted 1.8 million visitors. The local population has new access to microcredit and has been trained and employed not only for restoring the complex, but also for maintaining it – as a new expression of civil society.
Because historic sites are often located among concentrations of destitute peoples, they can become a linchpin for development. We work now with such sites as Bagh-e-Babur in Kabul, the old Stone Town in Zanzibar, the Aleppo Citadel in Syria, the historic Moghal sites at New Delhi and Lahore, and the old mud mosques of Mopti and Djenne and Timbuktu, in northern Mali. Altogether, more than one million impoverished people will be touched by these projects. Such investments in restoring the world’s cultural patrimony do not compete with investing in its social and economic development. Indeed, they go hand in hand.
In all these cases, it is the interaction of many elements that creates a dynamic momentum, bringing together people from different classes, cultures, and disciplines, and welcoming partners who live across the street – and partners who live across the planet. Each case is singular, and each requires multiple inputs. And it is here that those present tonight can have such an important impact. Working together on programme development, on sharing specialized knowledge, and on competent implementation, we can all contribute more effectively to the reduction of global poverty.
Let me say in closing, how much I admire the work you are doing, the commitment you feel, and the dreams you have embraced. I hope and trust that we will have many opportunities to renew and extend our sense of partnership as we work toward building strong and healthy nation states around our globe.
If we are to succeed we will need, first, to readjust our orientation by focusing on the immense size and diversity of rural populations whether they are in peri-urban or rural environments. For no-one can dispute, I think, that a large number of the world’s recent problems have been born in the countrysides of the poorest continents.
Finally, we will need to address these problems with a much stronger sense of urgency. What we may have been content to achieve in 25 years, we must now aim to do in 10 years.
A mighty challenge, no doubt.
Thank you.
His Highness the Aga Khan
Global Philanthropy Forum
April 23 2009
Washington DC, USA
Related:
http://www.akdn.org/speeches_detail.asp?ID=736
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2009/04/25/speech-by-his-highness-the-aga-khan-at-the-global-philanthropy-forum/
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2009/04/24/global-philanthropy-forum-2009-speech-photographs-and-article-from-official-websites/
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2009/04/25/photographs-aga-khan-speaking-at-the-global-philanthropy-forum/
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 Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims: Aga Khan IV(1985)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql): Prophet Muhammad(circa 632CE)
Thursday, April 23, 2009
473)Institute of Ismaili Studies Launches Two Recent Publications In Dubai; Quotes of Aga Khan IV.
"First, the globalisation of the knowledge of the cultures of the Umma is critical. We have to make known the cultural inheritance of the Muslims to the non-Muslim as well as the Muslim parts of the world because we will never succeed in building the respect and recognition that the Umma deserves unless we present the Umma as a remarkable carrier of civilisation.The misconceptions about Islam and Muslims in the West exist because we are, even today, absent from the global civilisation. We should encourage the Western education system to bring in knowledge of the civilisation of Islam into the secondary education system.I am thrilled with the initiative that Dubai and other states in the Gulf are taking by creating museums. Retracing our historical legacies and bringing them back in the modern world is extremely important."(Aga Khan IV, Interview with Gulf News, Dubai, UAE, April 2008)
"A thousand years ago, my forefathers, the Fatimid imam-caliphs of Egypt, founded al-Azhar University and the Academy of Knowledge in Cairo. In the Islamic tradition, they viewed the discovery of knowledge as a way to understand, so as to serve better God's creation, to apply knowledge and reason to build society and shape human aspirations"(Aga Khan IV, Speech, 25th June 2004, Matola, Mozambique.)
"Quran Symposium:....a reflection of how Islam's revelation, with its challenge to man's innate gift of quest and reason, became a powerful impetus for a new flowering of human civilisation.This programme is also an opportunity for achieving insights into how the discourse of the Qur'an-e-Sharif, rich in parable and allegory, metaphor and symbol, has been an inexhaustible well-spring of inspiration, lending itself to a wide spectrum of interpretations"(Aga Khan IV,Speech, Institute of Ismaili Studies, October 2003, London, U.K.)
"What does it (the West) know about the Islamic world? Is anything taught in secondary education? Does anybody know the names of the great philosophers, the scientists, the great theologians? Do they even know the names of the great civilizations?"(Aga Khan IV, Interview, 2nd Feb. 2002)
"Above all, following the guidance of the Holy Quran, there was freedom of enquiry and research. The result was a magnificent flowering of artistic and intellectual activity throughout the ummah" (Aga Khan IV, Aga Khan University, 16 March 1983, Karachi, Pakistan)
"One of the first and greatest research centres, the Bayt al-Hikmah established in Baghdad in 830, led Islam in translating philosophical and scientific works from Greek, Roman, Persian and Indian classics. By the art of translation, learning was assimilated from other civilizations"(Aga Khan IV, Aga Khan University, 16 March 1983, Karachi, Pakistan)
"It is no exaggeration to say that the original Christian universities of Latin West, at Paris, Bologna and Oxford, indeed the whole European renaissance, received a vital influx of new knowledge from Islam -- an influx from which the later western colleges and universities, including those of North Africa, were to benefit in turn"(Aga Khan IV, 16 March 1983, Aga Khan UNiversity, Karachi, Pakistan)
The above are 7 quotes and excerpts taken from Blogpost Four Hundred, a collection of around 100 quotes on the subjects of Knowledge, Intellect, Creation, Science and Religion:
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/09/400blogpost-four-hundred-knowledge.html
INSTITUTE OF ISMAILI STUDIES Launches Two Recent Publications in Dubai
April 2009
Two recent IIS publications were launched at the Ismaili Centre in Dubai. These included
1) The Ismailis: An Illustrated History and
2) An Anthology of Qur’anic Commentaries – Vol. 1: On the Nature of the Divine.
Held on 3 April 2009, the programme marked the Institute’s first major book launch in that region.
Mr Mohamed Keshavjee, a member of the Institute’s Board of Governors, commenced the programme with an overview of IIS’ contributions to the promotion of scholarship and learning of Muslim cultures and societies through the production of publications and other academic resources. Mr Keshavjee also shared the rationale behind each of the publications being launched.
Introducing the first of these publications, Dr Farhad Daftary, Acting Director of the IIS, discussed the Institute’s contributions to scholarship on Islam, particularly through its Department of Academic Research and Publications. He highlighted the Institute’s forthcoming series of accessible publications aimed at a wider audience, including non-specialist readers. Dr Daftary then focussed on The Ismailis: An Illustrated History, which is the first such publication produced by the IIS. Based on modern scholarship in Ismaili Studies and the broader field of Islamic Studies, the book offers a comprehensive and accessible account of the history of the Ismailis as well as their intellectual and cultural achievements, set in the wider contexts of Muslim and world history.
Dr Feras Hamza then introduced the second book launched at this programme, An Anthology of Qur’anic Commentaries – Volume 1: On the Nature of the Divine. Dr Hamza, formerly a Research Associate at the IIS and currently Assistant Professor of Middle Eastern Studies at the American University in Dubai, shared his experiences during the writing and production of this publication. The anthology, part of the IIS’ Qur’anic Studies Series, brings together the works of twenty selected Sunni, Shi‘i (including Ithna‘ashari and Ismaili), Ibadi, Mu‘tazili and Sufi commentators (mufassirun) on six different Qur’anic verses. This spectrum of commentaries highlights the varied approaches to the Holy Qur’an and records the rich diversity and plurality of approaches and opinions which have appealed to it throughout Muslim history. The book also provides contextual notes and historical background to these commentaries.
Attended by over 400 participants, the event was followed by an exhibition and cultural programme organised by the Ismaili Council for the United Arab Emirates.
http://www.iis.ac.uk/view_article.asp?ContentID=110217
1)The Ismailis: An Illustrated History
http://www.iis.ac.uk/view_article.asp?ContentID=109727
2)An Anthology of Qur’anic Commentaries - Volume I: On the Nature of the Divine
http://www.iis.ac.uk/view_article.asp?ContentID=110177
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 Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims: Aga Khan IV(1985)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql): Prophet Muhammad(circa 632CE)
"A thousand years ago, my forefathers, the Fatimid imam-caliphs of Egypt, founded al-Azhar University and the Academy of Knowledge in Cairo. In the Islamic tradition, they viewed the discovery of knowledge as a way to understand, so as to serve better God's creation, to apply knowledge and reason to build society and shape human aspirations"(Aga Khan IV, Speech, 25th June 2004, Matola, Mozambique.)
"Quran Symposium:....a reflection of how Islam's revelation, with its challenge to man's innate gift of quest and reason, became a powerful impetus for a new flowering of human civilisation.This programme is also an opportunity for achieving insights into how the discourse of the Qur'an-e-Sharif, rich in parable and allegory, metaphor and symbol, has been an inexhaustible well-spring of inspiration, lending itself to a wide spectrum of interpretations"(Aga Khan IV,Speech, Institute of Ismaili Studies, October 2003, London, U.K.)
"What does it (the West) know about the Islamic world? Is anything taught in secondary education? Does anybody know the names of the great philosophers, the scientists, the great theologians? Do they even know the names of the great civilizations?"(Aga Khan IV, Interview, 2nd Feb. 2002)
"Above all, following the guidance of the Holy Quran, there was freedom of enquiry and research. The result was a magnificent flowering of artistic and intellectual activity throughout the ummah" (Aga Khan IV, Aga Khan University, 16 March 1983, Karachi, Pakistan)
"One of the first and greatest research centres, the Bayt al-Hikmah established in Baghdad in 830, led Islam in translating philosophical and scientific works from Greek, Roman, Persian and Indian classics. By the art of translation, learning was assimilated from other civilizations"(Aga Khan IV, Aga Khan University, 16 March 1983, Karachi, Pakistan)
"It is no exaggeration to say that the original Christian universities of Latin West, at Paris, Bologna and Oxford, indeed the whole European renaissance, received a vital influx of new knowledge from Islam -- an influx from which the later western colleges and universities, including those of North Africa, were to benefit in turn"(Aga Khan IV, 16 March 1983, Aga Khan UNiversity, Karachi, Pakistan)
The above are 7 quotes and excerpts taken from Blogpost Four Hundred, a collection of around 100 quotes on the subjects of Knowledge, Intellect, Creation, Science and Religion:
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/09/400blogpost-four-hundred-knowledge.html
INSTITUTE OF ISMAILI STUDIES Launches Two Recent Publications in Dubai
April 2009
Two recent IIS publications were launched at the Ismaili Centre in Dubai. These included
1) The Ismailis: An Illustrated History and
2) An Anthology of Qur’anic Commentaries – Vol. 1: On the Nature of the Divine.
Held on 3 April 2009, the programme marked the Institute’s first major book launch in that region.
Mr Mohamed Keshavjee, a member of the Institute’s Board of Governors, commenced the programme with an overview of IIS’ contributions to the promotion of scholarship and learning of Muslim cultures and societies through the production of publications and other academic resources. Mr Keshavjee also shared the rationale behind each of the publications being launched.
Introducing the first of these publications, Dr Farhad Daftary, Acting Director of the IIS, discussed the Institute’s contributions to scholarship on Islam, particularly through its Department of Academic Research and Publications. He highlighted the Institute’s forthcoming series of accessible publications aimed at a wider audience, including non-specialist readers. Dr Daftary then focussed on The Ismailis: An Illustrated History, which is the first such publication produced by the IIS. Based on modern scholarship in Ismaili Studies and the broader field of Islamic Studies, the book offers a comprehensive and accessible account of the history of the Ismailis as well as their intellectual and cultural achievements, set in the wider contexts of Muslim and world history.
Dr Feras Hamza then introduced the second book launched at this programme, An Anthology of Qur’anic Commentaries – Volume 1: On the Nature of the Divine. Dr Hamza, formerly a Research Associate at the IIS and currently Assistant Professor of Middle Eastern Studies at the American University in Dubai, shared his experiences during the writing and production of this publication. The anthology, part of the IIS’ Qur’anic Studies Series, brings together the works of twenty selected Sunni, Shi‘i (including Ithna‘ashari and Ismaili), Ibadi, Mu‘tazili and Sufi commentators (mufassirun) on six different Qur’anic verses. This spectrum of commentaries highlights the varied approaches to the Holy Qur’an and records the rich diversity and plurality of approaches and opinions which have appealed to it throughout Muslim history. The book also provides contextual notes and historical background to these commentaries.
Attended by over 400 participants, the event was followed by an exhibition and cultural programme organised by the Ismaili Council for the United Arab Emirates.
http://www.iis.ac.uk/view_article.asp?ContentID=110217
1)The Ismailis: An Illustrated History
http://www.iis.ac.uk/view_article.asp?ContentID=109727
2)An Anthology of Qur’anic Commentaries - Volume I: On the Nature of the Divine
http://www.iis.ac.uk/view_article.asp?ContentID=110177
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 Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims: Aga Khan IV(1985)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql): Prophet Muhammad(circa 632CE)
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
472)Another Off-Topic Wake-Up Call; Tarek Fatah: Racism-The Road To Genocide
Racism - The Road to Genocide
Today at 6:32am
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
From Bangladesh to Darfur: How internalised racism has permitted lighter skinned Muslims to slaughter their darker skinned co-religionists.
By Tarek Fatah
The Durban Review Conference
Geneva, Switzerland
Dear NGO colleagues and delegates,
I speak to you deeply disappointed that my colleague Milly Nsekalije, a survivor of the Rwandan massacre could not share her story with all of you because in the eyes of some since she is not 100% Tutsi, she cannot have been a victim of the Genocide.
What does it say about the state of racism in our world when the victims of a genocide practise exclusion on the basis of the so-called purity of blood lines and ethnicities.
Worse than her exclusion from today’s event is the fact that it has happened at a conference meant to combat racism, when it fact, in my opinion, whether it was yesterday’s speech by Mahmood Ahmadenijad or this afternoon’s barring off Ms. Nsekalije, we have turned the concept of racism upside down.
Having said that, please allow me to dwell on how racism plays out its dirty game, not just as a Black-White divide, but also as a cancer that affects relations between people of colour, often sharing the same religion, but different shades of brown or black skin.
When the issue of racism comes up, the internalised racism that devours the people of the developing world in Asia and Africa, from within, rarely comes up for discussion.
This afternoon I would like to shed some light on two genocides—one in 1970-71 and the other that continues as I speak. In both instances the root of the problem lay in how one group of Muslims felt they were racially superior to their victims, who also happened to be Muslims. In both cases the doctrine of racial superiority and the practise of institutional racism went unchallenged even after the horrible consequences of such racism was evident and for all to see.
Bangladesh
The first genocide took place in then East Pakistan, now Bangladesh and second is taking place in Darfur. Let me dwell on the Bangladesh genocide first.
In 1970 in Pakistan, my country of birth was divided between two wings; an eastern part that is today known as Bangladesh and the western rump that survived a subsequent war with India as the state we know as Pakistan.
East Pakistan was inhabited by the darker skinned Bengali people who happened to be the majority community of the country, but found themselves ruled by a lighter skinned minority from what was known as West Pakistan—separated by a 1,000 miles.
In the first 25 years of the country, the racist depiction of the darker skinned Bengalis as an inferior and incapable people became the unquestioned dogma among the ruling minority. In addition to the racist depiction of the darker-skinned Bengalis, their culture was portrayed as unislamic and being influenced by Hinduism. Their music, cuisine and attire were mocked while their language was banned and led to widespread protests and deaths in 1952.
In 1970, after suffering under the minority rule of West Pakistan for 25 years, the people of East Pakistan voted to elect a party based in their region and gained a clear majority in the country’s national parliament.
However, the racist view that Bengali people were incapable of ruling the country or that they were traitors to the fair-skinned minority of West Pakistan, led to a military intervention and widespread massacres in which one million people were killed in a ten-month period.
The killing of the Bengali people by the West Pakistan army stopped only when India intervened and defeated the Pakistan Armed forces, but not before hundreds of Bengali intellectuals, professors, poets, authors, musicians and painters, were rounded up and massacred in the final act of mass murder that started with the tolerance of racism as an act of faith.
One million Muslims were murdered by fellow Muslims in an orgy of hate that defied the teachings of Islam and the very Prophet Muhammad who was being invoked by the Pakistan Army. At the root of this sad blot on Islamic history and all of humanity lay the view that people of darker skin are inferior to those for geographic reasons have for no fault of theirs, a lighter skin colour.
One would have hoped that the lessons of 1970-71 would have been learnt in the Muslim World, but the sad fact is that the ubiquitous racism that resides inside the Islamic world has faced no opposition. On the contrary there is near universal denial about this cancer, not just among the governments that rule with oppressive instruments of power, but also many NGOs and civil society groups in the Muslim world.
Darfur
The latest manifestation of racism leading to a genocide is in Sudan where the Arab Janjaweed militia and the Arab government in Khartoum has resulted in the killing of 500,000 Darfuri Muslims whose only fault is that they are Black and thus considered as inferior to the ruling classes of that country.
The mistreatment of Black Muslims by those who feel they are superior because of their lighter skin colour has been historical. Only in the Middle East can one get away by addressing a Black man as “Ya Abdi”, which translates to the horrible words, “Oh you slave”.
The acceptance of racism among the dominant community in the Arab world has today resulted in not just the genocide of Darfuris, but also the celebration by the Arab League of the man charged by the International Criminal Court, President Bashir of Sudan.
It is time that the medieval doctrine of the inferiority of non-Arab Muslims to Arab Muslims is laid to rest. It is necessary that Arab countries and leaders of Arab NGOs denounce this doctrine that has led to the discrimination of darker skinned Muslims by Arab governments in counties as far apart as Dubai to Darfur.
Behind the genocide of Bengal and Darfur, separated by 30 years, is the unchallenged doctrine of racial superiority of one ethnic group over another that has gone unnoticed and unpunished by any institution anywhere in the world.
This doctrine of racism has brought untold misery on the victims of this cancer, but this becomes worse when such racism is given a religious validation. In this day and age, we have fatwas from contemporary Islamic scholars who maintain that a non-Arab Muslim like me would be committing an act of sin if I considered myself equal to an Arab.
Fatwas from the 14th century have been dusted off the shelves, re-furbished and published on on-line Islamist forums to justify the superiority of one group over the other. This has provided the moral justification to the mass murder being committed on the Black Muslims of Darfur, which unfortunately, has gone unmentioned even at this conference.
Conclusion
Let me conclude by suggesting that if racism is a mountain that we all need to conquer, then we have not yet come to a place where we can see this mountain in the horizon, let alone be at base camp.
Ladies and gentlemen, sisters and brothers, if we cannot allow a woman to speak here because she is of mixed blood or the fact that untouchability in India is not on the agenda in Geneva, or that nations of the OIC seek the right to restrict free speech, or a demagogue from Iran with blood on his hands has the audacity to lecture us on human rights, then all I can say is that in the words of Robert Frost, we have miles to go before we sleep…
Tarek Fatah
Geneva, Switzerland
April 2009
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=592858760&ref=profile#/note.php?note_id=164051190246&id=601700011&ref=mf
Related Post:
Tarek Fatah: Turning a blind eye to Muslim-on-Muslim murder http://tinyurl.com/c834ez
http://www.torontosun.com/comment/columnists/salim_mansur/2009/04/18/9153766-sun.html
Easy Nash
If there are 23,000 jihadist websites and blogsites out there in cyberspace, there is no reason why we should not create 100,000 non-jihadist websites and blogsites: Easy Nash(2007)
Today at 6:32am
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
From Bangladesh to Darfur: How internalised racism has permitted lighter skinned Muslims to slaughter their darker skinned co-religionists.
By Tarek Fatah
The Durban Review Conference
Geneva, Switzerland
Dear NGO colleagues and delegates,
I speak to you deeply disappointed that my colleague Milly Nsekalije, a survivor of the Rwandan massacre could not share her story with all of you because in the eyes of some since she is not 100% Tutsi, she cannot have been a victim of the Genocide.
What does it say about the state of racism in our world when the victims of a genocide practise exclusion on the basis of the so-called purity of blood lines and ethnicities.
Worse than her exclusion from today’s event is the fact that it has happened at a conference meant to combat racism, when it fact, in my opinion, whether it was yesterday’s speech by Mahmood Ahmadenijad or this afternoon’s barring off Ms. Nsekalije, we have turned the concept of racism upside down.
Having said that, please allow me to dwell on how racism plays out its dirty game, not just as a Black-White divide, but also as a cancer that affects relations between people of colour, often sharing the same religion, but different shades of brown or black skin.
When the issue of racism comes up, the internalised racism that devours the people of the developing world in Asia and Africa, from within, rarely comes up for discussion.
This afternoon I would like to shed some light on two genocides—one in 1970-71 and the other that continues as I speak. In both instances the root of the problem lay in how one group of Muslims felt they were racially superior to their victims, who also happened to be Muslims. In both cases the doctrine of racial superiority and the practise of institutional racism went unchallenged even after the horrible consequences of such racism was evident and for all to see.
Bangladesh
The first genocide took place in then East Pakistan, now Bangladesh and second is taking place in Darfur. Let me dwell on the Bangladesh genocide first.
In 1970 in Pakistan, my country of birth was divided between two wings; an eastern part that is today known as Bangladesh and the western rump that survived a subsequent war with India as the state we know as Pakistan.
East Pakistan was inhabited by the darker skinned Bengali people who happened to be the majority community of the country, but found themselves ruled by a lighter skinned minority from what was known as West Pakistan—separated by a 1,000 miles.
In the first 25 years of the country, the racist depiction of the darker skinned Bengalis as an inferior and incapable people became the unquestioned dogma among the ruling minority. In addition to the racist depiction of the darker-skinned Bengalis, their culture was portrayed as unislamic and being influenced by Hinduism. Their music, cuisine and attire were mocked while their language was banned and led to widespread protests and deaths in 1952.
In 1970, after suffering under the minority rule of West Pakistan for 25 years, the people of East Pakistan voted to elect a party based in their region and gained a clear majority in the country’s national parliament.
However, the racist view that Bengali people were incapable of ruling the country or that they were traitors to the fair-skinned minority of West Pakistan, led to a military intervention and widespread massacres in which one million people were killed in a ten-month period.
The killing of the Bengali people by the West Pakistan army stopped only when India intervened and defeated the Pakistan Armed forces, but not before hundreds of Bengali intellectuals, professors, poets, authors, musicians and painters, were rounded up and massacred in the final act of mass murder that started with the tolerance of racism as an act of faith.
One million Muslims were murdered by fellow Muslims in an orgy of hate that defied the teachings of Islam and the very Prophet Muhammad who was being invoked by the Pakistan Army. At the root of this sad blot on Islamic history and all of humanity lay the view that people of darker skin are inferior to those for geographic reasons have for no fault of theirs, a lighter skin colour.
One would have hoped that the lessons of 1970-71 would have been learnt in the Muslim World, but the sad fact is that the ubiquitous racism that resides inside the Islamic world has faced no opposition. On the contrary there is near universal denial about this cancer, not just among the governments that rule with oppressive instruments of power, but also many NGOs and civil society groups in the Muslim world.
Darfur
The latest manifestation of racism leading to a genocide is in Sudan where the Arab Janjaweed militia and the Arab government in Khartoum has resulted in the killing of 500,000 Darfuri Muslims whose only fault is that they are Black and thus considered as inferior to the ruling classes of that country.
The mistreatment of Black Muslims by those who feel they are superior because of their lighter skin colour has been historical. Only in the Middle East can one get away by addressing a Black man as “Ya Abdi”, which translates to the horrible words, “Oh you slave”.
The acceptance of racism among the dominant community in the Arab world has today resulted in not just the genocide of Darfuris, but also the celebration by the Arab League of the man charged by the International Criminal Court, President Bashir of Sudan.
It is time that the medieval doctrine of the inferiority of non-Arab Muslims to Arab Muslims is laid to rest. It is necessary that Arab countries and leaders of Arab NGOs denounce this doctrine that has led to the discrimination of darker skinned Muslims by Arab governments in counties as far apart as Dubai to Darfur.
Behind the genocide of Bengal and Darfur, separated by 30 years, is the unchallenged doctrine of racial superiority of one ethnic group over another that has gone unnoticed and unpunished by any institution anywhere in the world.
This doctrine of racism has brought untold misery on the victims of this cancer, but this becomes worse when such racism is given a religious validation. In this day and age, we have fatwas from contemporary Islamic scholars who maintain that a non-Arab Muslim like me would be committing an act of sin if I considered myself equal to an Arab.
Fatwas from the 14th century have been dusted off the shelves, re-furbished and published on on-line Islamist forums to justify the superiority of one group over the other. This has provided the moral justification to the mass murder being committed on the Black Muslims of Darfur, which unfortunately, has gone unmentioned even at this conference.
Conclusion
Let me conclude by suggesting that if racism is a mountain that we all need to conquer, then we have not yet come to a place where we can see this mountain in the horizon, let alone be at base camp.
Ladies and gentlemen, sisters and brothers, if we cannot allow a woman to speak here because she is of mixed blood or the fact that untouchability in India is not on the agenda in Geneva, or that nations of the OIC seek the right to restrict free speech, or a demagogue from Iran with blood on his hands has the audacity to lecture us on human rights, then all I can say is that in the words of Robert Frost, we have miles to go before we sleep…
Tarek Fatah
Geneva, Switzerland
April 2009
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=592858760&ref=profile#/note.php?note_id=164051190246&id=601700011&ref=mf
Related Post:
Tarek Fatah: Turning a blind eye to Muslim-on-Muslim murder http://tinyurl.com/c834ez
http://www.torontosun.com/comment/columnists/salim_mansur/2009/04/18/9153766-sun.html
Easy Nash
If there are 23,000 jihadist websites and blogsites out there in cyberspace, there is no reason why we should not create 100,000 non-jihadist websites and blogsites: Easy Nash(2007)
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
471)Noor Cultural Center: 1)Ibn al-'Arabi's Cosmology and the New Creation; 2)Scientists, the Public, and Natural Selection: From Darwin to Dawkins
Quotes of Aga Khan IV, Aga Khan III and Nasir Khusraw:
"And the more we discover, the more we know, the more we penetrate just below the surface of our normal lives - the more our imagination staggers.........What we feel, even as we learn, is an ever-renewed sense of wonder, indeed, a powerful sense of awe – and of Divine inspiration.....the Power and the Mystery of Allah as the Lord of Creation"(Aga Khan IV, Ottawa, Canada, December 6th 2008)
"In Shia Islam, intellect is a key component of faith. Intellect allows us to understand the creation of God"(Aga Khan IV, July 23rd 2008, Lisbon, Portugal)
"The second great historical lesson to be learnt is that the Muslim world has always been wide open to every aspect of human existence. The sciences, society, art, the oceans, the environment and the cosmos have all contributed to the great moments in the history of Muslim civilisations. The Qur’an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God’s creation"(Closing Address by His Highness Aga Khan IV at the "Musée-Musées" Round Table Louvre Museum, Paris, France, October 17th 2007)
"......The Quran tells us that signs of Allah’s Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation - in the heavens and the earth, the night and the day, the clouds and the seas, the winds and the waters...."(Aga Khan IV, Kampala, Uganda, August 22 2007)
"....in Islam, but particularly Shia Islam, the role of the intellect is part of faith. That intellect is what seperates man from the rest of the physical world in which he lives.....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. Of that I am certain"(Aga Khan IV, Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, August 17th 2007)
"In this context, would it not also be relevant to consider how, above all, it has been the Qur'anic notion of the universe as an expression of Allah's will and creation that has inspired, in diverse Muslim communities, generations of artists, scientists and philosophers? Scientific pursuits, philosophic inquiry and artistic endeavour are all seen as the response of the faithful to the recurring call of the Qur'an to ponder the creation as a way to understand Allah's benevolent majesty. As Sura al-Baqara proclaims: 'Wherever you turn, there is the face of Allah'.The famous verse of 'light' in the Qur'an, the Ayat al-Nur, whose first line is rendered here in the mural behind me, inspires among Muslims a reflection on the sacred, the transcendent. It hints at a cosmos full of signs and symbols that evoke the perfection of Allah's creation and mercy"(Aga Khan IV,Speech, Institute of Ismaili Studies, October 2003, London, U.K.)
"Education has been important to my family for a long time. My forefathers founded al-Azhar University in Cairo some 1000 years ago, at the time of the Fatimid Caliphate in Egypt. Discovery of knowledge was seen by those founders as an embodiment of religious faith, and faith as reinforced by knowledge of workings of the Creator's physical world. The form of universities has changed over those 1000 years, but that reciprocity between faith and knowledge remains a source of strength"(Aga Khan IV, 27th May1994, Cambridge, Massachusets, U.S.A.)
"The Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims. Exchanges of knowledge between institutions and nations and the widening of man's intellectual horizons are essentially Islamic concepts. The Faith urges freedom of intellectual enquiry and this freedom does not mean that knowledge will lose its spiritual dimension. That dimension is indeed itself a field for intellectual enquiry. I can not illustrate this interdependence of spiritual inspiration and learning better than by recounting a dialogue between Ibn Sina, the philosopher, and Abu Said Abu -Khyar, the Sufi mystic. Ibn Sina remarked, "Whatever I know, he sees". To which Abu Said replied," Whatever I see, he knows"."(Aga Khan IV, Aga Khan University Inauguration Speech, Karachi, Pakistan, November 11th 1985)
“Muslims believe in an all-encompassing unit of man and nature. To them there is no fundamental division between the spiritual and the material while the whole world, whether it be the earth, sea or air, or the living creatures that inhabit them, is an expression of God’s creation.”(Aga Khan IV, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, USA, 13 April 1984)
"In Islamic belief, knowledge is two-fold. There is that revealed through the Holy Prophet (s.a.s.) and that which man discovers by virtue of his own intellect. Nor do these two involve any contradiction, provided man remembers that his own mind is itself the creation of God. Without this humility, no balance is possible. With it, there are no barriers. Indeed, one strength of Islam has always lain in its belief that creation is not static but continuous, that through scientific and other endeavours, God has opened and continues to open new windows for us to see the marvels of His creation"(Aga Khan IV, Aga Khan University, 16 March 1983, Karachi, Pakistan)
"Our religious leadership must be acutely aware of secular trends, including those generated by this age of science and technology. Equally, our academic or secular elite must be deeply aware of Muslim history, of the scale and depth of leadership exercised by the Islamic empire of the past in all fields"(Aga Khan IV, 6th February 1970, Hyderabad, Pakistan)
"The creation according to Islam is not a unique act in a given time but a perpetual and constant event; and God supports and sustains all existence at every moment by His will and His thought. Outside His will, outside His thought, all is nothing, even the things which seem to us absolutely self-evident such as space and time. Allah alone wishes: the Universe exists; and all manifestations are as a witness of the Divine Will"(Memoirs of Aga Khan III, 1954)
"Thus Islam's basic principle can only be defined as mono-realism and not as monotheism. Consider, for example, the opening declaration of every Islamic prayer: "Allah-o-Akbar". What does that mean? There can be no doubt that the second word of the declaration likens the character of Allah to a matrix which contains all and gives existence to the infinite, to space, to time, to the Universe, to all active and passive forces imaginable, to life and to the soul"(Memoirs of Aga Khan III, 1954)
"Islam is fundamentally in its very nature a natural religion. Throughout the Quran God's signs (Ayats) are referred to as the natural phenomenon, the law and order of the universe, the exactitudes and consequences of the relations between natural phenomenon in cause and effect. Over and over, the stars, sun, moon, earthquakes, fruits of the earth and trees are mentioned as the signs of divine power, divine law and divine order. Even in the Ayeh of Noor, divine is referred to as the natural phenomenon of light and even references are made to the fruit of the earth. During the great period of Islam, Muslims did not forget these principles of their religion"(Aga Khan III, April 4th 1952)
"O brother! You asked: What is the [meaning of] `alam [world] and what is that entity to which this name applies? How should we describe the world in its entirety? And how many worlds are there? Explain so that we may recognize. Know, O brother, that the name `alam is derived from [the word] `ilm(knowledge), because the traces of knowledge are evident in [all] parts of the physical world. Thus, we say that the very constitution (nihad) of the world is based on a profound wisdom"(Nasir Khusraw, 11th century Ismaili cosmologist-philosopher-poet, from his book "Knowledge and Liberation")
The above are 15 quotes and excerpts taken from Blogpost Four Hundred, a collection of around 100 quotes on the subjects of Knowledge, Intellect, Creation, Science and Religion:
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/09/400blogpost-four-hundred-knowledge.html
Noor Cultural Center, 123 Wynford Drive, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M3C 1K1
Sat. April 25, 3:30 pm
Lecture Two in Dialogues of Faith and Reason Series
Special lecture series featuring Dr. Timothy Gianotti (April 18), Dr. Laury Silvers (April 25), and Dr. Bernard Lightman (May 9)
Offered in connection with Noor's Darwin and the Divine course, this special lecture series will also be of interest to the general public. The series began with an examination of different ways of knowing the world, continues with a lecture on the creation theory of one of Islam's greatest thinkers, and culminates with a discussion on Darwin's theory of evolution.
1)Ibn al-'Arabi's Cosmology and the New Creation
Dr. Laury Silvers
Date: Saturday April 25, 2009
Time: 3:30 p.m.
Location: Auditorium, Noor Cultural Centre
Admission: $5
The Qur'an says, "Were We then tired from the first creation that they are in doubt as to the new creation?" (50:15) For Muslims, God did not rest after creating the heavens and the earth - rather, creation continues in every passing moment. This talk will be a brief introduction to Ibn al-'Arabi's vision of the cosmos as a barzakh, an "isthmus" or a relationship struck between God and Nothing, renewed in every passing moment, on every level of existence down to the tiniest atom. Ibn al-`Arabi (d. 1240) is known as the Greatest Shaykh, one of Islamic civilizations greatest mystical thinkers, philosophers, theologians, and poets.
Laury Silvers is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department for the Study of Religion at University of Toronto. Her scholarship focuses on Islam in the Formative Period, particularly Sufism, Sufi Metaphysics, and Gender.
2)Scientists, the Public, and Natural Selection: From Darwin to Dawkins
Dr. Bernard Lightman
Date: Saturday May 9, 2009
Time: 3:30 p.m.
Location: Auditorium, Noor Cultural Centre
Admission: $5
This presentation will discuss how Darwin's theory of natural selection was received by Anglo-American scientists and the public since he presented it in his Origin of Species in 1859. It will explore how the changing fortunes of natural selection have affected the way the religious implications of evolution have been perceived right up to the debates between creationists and atheists like Richard Dawkins.
Bernard Lightman is Professor of Humanities at York University, Director of the new Graduate Program in Science and Technology Studies, and Editor of the history of science journal Isis. His publications include The Origins of Agnosticism and Victorian Popularizers of Science.
Volunteers needed: To volunteer for any of the lectures in the series, please sign up at http://noorculturalcentre.pbwiki.com/ or email volunteers@noorculturalcentre.ca.
Related Posts:
A Collection of Posts on Charles Darwin,a Scientist Way Ahead of His Time; Dynamic vs Static Creation; Quotes of Noble Quran, Aga Khans IV and III
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/02/450a-collection-of-posts-on-charles.html
The Peter McKnight Collection Of Posts On Science And Religion; Read Them Along With Blogpost Four Hundred; Quotes of Aga Khans IV and III
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/01/441the-peter-mcknight-collection-of.html
Knowledge Society: A Collection of Posts on the Rise and Fall of Islamic Spain; Quotes of Aga Khan IV.
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/01/438knowledge-society-collection-of.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)
The Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims: Aga Khan IV(1985)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql): Prophet Muhammad(circa 632CE)
"And the more we discover, the more we know, the more we penetrate just below the surface of our normal lives - the more our imagination staggers.........What we feel, even as we learn, is an ever-renewed sense of wonder, indeed, a powerful sense of awe – and of Divine inspiration.....the Power and the Mystery of Allah as the Lord of Creation"(Aga Khan IV, Ottawa, Canada, December 6th 2008)
"In Shia Islam, intellect is a key component of faith. Intellect allows us to understand the creation of God"(Aga Khan IV, July 23rd 2008, Lisbon, Portugal)
"The second great historical lesson to be learnt is that the Muslim world has always been wide open to every aspect of human existence. The sciences, society, art, the oceans, the environment and the cosmos have all contributed to the great moments in the history of Muslim civilisations. The Qur’an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God’s creation"(Closing Address by His Highness Aga Khan IV at the "Musée-Musées" Round Table Louvre Museum, Paris, France, October 17th 2007)
"......The Quran tells us that signs of Allah’s Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation - in the heavens and the earth, the night and the day, the clouds and the seas, the winds and the waters...."(Aga Khan IV, Kampala, Uganda, August 22 2007)
"....in Islam, but particularly Shia Islam, the role of the intellect is part of faith. That intellect is what seperates man from the rest of the physical world in which he lives.....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. Of that I am certain"(Aga Khan IV, Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, August 17th 2007)
"In this context, would it not also be relevant to consider how, above all, it has been the Qur'anic notion of the universe as an expression of Allah's will and creation that has inspired, in diverse Muslim communities, generations of artists, scientists and philosophers? Scientific pursuits, philosophic inquiry and artistic endeavour are all seen as the response of the faithful to the recurring call of the Qur'an to ponder the creation as a way to understand Allah's benevolent majesty. As Sura al-Baqara proclaims: 'Wherever you turn, there is the face of Allah'.The famous verse of 'light' in the Qur'an, the Ayat al-Nur, whose first line is rendered here in the mural behind me, inspires among Muslims a reflection on the sacred, the transcendent. It hints at a cosmos full of signs and symbols that evoke the perfection of Allah's creation and mercy"(Aga Khan IV,Speech, Institute of Ismaili Studies, October 2003, London, U.K.)
"Education has been important to my family for a long time. My forefathers founded al-Azhar University in Cairo some 1000 years ago, at the time of the Fatimid Caliphate in Egypt. Discovery of knowledge was seen by those founders as an embodiment of religious faith, and faith as reinforced by knowledge of workings of the Creator's physical world. The form of universities has changed over those 1000 years, but that reciprocity between faith and knowledge remains a source of strength"(Aga Khan IV, 27th May1994, Cambridge, Massachusets, U.S.A.)
"The Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims. Exchanges of knowledge between institutions and nations and the widening of man's intellectual horizons are essentially Islamic concepts. The Faith urges freedom of intellectual enquiry and this freedom does not mean that knowledge will lose its spiritual dimension. That dimension is indeed itself a field for intellectual enquiry. I can not illustrate this interdependence of spiritual inspiration and learning better than by recounting a dialogue between Ibn Sina, the philosopher, and Abu Said Abu -Khyar, the Sufi mystic. Ibn Sina remarked, "Whatever I know, he sees". To which Abu Said replied," Whatever I see, he knows"."(Aga Khan IV, Aga Khan University Inauguration Speech, Karachi, Pakistan, November 11th 1985)
“Muslims believe in an all-encompassing unit of man and nature. To them there is no fundamental division between the spiritual and the material while the whole world, whether it be the earth, sea or air, or the living creatures that inhabit them, is an expression of God’s creation.”(Aga Khan IV, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, USA, 13 April 1984)
"In Islamic belief, knowledge is two-fold. There is that revealed through the Holy Prophet (s.a.s.) and that which man discovers by virtue of his own intellect. Nor do these two involve any contradiction, provided man remembers that his own mind is itself the creation of God. Without this humility, no balance is possible. With it, there are no barriers. Indeed, one strength of Islam has always lain in its belief that creation is not static but continuous, that through scientific and other endeavours, God has opened and continues to open new windows for us to see the marvels of His creation"(Aga Khan IV, Aga Khan University, 16 March 1983, Karachi, Pakistan)
"Our religious leadership must be acutely aware of secular trends, including those generated by this age of science and technology. Equally, our academic or secular elite must be deeply aware of Muslim history, of the scale and depth of leadership exercised by the Islamic empire of the past in all fields"(Aga Khan IV, 6th February 1970, Hyderabad, Pakistan)
"The creation according to Islam is not a unique act in a given time but a perpetual and constant event; and God supports and sustains all existence at every moment by His will and His thought. Outside His will, outside His thought, all is nothing, even the things which seem to us absolutely self-evident such as space and time. Allah alone wishes: the Universe exists; and all manifestations are as a witness of the Divine Will"(Memoirs of Aga Khan III, 1954)
"Thus Islam's basic principle can only be defined as mono-realism and not as monotheism. Consider, for example, the opening declaration of every Islamic prayer: "Allah-o-Akbar". What does that mean? There can be no doubt that the second word of the declaration likens the character of Allah to a matrix which contains all and gives existence to the infinite, to space, to time, to the Universe, to all active and passive forces imaginable, to life and to the soul"(Memoirs of Aga Khan III, 1954)
"Islam is fundamentally in its very nature a natural religion. Throughout the Quran God's signs (Ayats) are referred to as the natural phenomenon, the law and order of the universe, the exactitudes and consequences of the relations between natural phenomenon in cause and effect. Over and over, the stars, sun, moon, earthquakes, fruits of the earth and trees are mentioned as the signs of divine power, divine law and divine order. Even in the Ayeh of Noor, divine is referred to as the natural phenomenon of light and even references are made to the fruit of the earth. During the great period of Islam, Muslims did not forget these principles of their religion"(Aga Khan III, April 4th 1952)
"O brother! You asked: What is the [meaning of] `alam [world] and what is that entity to which this name applies? How should we describe the world in its entirety? And how many worlds are there? Explain so that we may recognize. Know, O brother, that the name `alam is derived from [the word] `ilm(knowledge), because the traces of knowledge are evident in [all] parts of the physical world. Thus, we say that the very constitution (nihad) of the world is based on a profound wisdom"(Nasir Khusraw, 11th century Ismaili cosmologist-philosopher-poet, from his book "Knowledge and Liberation")
The above are 15 quotes and excerpts taken from Blogpost Four Hundred, a collection of around 100 quotes on the subjects of Knowledge, Intellect, Creation, Science and Religion:
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/09/400blogpost-four-hundred-knowledge.html
Noor Cultural Center, 123 Wynford Drive, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M3C 1K1
Sat. April 25, 3:30 pm
Lecture Two in Dialogues of Faith and Reason Series
Special lecture series featuring Dr. Timothy Gianotti (April 18), Dr. Laury Silvers (April 25), and Dr. Bernard Lightman (May 9)
Offered in connection with Noor's Darwin and the Divine course, this special lecture series will also be of interest to the general public. The series began with an examination of different ways of knowing the world, continues with a lecture on the creation theory of one of Islam's greatest thinkers, and culminates with a discussion on Darwin's theory of evolution.
1)Ibn al-'Arabi's Cosmology and the New Creation
Dr. Laury Silvers
Date: Saturday April 25, 2009
Time: 3:30 p.m.
Location: Auditorium, Noor Cultural Centre
Admission: $5
The Qur'an says, "Were We then tired from the first creation that they are in doubt as to the new creation?" (50:15) For Muslims, God did not rest after creating the heavens and the earth - rather, creation continues in every passing moment. This talk will be a brief introduction to Ibn al-'Arabi's vision of the cosmos as a barzakh, an "isthmus" or a relationship struck between God and Nothing, renewed in every passing moment, on every level of existence down to the tiniest atom. Ibn al-`Arabi (d. 1240) is known as the Greatest Shaykh, one of Islamic civilizations greatest mystical thinkers, philosophers, theologians, and poets.
Laury Silvers is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department for the Study of Religion at University of Toronto. Her scholarship focuses on Islam in the Formative Period, particularly Sufism, Sufi Metaphysics, and Gender.
2)Scientists, the Public, and Natural Selection: From Darwin to Dawkins
Dr. Bernard Lightman
Date: Saturday May 9, 2009
Time: 3:30 p.m.
Location: Auditorium, Noor Cultural Centre
Admission: $5
This presentation will discuss how Darwin's theory of natural selection was received by Anglo-American scientists and the public since he presented it in his Origin of Species in 1859. It will explore how the changing fortunes of natural selection have affected the way the religious implications of evolution have been perceived right up to the debates between creationists and atheists like Richard Dawkins.
Bernard Lightman is Professor of Humanities at York University, Director of the new Graduate Program in Science and Technology Studies, and Editor of the history of science journal Isis. His publications include The Origins of Agnosticism and Victorian Popularizers of Science.
Volunteers needed: To volunteer for any of the lectures in the series, please sign up at http://noorculturalcentre.pbwiki.com/ or email volunteers@noorculturalcentre.ca.
Related Posts:
A Collection of Posts on Charles Darwin,a Scientist Way Ahead of His Time; Dynamic vs Static Creation; Quotes of Noble Quran, Aga Khans IV and III
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/02/450a-collection-of-posts-on-charles.html
The Peter McKnight Collection Of Posts On Science And Religion; Read Them Along With Blogpost Four Hundred; Quotes of Aga Khans IV and III
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/01/441the-peter-mcknight-collection-of.html
Knowledge Society: A Collection of Posts on the Rise and Fall of Islamic Spain; Quotes of Aga Khan IV.
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/01/438knowledge-society-collection-of.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)
The Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims: Aga Khan IV(1985)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql): Prophet Muhammad(circa 632CE)
Monday, April 20, 2009
470)'Scientism' infects Darwinian debates: An unflinching belief that science can explain everything about evolution becomes its own ideology
"Science is a wonderful, powerful tool and research budgets are essential. But Science is only the beginning in the new age we are entering. Islam does not perceive the world as two seperate domains of mind and spirit, science and belief. Science and the search for knowledge are an expression of man's designated role in the universe, but they do not define that role totally....."(Aga Khan IV, McMaster University Convocation, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, May 15th 1987)
"Our religious leadership must be acutely aware of secular trends, including those generated by this age of science and technology. Equally, our academic or secular elite must be deeply aware of Muslim history, of the scale and depth of leadership exercised by the Islamic empire of the past in all fields"(Aga Khan IV, 6th February 1970, Hyderabad, Pakistan)
"Indeed, one strength of Islam has always lain in its belief that creation is not static but continuous, that through scientific and other endeavours, God has opened and continues to open new windows for us to see the marvels of His creation"(Aga Khan IV, Aga Khan University, 16 March 1983, Karachi, Pakistan)
The above are 3 quotes and excerpts taken from Blogpost Four Hundred, a collection of around 100 quotes on the subjects of Knowledge, Intellect, Creation, Science and Religion:
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/09/400blogpost-four-hundred-knowledge.html
'Scientism' infects Darwinian debates
An unflinching belief that science can explain everything about evolution becomes its own ideology
By Douglas Todd, Vancouver
Sun April 4, 2009
There are two major obstacles to a rich public discussion on Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and what it means to all of us.
The most obvious obstacle is religious literalism, which leads to Creationism. It's the belief the Bible or other ancient sacred texts offer the first and last word on how humans came into existence.
The second major barrier to a rewarding public conversation about the impact of evolution on the way we understand the world is not named nearly as much.
It is "scientism."
Scientism is the belief that the sciences have no boundaries and will, in the end, be able to explain everything in the universe. Scientism can, like religious literalism, become its own ideology.
The Encyclopedia of Science, Technology and Ethics defines scientism as "an exaggerated trust in the efficacy of natural science to be applied to all areas of investigation (as in philosophy, the social sciences and the humanities)."
Those who unknowingly fall into the trap of scientism act as if hard science is the only way of knowing reality. If something can't be "proved" through the scientific method, through observable and measurable evidence, they say it's irrelevant.
Scientism is terribly limiting of human understanding. It leaves little or no place for the insights of the arts, philosophy, psychology, literature, mythology, dreams, music, the emotions or spirituality.
In general, scientism leaves little or no place for the imagination, which Albert Einstein, after all, said is "everything."
Many people have been falling into the trap of scientism this year as commentators, including myself, have examined the legacy of Darwin, whose book, On the Origin of Species, was published 150 years ago.
While I am not at all persuaded by Creationists who believe the Earth is less than 10,000 years old, I also have trouble with those who claim science can only support the atheistic proposal that evolution is a result of pure chance.
Such people maintain orthodox science cannot contemplate the possibility that the evolutionary process may include elements of purpose. This is an example of scientism.
One of the scientists who appears to illustrate this view is Patrick Walden, who works at the TRIUMF Cyclotron Laboratory on the University of B.C. campus.
Walden had a punchy opinion piece published in Monday's Vancouver Sun in which he began by applauding my proposal that public schools and universities expose more students to Darwin's evolutionary theory.
While I greatly appreciate Walden's willingness to step out of the confines of academia and take on the role of public intellectual, I disagree with the second part of his commentary.
Walden was bothered by my recommendation that the education system and the media help the public learn there is more than one operative theory of evolution -- that there are at least 12.
Walden assumed I was challenging the general validity of Darwin's theory of evolution. I wasn't.
I think the proposal that humans evolved over billions of years from simpler life forms is a no-brainer.
However, I don't believe either Darwin or neo-Darwinists have yet devised a complete picture of how evolution happens, or what drives it.
I detected more than a hint of scientism when Walden declared that neo-Darwinism (which he called "the modern evolutionary synthesis") is the only theory accepted by respectable scientists.
Walden said four of the other scientific theories of evolution outlined by Phipps in his article in EnlightenNext journal, including biologist's Lynn Margulis theory of cooperation, are mere "additions" to neo-Darwinism.
Beyond that, Walden said the other seven proposed theories of evolution, some of which included philosophical and spiritual perspectives, are nothing more than "pseudo-scientific speculation." As such, he said, "they are nonsense."
In other words, Walden, whose viewpoint represents that of many scientists, appears to believe that any discussion of evolution that does not uphold chance as the only driving force is ridiculous.
This is blinkered.
It defaults to atheism. And it assumes incorrectly that what we believe, and the way we live, is always based on provable "facts," which do not include conjecture, speculation or imagination.
Science has always had a speculative component, as we see with theories about quantum physics and the Big Bang and evolution.
Arguing that any theory about what drives evolution that is not essentially neo-Darwinistic is "nonsense" reflects blindness to the insights that have been offered by philosophy, cosmology and metaphysics, let alone the arts.
In addition to suggesting Walden's approach reflects scientism, I would also say it is a manifestation of "disciplinolatry," which is the conviction that one academic discipline contains everything that needs to be known about a subject.
Walden attempts to mock the idea that philosophy and even spirituality could be considered when trying to understand what fuels evolution. He acts as if I am arguing for Madame Blavatsky's 19th-century esoteric theories (and her anti-Semitic views) to replace Darwin in public school science classes.
By creating this red herring, Walden ignores the great 20th-century thinkers who have embraced evolutionary theory while offering innovative non-atheistic understandings about how it happens.
They include Alfred North Whitehead, Charles Hartshorne, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Marshal McLuhan, John Cobb, Ken Wilber, Charles Birch and countless other scientists and philosophers who are not as easy to write off as the eccentric Blavatsky.
The truth is that many scientists are slowly becoming more open to at least discussing the possibility that elements of purpose, not just chance, are inherent in the evolutionary process.
They include the noted biologist Lynn Margulis, the first wife of the late astronomer Carl Sagan, and their science writer son, Dorion Sagan.
Walden appears to think highly of Margulis as an evolutionary theorist. But he fails to appreciate Margulis is willing to expand her mind beyond scientism.
Margulis and Sagan took part this year in an interdisciplinary conference on evolution with philosophers, scientists and theologians at the Vatican.
They have also contributed to books with spiritually inclined scientists and philosophers, including Back to Darwin: A Richer Account of Evolution (Eerdmans), edited by John Cobb.
Back to Darwin says the lively exchange Margulis and Sagan join in on in the book "presents a holistic case for evolution that both theists and nontheists can accept."
I would like to think Margulis and Sagan would also be willing to have some of the 12 theories of evolution discussed in public schools -- if not in biology classes, at least in courses on the history of science or the philosophy of science, as well as in classes on philosophy, world religions and metaphysics.
The general theory of evolution has been widely accepted by both atheists and thinkers with spiritual sensitivities.
Everyone would agree, however, that evolution is also a theory that is incomplete.
When more evolutionary scientists open up to the insights of philosophers and those from other disciplines, I believe their beloved theory will itself evolve. It will become more complex and more elegant.
dtodd@vancouversun.com
http://www.vancouversun.com/Life/Scientism+infects+Darwinian+debates/1464023/story.html
Easy Nash
Easy NashThe 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 Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims: Aga Khan IV(1985)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql): Prophet Muhammad(circa 632CE)
"Our religious leadership must be acutely aware of secular trends, including those generated by this age of science and technology. Equally, our academic or secular elite must be deeply aware of Muslim history, of the scale and depth of leadership exercised by the Islamic empire of the past in all fields"(Aga Khan IV, 6th February 1970, Hyderabad, Pakistan)
"Indeed, one strength of Islam has always lain in its belief that creation is not static but continuous, that through scientific and other endeavours, God has opened and continues to open new windows for us to see the marvels of His creation"(Aga Khan IV, Aga Khan University, 16 March 1983, Karachi, Pakistan)
The above are 3 quotes and excerpts taken from Blogpost Four Hundred, a collection of around 100 quotes on the subjects of Knowledge, Intellect, Creation, Science and Religion:
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/09/400blogpost-four-hundred-knowledge.html
'Scientism' infects Darwinian debates
An unflinching belief that science can explain everything about evolution becomes its own ideology
By Douglas Todd, Vancouver
Sun April 4, 2009
There are two major obstacles to a rich public discussion on Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and what it means to all of us.
The most obvious obstacle is religious literalism, which leads to Creationism. It's the belief the Bible or other ancient sacred texts offer the first and last word on how humans came into existence.
The second major barrier to a rewarding public conversation about the impact of evolution on the way we understand the world is not named nearly as much.
It is "scientism."
Scientism is the belief that the sciences have no boundaries and will, in the end, be able to explain everything in the universe. Scientism can, like religious literalism, become its own ideology.
The Encyclopedia of Science, Technology and Ethics defines scientism as "an exaggerated trust in the efficacy of natural science to be applied to all areas of investigation (as in philosophy, the social sciences and the humanities)."
Those who unknowingly fall into the trap of scientism act as if hard science is the only way of knowing reality. If something can't be "proved" through the scientific method, through observable and measurable evidence, they say it's irrelevant.
Scientism is terribly limiting of human understanding. It leaves little or no place for the insights of the arts, philosophy, psychology, literature, mythology, dreams, music, the emotions or spirituality.
In general, scientism leaves little or no place for the imagination, which Albert Einstein, after all, said is "everything."
Many people have been falling into the trap of scientism this year as commentators, including myself, have examined the legacy of Darwin, whose book, On the Origin of Species, was published 150 years ago.
While I am not at all persuaded by Creationists who believe the Earth is less than 10,000 years old, I also have trouble with those who claim science can only support the atheistic proposal that evolution is a result of pure chance.
Such people maintain orthodox science cannot contemplate the possibility that the evolutionary process may include elements of purpose. This is an example of scientism.
One of the scientists who appears to illustrate this view is Patrick Walden, who works at the TRIUMF Cyclotron Laboratory on the University of B.C. campus.
Walden had a punchy opinion piece published in Monday's Vancouver Sun in which he began by applauding my proposal that public schools and universities expose more students to Darwin's evolutionary theory.
While I greatly appreciate Walden's willingness to step out of the confines of academia and take on the role of public intellectual, I disagree with the second part of his commentary.
Walden was bothered by my recommendation that the education system and the media help the public learn there is more than one operative theory of evolution -- that there are at least 12.
Walden assumed I was challenging the general validity of Darwin's theory of evolution. I wasn't.
I think the proposal that humans evolved over billions of years from simpler life forms is a no-brainer.
However, I don't believe either Darwin or neo-Darwinists have yet devised a complete picture of how evolution happens, or what drives it.
I detected more than a hint of scientism when Walden declared that neo-Darwinism (which he called "the modern evolutionary synthesis") is the only theory accepted by respectable scientists.
Walden said four of the other scientific theories of evolution outlined by Phipps in his article in EnlightenNext journal, including biologist's Lynn Margulis theory of cooperation, are mere "additions" to neo-Darwinism.
Beyond that, Walden said the other seven proposed theories of evolution, some of which included philosophical and spiritual perspectives, are nothing more than "pseudo-scientific speculation." As such, he said, "they are nonsense."
In other words, Walden, whose viewpoint represents that of many scientists, appears to believe that any discussion of evolution that does not uphold chance as the only driving force is ridiculous.
This is blinkered.
It defaults to atheism. And it assumes incorrectly that what we believe, and the way we live, is always based on provable "facts," which do not include conjecture, speculation or imagination.
Science has always had a speculative component, as we see with theories about quantum physics and the Big Bang and evolution.
Arguing that any theory about what drives evolution that is not essentially neo-Darwinistic is "nonsense" reflects blindness to the insights that have been offered by philosophy, cosmology and metaphysics, let alone the arts.
In addition to suggesting Walden's approach reflects scientism, I would also say it is a manifestation of "disciplinolatry," which is the conviction that one academic discipline contains everything that needs to be known about a subject.
Walden attempts to mock the idea that philosophy and even spirituality could be considered when trying to understand what fuels evolution. He acts as if I am arguing for Madame Blavatsky's 19th-century esoteric theories (and her anti-Semitic views) to replace Darwin in public school science classes.
By creating this red herring, Walden ignores the great 20th-century thinkers who have embraced evolutionary theory while offering innovative non-atheistic understandings about how it happens.
They include Alfred North Whitehead, Charles Hartshorne, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Marshal McLuhan, John Cobb, Ken Wilber, Charles Birch and countless other scientists and philosophers who are not as easy to write off as the eccentric Blavatsky.
The truth is that many scientists are slowly becoming more open to at least discussing the possibility that elements of purpose, not just chance, are inherent in the evolutionary process.
They include the noted biologist Lynn Margulis, the first wife of the late astronomer Carl Sagan, and their science writer son, Dorion Sagan.
Walden appears to think highly of Margulis as an evolutionary theorist. But he fails to appreciate Margulis is willing to expand her mind beyond scientism.
Margulis and Sagan took part this year in an interdisciplinary conference on evolution with philosophers, scientists and theologians at the Vatican.
They have also contributed to books with spiritually inclined scientists and philosophers, including Back to Darwin: A Richer Account of Evolution (Eerdmans), edited by John Cobb.
Back to Darwin says the lively exchange Margulis and Sagan join in on in the book "presents a holistic case for evolution that both theists and nontheists can accept."
I would like to think Margulis and Sagan would also be willing to have some of the 12 theories of evolution discussed in public schools -- if not in biology classes, at least in courses on the history of science or the philosophy of science, as well as in classes on philosophy, world religions and metaphysics.
The general theory of evolution has been widely accepted by both atheists and thinkers with spiritual sensitivities.
Everyone would agree, however, that evolution is also a theory that is incomplete.
When more evolutionary scientists open up to the insights of philosophers and those from other disciplines, I believe their beloved theory will itself evolve. It will become more complex and more elegant.
dtodd@vancouversun.com
http://www.vancouversun.com/Life/Scientism+infects+Darwinian+debates/1464023/story.html
Easy Nash
Easy NashThe 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 Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims: Aga Khan IV(1985)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql): Prophet Muhammad(circa 632CE)
Sunday, April 19, 2009
469)Another Off-Topic Gem; An Unholy Alliance That Could Lead To Nuclear Armageddon: The Left Romances The Jihad, By Clifford D. May and Jamie Glazov.
Clifford D. May: The left romances the jihad
By CLIFFORD D. MAY
Saturday, Apr. 18, 2009
Ask those on the left what values they champion, and they will say equality, tolerance, women's rights, gay rights, workers rights and human rights. Militant Islamists oppose all that, not infrequently through the application of lethal force. So how does one explain the burgeoning left-Islamist alliance?
I know: There are principled individuals on the left who do not condone terrorism or minimize the Islamist threat. Author Paul Berman, a man of the left, has been more incisive on these issues than just about anyone else. Left-of-center publications, such as The New Republic, have not been apologists for jihadism.
But it is no exaggeration to call The Nation magazine and such groups as MoveOn.org pro-appeasement. Further left on the political spectrum, the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition sympathizes with Islamists as well as with the Stalinist regime in North Korea -- which is in league with Islamist Iran and its client state, Syria. Meanwhile, Hugo Chavez, the Bolivian socialist Venezuelan strongman, is developing a strategic alliance with Iran's ruling mullahs and with Hezbollah, Iran's terrorist proxy.
In a new book, "United in Hate: The Left's Romance with Tyranny and Terror," Jamie Glazov takes a hard look at this unholy alliance. Glazov's book indicts left artists and intellectuals for having "venerated mass murderers such as Lenin, Stalin, and Mao, Castro, and Ho Chi Minh, habitually excusing their atrocities while blaming Americans and even the victims for their crimes."
Following the fall of the Berlin Wall, the left spent several years wandering in the wilderness. More than a few, Glazov suggests, looked upon the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, less as an atrocity than as an opportunity to revive a moribund revolutionary movement.
He notes that novelist Norman Mailer called the 9/11 hijackers "brilliant," their terrorism "understandable" because "everything wrong with America led to the point where the country built that tower of Babel, which consequently had to be destroyed."
German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen called 9/11 "the greatest work of art for the whole cosmos."
And then there is Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, aka Carlos the Jackal, who in 2003, from his prison cell, published a book called "Revolutionary Islam," which urged "all revolutionaries, including those of the left, even atheists," to accept the leadership of militant jihadists, Osama bin Laden key among them. His reasoning: "Only a coalition of Marxists and Islamists can destroy the United States."
Glazov quotes British lawmaker George Galloway, elaborating on the rationale for this coalition. "Not only do I think (a Muslim-leftist alliance is) possible, but I think it is vitally necessary, and I think it is happening already," Galloway said. "It is possible because the progressive movement around the world and the Muslims have the same enemies. Their enemies are the Zionist occupation, American occupation, British occupation of poor countries, mainly Muslim countries."
There also is an older tradition to build on. In the 1970s, the Red Army Faction -- West German Marxist terrorists also known as the Baader-Meinhof gang -- went to Jordan to train with the Palestine Liberation Organization. And in 1979, the success of the Islamist Revolution in Iran depended, in large measure, on the support given by the Iranian left to the Ayatollah Khomeini. Once firmly in power, the clerical regime repaid its leftist enablers with executions, assassinations and prison sentences. Evidently, no lessons were learned.
Glazov concludes that the left's "romance with Islamism is just a logical continuation of the long leftist tradition of worshipping America's foes. ... The left clearly continues to be inspired by its undying Marxist conviction that capitalism is evil and that forces of revolution are rising to overthrow it -- and must be supported."
If such values as equality, tolerance and human rights are crushed in the process, that's a price many on the left are willing to pay. Those on the left who disagree should perhaps speak up more loudly and more often.
Clifford D. May is president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focusing on terrorism. His e-mail is cliff@defenddemocracy.org.
http://www.unionleader.com/article.aspx?headline=Clifford+D.+May%3A+The+left+romances+the+jihad&articleId=83cc1feb-31ee-4ca4-8aa2-131020b37fba
http://www.defenddemocracy.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=11785228&Itemid=105
Related:
http://www.torontosun.com/comment/columnists/salim_mansur/2009/04/18/9153766-sun.html
http://www.torontosun.com/comment/columnists/salim_mansur/2009/04/25/9240706-sun.html
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/01/436darth-vader-gets-tripped-up-by.html
Islamism and Democracy by Joshua Muravchik
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/07/383an-interesting-off-topic-diversion.html
Easy Nash
If there are 23,000 jihadist websites and blogsites out there in cyberspace, there is no reason why we should not create 100,000 non-jihadist websites and blogsites: Easy Nash(2007)
By CLIFFORD D. MAY
Saturday, Apr. 18, 2009
Ask those on the left what values they champion, and they will say equality, tolerance, women's rights, gay rights, workers rights and human rights. Militant Islamists oppose all that, not infrequently through the application of lethal force. So how does one explain the burgeoning left-Islamist alliance?
I know: There are principled individuals on the left who do not condone terrorism or minimize the Islamist threat. Author Paul Berman, a man of the left, has been more incisive on these issues than just about anyone else. Left-of-center publications, such as The New Republic, have not been apologists for jihadism.
But it is no exaggeration to call The Nation magazine and such groups as MoveOn.org pro-appeasement. Further left on the political spectrum, the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition sympathizes with Islamists as well as with the Stalinist regime in North Korea -- which is in league with Islamist Iran and its client state, Syria. Meanwhile, Hugo Chavez, the Bolivian socialist Venezuelan strongman, is developing a strategic alliance with Iran's ruling mullahs and with Hezbollah, Iran's terrorist proxy.
In a new book, "United in Hate: The Left's Romance with Tyranny and Terror," Jamie Glazov takes a hard look at this unholy alliance. Glazov's book indicts left artists and intellectuals for having "venerated mass murderers such as Lenin, Stalin, and Mao, Castro, and Ho Chi Minh, habitually excusing their atrocities while blaming Americans and even the victims for their crimes."
Following the fall of the Berlin Wall, the left spent several years wandering in the wilderness. More than a few, Glazov suggests, looked upon the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, less as an atrocity than as an opportunity to revive a moribund revolutionary movement.
He notes that novelist Norman Mailer called the 9/11 hijackers "brilliant," their terrorism "understandable" because "everything wrong with America led to the point where the country built that tower of Babel, which consequently had to be destroyed."
German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen called 9/11 "the greatest work of art for the whole cosmos."
And then there is Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, aka Carlos the Jackal, who in 2003, from his prison cell, published a book called "Revolutionary Islam," which urged "all revolutionaries, including those of the left, even atheists," to accept the leadership of militant jihadists, Osama bin Laden key among them. His reasoning: "Only a coalition of Marxists and Islamists can destroy the United States."
Glazov quotes British lawmaker George Galloway, elaborating on the rationale for this coalition. "Not only do I think (a Muslim-leftist alliance is) possible, but I think it is vitally necessary, and I think it is happening already," Galloway said. "It is possible because the progressive movement around the world and the Muslims have the same enemies. Their enemies are the Zionist occupation, American occupation, British occupation of poor countries, mainly Muslim countries."
There also is an older tradition to build on. In the 1970s, the Red Army Faction -- West German Marxist terrorists also known as the Baader-Meinhof gang -- went to Jordan to train with the Palestine Liberation Organization. And in 1979, the success of the Islamist Revolution in Iran depended, in large measure, on the support given by the Iranian left to the Ayatollah Khomeini. Once firmly in power, the clerical regime repaid its leftist enablers with executions, assassinations and prison sentences. Evidently, no lessons were learned.
Glazov concludes that the left's "romance with Islamism is just a logical continuation of the long leftist tradition of worshipping America's foes. ... The left clearly continues to be inspired by its undying Marxist conviction that capitalism is evil and that forces of revolution are rising to overthrow it -- and must be supported."
If such values as equality, tolerance and human rights are crushed in the process, that's a price many on the left are willing to pay. Those on the left who disagree should perhaps speak up more loudly and more often.
Clifford D. May is president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focusing on terrorism. His e-mail is cliff@defenddemocracy.org.
http://www.unionleader.com/article.aspx?headline=Clifford+D.+May%3A+The+left+romances+the+jihad&articleId=83cc1feb-31ee-4ca4-8aa2-131020b37fba
http://www.defenddemocracy.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=11785228&Itemid=105
Related:
http://www.torontosun.com/comment/columnists/salim_mansur/2009/04/18/9153766-sun.html
http://www.torontosun.com/comment/columnists/salim_mansur/2009/04/25/9240706-sun.html
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/01/436darth-vader-gets-tripped-up-by.html
Islamism and Democracy by Joshua Muravchik
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/07/383an-interesting-off-topic-diversion.html
Easy Nash
If there are 23,000 jihadist websites and blogsites out there in cyberspace, there is no reason why we should not create 100,000 non-jihadist websites and blogsites: Easy Nash(2007)
Friday, April 17, 2009
468)Journey to Mecca: In the Footsteps of Ibn Battuta; IMAX Film at Ontario Science Center Feb 7-May 10 2009; Quotes of Aga Khan IV.
"The truth, as the famous Islamic scholars repeatedly told their students, is that the spirit of disciplined, objective enquiry is the property of no single culture, but of all humanity. To quote the great physician and philosopher, Ibn Sina: "MY PROFESSION IS TO BE FOREVER JOURNEYING, TO TRAVEL ABOUT THE UNIVERSE SO THAT I MAY KNOW ALL ITS CONDITIONS"(Aga Khan IV, Aga Khan University, 16 March 1983, Karachi, Pakistan)
"First, the globalisation of the knowledge of the cultures of the Umma is critical. We have to make known the cultural inheritance of the Muslims to the non-Muslim as well as the Muslim parts of the world because we will never succeed in building the respect and recognition that the Umma deserves unless we present the Umma as a remarkable carrier of civilisation.The misconceptions about Islam and Muslims in the West exist because we are, even today, absent from the global civilisation. We should encourage the Western education system to bring in knowledge of the civilisation of Islam into the secondary education system.I am thrilled with the initiative that Dubai and other states in the Gulf are taking by creating museums. Retracing our historical legacies and bringing them back in the modern world is extremely important."(Aga Khan IV, Interview with Gulf News, Dubai, UAE, April 2008)
"That quest for a better life, among Muslims and non-Muslims alike, must lead inevitably to the Knowledge Society which is developing in our time. The great and central question facing the Ummah of today is how it will relate to the Knowledge Society of tomorrow.The fundamental reason for the pre-eminence of Islamic civilizations lay neither in accidents of history nor in acts of war, but rather in their ability to discover new knowledge, to make it their own, and to build constructively upon it. They became the Knowledge Societies of their time."(Aga Khan IV, Speech, 2nd December 2006, Aga Khan University, Karachi, Pakistan)
"For century after century, the Arabs, the Persians, the Turks and many other Islamic societies achieved powerful leadership roles in the world—not only politically and economically but also intellectually. Some ill-informed historians and biased commentators have tried to argue that these successes were essentially produced by military power, but this view is profoundly incorrect"(Aga Khan IV, 2nd December 2006, Aga Khan University, Karachi, Pakistan)
"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"(Aga Khan IV, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, USA, 1996)
The above are 5 quotes and excerpts taken from Blogpost Four Hundred, a collection of about 100 quotes on the subjects of Knowledge, Intellect, Creation, Education, Science and Religion:
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/09/400blogpost-four-hundred-knowledge.html
Journey to Mecca: In the Footsteps of Ibn Battuta ~ New IMAX Film
Opens February 7 2009, Ends May 10 2009
Journey to Mecca tells the story of a young scholar, who leaves Tangier in 1325 on an epic and perilous journey, travelling alone from his home in Morocco to reach Mecca, some 3,000 miles to the east.
lbn Battuta is besieged by countless obstacles as he makes his way across the North African desert to Mecca. Along the route he meets an unlikely stranger, a highwayman, who becomes his paid protector and eventual friend.
During his travels he is attacked by bandits, dehydrated by thirst, rescued by Bedouins and forced to retrace his route by a war-locked Red Sea. lbn Battuta finally joins the legendary Damascus Caravan with thousands of pilgrims bound for Mecca for the final leg of what would become his 5,000 mile, 18 month long journey to Mecca.
When he arrives in Mecca, he is a man transformed. We then experience the Hajj as he did over 700 years ago and, in recognition of its timelessness, we dissolve to the Hajj as it is still performed today by millions of pilgrims in some of the most extraordinary and moving IMAX® footage ever presented.
lbn Battuta would not return home for almost 30 years, reaching over 40 countries and revisiting Mecca five more times to perform the Hajj. He would travel three times farther than Marco Polo.
His legacy is one of the greatest travel journals ever recorded. A crater on the moon is named in his honour.
An SK Films Release in association with National Geographic of a Cosmic Picture Film.
http://ontariosciencecentre.ca/imax/default.asp?filmdetail=Journey+to+Mecca
English Trailer youtube clip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJSmn6ITBMs
http://www.journeytomeccagiantscreen.com/
Related: This one also ends on May 10 2009
Ontario Science Center, Toronto, Canada, Exhibit opening Feb 5 2009; Sultans of Science:1000 Years of Knowledge Rediscovered; Quotes of Aga Khan IV
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/01/439ontario-science-center-toronto.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)
The Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims: Aga Khan IV(1985)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql): Prophet Muhammad(circa 632CE)
"First, the globalisation of the knowledge of the cultures of the Umma is critical. We have to make known the cultural inheritance of the Muslims to the non-Muslim as well as the Muslim parts of the world because we will never succeed in building the respect and recognition that the Umma deserves unless we present the Umma as a remarkable carrier of civilisation.The misconceptions about Islam and Muslims in the West exist because we are, even today, absent from the global civilisation. We should encourage the Western education system to bring in knowledge of the civilisation of Islam into the secondary education system.I am thrilled with the initiative that Dubai and other states in the Gulf are taking by creating museums. Retracing our historical legacies and bringing them back in the modern world is extremely important."(Aga Khan IV, Interview with Gulf News, Dubai, UAE, April 2008)
"That quest for a better life, among Muslims and non-Muslims alike, must lead inevitably to the Knowledge Society which is developing in our time. The great and central question facing the Ummah of today is how it will relate to the Knowledge Society of tomorrow.The fundamental reason for the pre-eminence of Islamic civilizations lay neither in accidents of history nor in acts of war, but rather in their ability to discover new knowledge, to make it their own, and to build constructively upon it. They became the Knowledge Societies of their time."(Aga Khan IV, Speech, 2nd December 2006, Aga Khan University, Karachi, Pakistan)
"For century after century, the Arabs, the Persians, the Turks and many other Islamic societies achieved powerful leadership roles in the world—not only politically and economically but also intellectually. Some ill-informed historians and biased commentators have tried to argue that these successes were essentially produced by military power, but this view is profoundly incorrect"(Aga Khan IV, 2nd December 2006, Aga Khan University, Karachi, Pakistan)
"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"(Aga Khan IV, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, USA, 1996)
The above are 5 quotes and excerpts taken from Blogpost Four Hundred, a collection of about 100 quotes on the subjects of Knowledge, Intellect, Creation, Education, Science and Religion:
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/09/400blogpost-four-hundred-knowledge.html
Journey to Mecca: In the Footsteps of Ibn Battuta ~ New IMAX Film
Opens February 7 2009, Ends May 10 2009
Journey to Mecca tells the story of a young scholar, who leaves Tangier in 1325 on an epic and perilous journey, travelling alone from his home in Morocco to reach Mecca, some 3,000 miles to the east.
lbn Battuta is besieged by countless obstacles as he makes his way across the North African desert to Mecca. Along the route he meets an unlikely stranger, a highwayman, who becomes his paid protector and eventual friend.
During his travels he is attacked by bandits, dehydrated by thirst, rescued by Bedouins and forced to retrace his route by a war-locked Red Sea. lbn Battuta finally joins the legendary Damascus Caravan with thousands of pilgrims bound for Mecca for the final leg of what would become his 5,000 mile, 18 month long journey to Mecca.
When he arrives in Mecca, he is a man transformed. We then experience the Hajj as he did over 700 years ago and, in recognition of its timelessness, we dissolve to the Hajj as it is still performed today by millions of pilgrims in some of the most extraordinary and moving IMAX® footage ever presented.
lbn Battuta would not return home for almost 30 years, reaching over 40 countries and revisiting Mecca five more times to perform the Hajj. He would travel three times farther than Marco Polo.
His legacy is one of the greatest travel journals ever recorded. A crater on the moon is named in his honour.
An SK Films Release in association with National Geographic of a Cosmic Picture Film.
http://ontariosciencecentre.ca/imax/default.asp?filmdetail=Journey+to+Mecca
English Trailer youtube clip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJSmn6ITBMs
http://www.journeytomeccagiantscreen.com/
Related: This one also ends on May 10 2009
Ontario Science Center, Toronto, Canada, Exhibit opening Feb 5 2009; Sultans of Science:1000 Years of Knowledge Rediscovered; Quotes of Aga Khan IV
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/01/439ontario-science-center-toronto.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)
The Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims: Aga Khan IV(1985)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql): Prophet Muhammad(circa 632CE)
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