Islamic Art Steals Limelight in London

Monday, 23 July 2007

More than 160 masterpieces displayed at a London exhibition have taken the breath of art critics away and left them marveling
at the beauty and richness of the Islamic art.
“My thoughts turned immediately to the magnificent collection of Islamic art I had just seen back in London, at the Ismaili Centre, opposite the V&A. There are manuscripts in this show that took 20 years to paint,” art critic Waldemar Januszczak wrote Sunday, July 22, in the Times of Britain.

Januszczak was referring to the “Spirit & Life” exhibition, which opened at London’s Ismaili Centre on July 14 and runs through August 31.

The London tour is the collection’s first stop on a multi-leg journey that would land the masterpieces finally at the Aga Khan Museum, which will open in Toronto, Canada, in 2010.

Organized by Aga Khan, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Ismaili community, the fair displays Islamic masterpieces spanning from the ninth to the 19th century and collected from India to Morocco.

“There are manuscripts in this show that took 20 years to paint,” said Januszczak.

The art works range from textiles, miniatures and manuscripts, rare Qur’an copies, to figurative oil paintings, musical instruments and ceramics.

The masterpieces reveal the glamour of the Islamic culture.

“There are pieces of jewelry of such impossible intricacy that you cannot believe a human hand could ever have made itself small enough to fashion them,” noted Januszczak.

“In some of the Qur’ans, a single letter took a team of scribes a month to lay down. It was all done for the love of God.”

Among the exhibits is a page from the breathtaking “Blue Qur’an”, made in North Africa and dating back to the 10th Century.

Januszczak said master works like Van Gogh’s Starry Night and Michelangelo’s ceiling of the Sistine Chapel are dwarfed by this single page of the “Blue Qur’an.”

“The difference between all these and the Blue Koran is that they are easy to date, while this startling piece of 10th-century Islamic minimalism might have been finished yesterday,” he said.

Great Art

Organizers hope the exhibition will clear misconceptions that Islam was poor in art and creativity.

Some of the audience admired a miniature of a poet, many highly decorated musical instruments and countless paintings of people playing on musical instruments.

“Music was an integral part of our culture,” Alnoor Merchant, the curator of the collection at London’s Ismaili Centre told the BBC.

“The notion that music was not allowed is a fallacy. Music and gamesmanship were a part of normal life.”

Aga Khan, owner of the unique collection, said the exhibition is dedicated to change the way people think about Islam.

“The essential problem, as I see it, in relations between the Muslim world and the West is a clash of ignorance,” the spiritual leader of nearly 15 million Ismaili Muslims living in some 25 countries around the globe, said in a recent speech.

He hopes that his collection will be an opportunity to open a dialogue and foster cultural understanding.

Merchant agreed that the exhibition has revealed dramatically the considerable lack of knowledge of the Muslim world in many Western societies.

“This exhibition seeks to show that Islam has a heritage that is a shared legacy,” he said.

“It is not about killing and suicide bombings.”

AMSI Net- Islamonline
Source: http://uruknet.info/?p=m34730&s1=h1

Power and glory: an Aga Khan saga

For 50 years, an enigmatic billionaire has been a spiritual figurehead to millions of Ismaili Muslims. To celebrate, he’s showing off his art collection. Paul Vallely explores his wonderful world

Published: 14 July 2007

Amid the breath-taking collection of pieces from the previously unseen art collection of the Aga Khan which opens in London today - including an 11th-century bird incense burner, exquisite textiles and ceramics and ancient manuscripts finely decorated with gold and lapis lazuli - is a segment of a book by a man with two names.

Its title is The Canon of Medicine and it was a primary medical text for an extraordinary 500 years through Europe and the Middle East. The medieval scholars of Christendom called him Avicenna. But in his native Persia, the man who was the foremost physician, astronomer, logician, mathematician, philosopher, physicist, scientist and theologian, of his day was called Ibn Sina.

The days when two great cultures could lay common claim to such a sage seem long gone in our own age, when relations between Islam and the West are commonly characterised as a “clash of civilisations”. But the antidote to the sound and fury of our modern discourse may yet be found in the great storehouse of such art.

Certainly, the Aga Khan believes so. The man whose personal wealth is said to exceed $1bn is an anomalous figure. He is, on the one hand, a twice-married jet-setter who owns a chain of luxury hotels, an airline, mobile phone companies, hundreds of thoroughbred racehorses, valuable stud farms, an exclusive yacht club on Sardinia, a grand estate near Paris and more than 90 businesses employing more than 36,000 people. But he is also the spiritual leader of the world’s 15 million Ismaili Muslims who, in what is described as a dizzyingly complex system of tithes, pay him what is thought to be hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

The man who this week celebrated his 50th anniversary as Aga Khan has unconditional control of this massive fortune. Prince Karim Al Husseini, the 49th Imam of the Ismailis and the fourth Aga Khan, does enjoy the appurtenances of wealth, though one of his spokesmen this week, while conceding his boss did own two jets, pointed out that his car is only an Audi and that his yacht is 25 years old.

But the Aga Khan takes his duties as a religious leader seriously. Though his business portfolio is run for profit, most of his investment is in small and medium-size enterprises in Africa, India, Pakistan and the poorer parts of Asia, which he set up as engines of employment to promote economic self-reliance among the poorest people. And he runs the Aga Khan Development Foundation, the world’s largest private aid agency, which gives away $300m a year for rural development, education and healthcare in the developing world.

Now he wants to turn even his private art collection into an ethical instrument. “Political situations with a theological overlay are causing disaffection or antagonism between communities of the same faith, and even more so amongst different faiths,” he said, as the final touches were being put to the exhibition in the Ismaili Centre in London this week. “At the centre of this turbulence is Islam. We cannot let this continue.”

His exhibition, he hopes, will provide the opportunity for a more enlightened encounter and go some way to dispelling the “countless misconceptions and misunderstandings” between Islam and the West, a gap which did not gape so dangerously in the more tolerant time of Ibn Sina. Today, he said in a rare interview on American public radio, “knowledge of the different civilisations of the Islamic world, of the pluralism of that world, of the plurality of interpretations of Islam, is very, very shallow indeed, and is a significant contributor to misunderstanding.” This was true not just of non-Muslims but among many who hold the faith and who falsely believe that the beliefs of the world’s 1.4 billion Muslims “are all identical” when they are not.

That such sentiments are voiced by the leader of the world’s Ismailis is itself an indicator of the possibility of change. For his sect grows out of the very prototype of Islamist terrorism.

In the 7th century, Muslims split into the Sunni and the Shia, in a dispute over who should succeed the Prophet Mohamed. The Sunni wanted the caliph elected. The Shia insisted succession should remain within the direct line of the Prophet’s closest relatives. Sunnis placed the emphasis on primarily political and military leadership; the Shia emphasised the need for wisdom and spirituality. Eventually, the Shia themselves divided. Most, including the majority populations in Iran and Iraq, believe there was an unbroken line of 12 imams, the last of whom will return to usher in a reign of justice.

But the second biggest group, the Ismailis, trace their own leadership from the seventh imam, Isma’il bin Jafar, and believe a mystical teaching is passed down from one imam to the next. The present Aga Khan was a 20-year-old student at Harvard, when, in 1957, his grandfather nominated him (bypassing his two sons, including the playboy Aly Khan) as the 49th hereditary imam of the Shia Ismailis.

What historically defined the Ismailis was a mystic secret society known as the hashishinnya - from which we get our word assassin - whose members specialised in bold, politically motivated murders. Their targets were the Sunni rulers known as the Seljuks. Their aim was to kill only their target, without additional casualties, and they wanted to dispatch their victims in public. Rejecting poison, bows or other weapons which could allow the attacker to escape, they preferred daggers. They never committed suicide afterwards, preferring to be killed by the entourage of their victims.

They soon built up a fearsome reputation which inspired terror out of all proportion to their tiny numbers. They were led by Rashid Al-Din Sinan known to the Crusaders as “The Old Man of the Mountains”. The legends grew wild. The word hashishinnya was said to derive from reports that they took hashish before missions to calm themselves, boost their strength or turn them into madmen in battle. Modern scholarship discounts all this as sheer invention by bewildered opponents desperate to seek some convincing psychological explanation of the fearless zealotry of the assassins. There is no evidence to suggest hashish or any other drug was used in any systematic fashion.

But what is more remarkable is the way that the Ismailis then slowly transformed themselves into a different religious disposition. They became more mystical, seeing particular significance in different numbers, seven being a central one. They began to pray three times a day instead of five. But, most strikingly, they began to acculturate themselves into the different societies in which they found themselves as they spread across Asia and Africa, then Europe and North America.

Ismailis were crucial in translating the Greek texts of Plato and Aristotle into Arabic, preserving them when Western Europe lost the originals. Ibn Sina did not just produce that classic medical textbook but also a philosophy that profoundly influenced that of Thomas Aquinas and thus the whole of Western theology and philosophy. The Ismailis established the world’s oldest universities. Through them, agriculture, commerce, the arts, the sciences and philosophy flourished.

“The central trait of their long history is a remarkable tendency to acculturate to different contexts,” says Ali S Asani, a professor of Indo-Muslim languages and culture at Harvard. Today, though the Ismailis are but a small minority of Muslims - about 20 million, against 120 million Shia and more than a billion Sunnis worldwide - their influence is disproportionate.

It has brought them to an outlook on life which can act to bridge the chasm which some see between Islam and the West. “The role and responsibility of an Imam,” the Aga Khan said, “is to interpret the faith to the community, and also to do all within his means to improve the quality, and security of their daily lives.” At its heart is an active struggle for social justice and human development through wealth creation, one which extends beyond the Ismaili community itself into the wider societies in which it finds itself.

Through the Aga Khan Development Network, it works for reductions in global poverty, advancement of the status of women and the furthering of pluralistic values. It is involved in a great breadth of activities from disaster relief, basic healthcare, rural development, microlending to the poorest and the promotion of private enterprise to architecture, culture and the revitalisation of historic cities. It has more than 300 schools and 200 hospitals and clinics, and finances risky projects of which commercial investors fight shy. It is the biggest single investor in Afghanistan, with a $400m development portfolio there.

“If you travel the developing world, you see poverty is the driver of tragic despair,” the Aga Khan said. By assisting the poor in business “we are developing protection against extremism”.

His view of Islam, as a teacher of compassion, tolerance and upholder of the dignity of man strikes a very different note from the discordant voices of extremism. His exhibition of art, like his other works, will, he hopes, speak that truth more loudly still.

Aga Khan, spiritual leader to 15 million Ismaili Muslims, marks golden jubilee

TORONTO (CP) - As Ismaili Muslims around the world mark the occasion Wednesday of the Aga Khan’s golden jubilee, Canadians among them are grateful not only for his guidance and leadership, but also for his assistance in helping them make their homes in Canada.

“We know from our parents and our grandparents the conditions under which we lived in East Africa, the conditions under which we had to flee Africa,” said Amir Karim, a Montreal volunteer with the Ismaili Council for Canada.

“And I think we are very thankful to His Highness that 35 years later we are here, we got ourselves a good education, careers, and are, most importantly, contributing back to the society which accepted us.”

The spiritual leader of the Ismailis is His Highness Prince Karim Aga Khan, who became the 49th hereditary Imam of the Shia Imami Ismaili Muslims on July 11, 1957, at age 20, following the death of his grandfather.

He’s well known beyond his religious community for his wealth and for his good works - the Aga Khan Development Network, or AKDN, a group of private, international and non-denominational agencies, spends more than US$320 million a year on social and cultural development activities, mostly in the poorest regions of Africa and Asia. Among the many honours bestowed on him is honorary companion of the Order of Canada.

The Aga Khan was born in Geneva, spent his early years in Nairobi, was schooled partly in Switzerland and graduated from Harvard University in 1959 after studying Islamic history.

He now resides in France and leads about 15 million Ismailis in about 25 countries, including a vibrant community of between 80,000 and 100,000 in Canada.
Karim said there were two major waves of migration to Canada.

“Idi Amin in Uganda had asked all residents of Indian descent to leave Uganda within a certain number of days. Ismailis had to find new homes, and so a number of them came to Canada in 1972-ish,” he said.

“The second big wave of immigration was in the early ’90s with the collapse of the Soviet Union. There are many, many Ismailis who live in central Asia, and some of them were fleeing the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.”

Eighty to 90 per cent of Muslims are Sunni, while 10 to 20 per cent are Shia, Karim said. Ismailis are Shias, and along with other Shia Muslims believe that after the death of the Prophet Muhammad, authority and leadership of the community was passed to his cousin and son-in-law, Ali, and would continue by heredity though Ali and his wife Fatima, the Prophet’s daughter.

“What characterizes Ismaili Muslims is that we consider the Aga Khan, the 49th direct descendant of the Prophet Muhammad, as our Imam, or spiritual leader,” Karim explained.

“This is not only a commemoration of 50 years of leadership, but it is also a commemoration or a reminder to ourselves, Ismailis, that this is 1,400 years of history.”
Karim said it’s part of Ismaili tradition to mark epochal events in the lives of their imams, and a time to reflect on their work.

Reena Lalji, a Toronto lawyer and volunteer with the Ismaili Council for Ontario, agreed.
“A very fundamental ethos of Islam is to give to the less fortunate, to help the less fortunate, to assist with the betterment of the lives of people around you,” she said. “And that’s what is being accomplished through the AKDN.”

Karim noted the importance of compassion and sharing.

“His Highness tells his community to always remember, not to think about ‘what have I achieved today?’ but ‘what have I helped others to achieve?”‘

A statement issued by the Aiglemont estate in France, headquarters of the AKDN, said jubilee celebrations “offer occasions to launch new social, cultural and economic development projects.”

An event in France marking the jubilee Wednesday will be private, but Karim and Lalji both expressed the hope that the Aga Khan’s travels in the coming year will bring him to Canada.

Jason Kenney, secretary of state for multiculturalism and Canadian identity, issued a statement recognizing the golden jubilee and encouraging Canadians to learn more about the Aga Khan’s “substantial contributions to international development, and the Canadian community’s very impressive achievements.”

Last October, the Aga Khan and Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced the federal government and the Aga Khan would each contribute $30 million to a new Global Centre for Pluralism in Ottawa.
The think-tank and research facility will be housed in the old Canadian War Museum.
The Aga Khan wants “to essentially export the Canadian values of pluralism and tolerance to other countries,” Lalji said.

The Aga Khan is also establishing a representative office on Sussex Drive in Ottawa, designed by architect Fumihiko Maki.

In addition, Toronto will be the site of the Aga Khan Museum, and a new Ismaili Centre with classrooms, a library and a prayer hall.

“The museum will contain works from the Aga Khan’s family collection, as well as other collections,” Lalji said.

The relationship between the federal government and the Aga Khan dates back about 25 years, when the Canadian International Development Agency, or CIDA, became involved with the network.

“I think by building such a strong presence in Ottawa, what His Highness is saying is that this relationship is ready to go to the next level,” said Karim.

©All rights reserved, news from Canadian Press

Aga Khan a Man of Vision, Inspiration

How do you explain your faith to people who do not share your truth claims and who find your sacred practices foreign?

As a minority within a minority within a minority in the West – a Muslim, a Shia, an Ismaili – I have long struggled with that question.

When I was a child and I had to explain why I was fasting from food and drink on a certain day, or why I wore an Arabic symbol for God on a chain around my neck, I would put my head down and mutter: “My mom makes me do it.”

In a world where people from different faith backgrounds are in constant contact with one another, and there are forces who actively seek to sow division between diverse people, we need better ways to build understanding. We need what I call a ‘public language’ of faith, a language which highlights the history of our traditions, and the good works they are doing for the broader world.

Every tradition has a history, and while yours might be different from mine, I expect that you will have more understanding for who I am and how I practice faith if I tell you a little about where I come from. And every tradition has a core which seeks to serve others. And if I tell you about how the people, institutions and leader of my faith are helping people live more peaceful and prosperous lives, I think that you will have deeper respect – perhaps even admiration – for my tradition.

Today, on one of the holiest days of my life, I want to use this public language of faith, in the hopes that it will provide a window of understanding into my tradition and community.

Today, I celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Imamat of my spiritual leader, the Aga Khan.

I am an Ismaili Muslim, one of 15 million members of a Shia Muslim community spread across 25 countries. Ismailis, like all Muslims, affirm the Shahada – that there is no god but God and Muhammad is God’s messenger. Like all Shia, we believe that the Prophet Muhammad appointed his cousin and son-in-law Ali to lead the Muslim community after his death. Ali was known as the first Imam (this is not to be confused with the small ‘i’ imam, as in the person who leads Muslim congregational prayers), a designation that carried with it the unique ability to interpret the meaning and application of the Holy Qur’an in changing times. The Imam, according to Shia tradition, chooses his successor from within the Ahl al-Bayt, or the family of the Prophet. Over the course of history, disputes arose over the appointment of certain Imams, and the Shia split into multiple communities.

Today, the Ismailis are the only Shia community with a living and present Imam. The current Aga Khan is the 49th in the line of Imams recognized by Ismailis. Previous Imams have played a significant role within the Muslim ummah and the wider world. Ali was not only the first Shia Imam, he was also the fourth Caliph of the entire Muslim community. Ismaili Imams laid the foundation for the modern city of Cairo in the 10th century, and built there one of the world’s most ancient universities, Al Azhar. This Imam’s immediate predecessor, Sultan Muhammad Shah, served as the President of the League of Nations and was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.

As an Ismaili, I look to the Aga Khan for religious guidance. But one does not need to have a spiritual allegiance to the Aga Khan to admire the work of his institutions. As the Chairman of the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) - an innovative and highly effective association of health, education, cultural and economic development institutions - he has helped literally millions of people in forgotten parts of the developing world live more peaceful, prosperous and dignified lives.

Consider these concrete examples:

-There are 300 Aga Khan schools in the world, educating 62,000 students and employing nearly 5000 staff.

- There are over 200 Aga Khan health centers in the world, caring for nearly two million and employing nearly 10,000 staff.

- The AKDN is currently building the University of Central Asia, whose purpose is to foster the human and social capital for democracy, pluralism and prosperity in a region that gets far too little attention.

- When a tragic earthquake struck Kashmir in 2005, AKDN helicopters were amongst the first to arrive on the scene.

Two particularly distinctive aspects of the AKDN is its understanding that culture – architecture, poetry, music, calligraphy – is a crucial part of human existence, and its commitment to nurturing effective private enterprise in developing countries. On the culture front, the AKDN built Al Azhar park in Cairo and restored Humayan’s Tomb in India. It has supported everything from indigenous music in Tajikistan to Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Project. Regarding effective private enterprise, Roshan, a mobile phone company that the AKDN owns a 51% share in, is the single largest private employer in Afghanistan.

A substantial amount of this work is funded by the private resources of the Aga Khan and the Ismaili community. (I serve on the National Committee of the Aga Khan Foundation in the USA, which raises money and awareness for AKDN programs around the world, especially through the Partnership Walk). But all of it – the hospitals and schools, the private companies and university courses – is non-sectarian. In fact, these programs are specifically designed to nurture pluralism. As the Aga Khan once said, “Tolerance, openness and understanding toward other peoples’ cultures, social structures, values and faiths are now essential to the very survival of an interdependent world. Pluralism is no longer simply an asset or a prerequisite for progress and development, it is vital to our existence.”

There is a guiding philosophy, an animating ethos, behind the AKDN – Islam. Over and over again, the Aga Khan has emphasized that his work for mercy, compassion and dignity emerge directly from his commitment to Islam.

So while many people call the Aga Khan a leading philanthropist, I believe that term captures neither his inspiration nor his vision.

He is the Imam of the Ismaili community. He is a Muslim.

“On Faith” panelist Eboo Patel is the Executive Director of the Interfaith Youth Core and the author of “ Acts of Faith.”

Source: http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/guestvoices/2007/07/aga_khan_a_man_of_vision_inspi.html

Ismailis ready to celebrate

Spiritual leader’s 50 years of guidance recognized with events throughout the year in Calgary

Graeme Morton, Calgary Herald
Published: Saturday, July 07, 2007

Calgary’s Ismaili Muslim community is ready to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the ascension to the Imamat of their spiritual leader, the Aga Khan.

While the actual anniversary will be marked at five local Ismaili jamatkhanas (places of gathering) next Wednesday, events are planned throughout the year, says Sameera Sereda a volunteer with the Shia Ismaili Muslim Community of Calgary.

Born in Switzerland in 1936, the Aga Khan became Imam to the world’s Ismaili Muslims on July 11, 1957, succeeding his grandfather. He was a 20-year-old Harvard University student at the time.

For Ismailis, the Aga Khan is the 49th hereditary Imam and a direct descendant of the Prophet Muhammad,” Sereda says. “That direct link of a living descendant is very special to us; it speaks of 1,400 years of history.” Sereda says the Aga Khan’s mission as leader of the world’s Ismailis is multi-faceted.

“As our spiritual leader, his role is to interpret the faith and to advance the well-being of the Ismaili community from both a spiritual and a worldly aspect and improve the quality of life of the societies in which Ismailis live,” she says.

“But it goes far beyond that. We are called to contribute positively to our community and our world; that’s a fundamental ethic of Islam.” The Stampede is a prime time for local Ismailis to pitch in, Sereda says. A pancake breakfast this morning under a large tent near the airport is expected to draw 8,000 people. It will help celebrate new bonds being forged between Calgary Ismailis and Habitat for Humanity to help tackle the city’s need for affordable housing.

“For us, volunteering and giving back to our community is a faith-based value,” says Sereda, a Calgary legal recruiter. Sereda says in recent years local Ismailis have formed partnerships with a number of local social agencies to offer both their sweat and expertise.

“Habitat for Humanity is the latest in that history and it’s going to be a long-term commitment,” Sereda says.

Sereda says the Aga Khan Development Network, an umbrella organization active in many of the world’s poorest regions, embodies the social conscience of Islam expressed through concrete, humanitarian action.

“Its work in health, education and many other fields is completely non-denominational. It responds wherever the need is greatest, specifically in areas of Africa and Asia,” she adds.

Calgary is home to about 10,000 of Canada’s estimated 90,000 Ismailis.

The first major wave of Ismaili immigration to Canada came in the early 1970s, spawned by the mass expulsion of South Asians from Uganda by dictator Idi Amin and turmoil in other East African nations.

One of those was Calgary writer Mansoor Ladha, who has met the Aga Khan twice; first in 1968 as a young reporter in Tanzania, the second time as a leader of Edmonton’s Ismaili community in 1979.

“In Tanzania, I interviewed him about economic development and political issues of the time such as apartheid in South Africa,” recalls Ladha.

“In Edmonton, it was very much a visit by our spiritual leader. What struck me was how effortlessly and eloquently he could speak in either world.

“You could immediately tell the impressive qualities of the man that have made him so respected,” says Ladha, who is writing a book about Ismaili settlement in Canada.

The Aga Khan, Sereda says, has always had a strong affinity for Canada, a country he holds up as an example of a progressive, pluralistic society in a turbulent world. In partnership with the federal government, he is opening the Global Centre for Pluralism in Ottawa. It will act as an institution for research, study and promotion of pluralistic values and practices in culturally diverse societies worldwide.

“Even within our Calgary Ismaili community, there are people from many different countries,” Ladha adds.

Sereda says Ismailis will take the next 12 months to celebrate the Aga Khan’s leadership over 50 years, but also “to search our own hearts for what we can do as individuals to serve mankind.” She says she expects the Aga Khan will visit as many of the 25-plus countries where Ismaili Muslims live as he can in the next year.

“The last time he was in Calgary was 1992, so we hope we’ll be on his list.”

gmorton@theherald.canwest.com
 

Aga Khan calls for ‘great alliance’ in development

By CHURCHILL OTIENO

The EastAfrican

Afghanistan has turned to a development model first tried in Nairobi in 1986 to give its reconstruction a badly needed burst of energy after nearly three decades of war against Russia and a civil war.

The meeting in 1986 in the Kenyan capital was hosted by then President Daniel arap Moi and it was there that the Aga Khan raised, for the first time, the need for governments to provide an enabling environment to attract investments. 

Kenya at the time faced some of the problems bedevilling Afghanistan today, with reluctance by foreign investors to move into a high- risk environment topping the list.

It was at the Nairobi meeting that the phrase “enabling environment” was coined. It signifies the presence of political stability, safety and security, citizens’ rights, predictable democratic practices and efficient legal and administrative frameworks. 

Last week, a similar message was passed on to Kabul during a high-level conference believed to be the largest such gathering held in the Afghan capital in recent years. It was jointly organised by the Afghanistan government and the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) to help spur development in the war-weary country. The World Bank, the United Nations Development Fund and the Asian Development Bank were also involved in hosting the Conference, which was attended by the Afghan President Hamid Karzai, his First Vice-President Ahmad Zia Massoud and several Cabinet ministers and government officials.

The prescription was one that any country that has seen its economy looking up in the recent years knows only too well — open up for business, ease movement of goods and services into and out of the country, fix the infrastructure, attract foreign investment and ensure a secure environment, the ingredients for the so-called enabling environment.

While the case at hand was the reconstruction of Afghanistan, many lessons abound for other developing countries, especially Kenya and the Eastern African region, where the idea was first planted.

Badly in need of foreign investment to set it on the path to growth, Afghanistan is reaching out for goodwill from key regional and world heavyweights in politics, business, aid and civil society.

Key leaders who have chosen to help the country rise, and who participated at last week’s Enabling Environment Conference, included Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, the Aga Khan, Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, Celtel founder Dr Mo Ibrahim and Prince Amyn Aga Khan. Others were representatives from the World Bank, the UNDP and the Asian Development Bank.

The conference provided a rare opportunity for the state, business and civil society — including multilateral institutions such as the World Bank — to come together and discuss the measures that needed to be taken to set the mountainous country on the road to development.

The challenge is huge, but two aspects stand out. First is the need to reduce the insecurity orchestrated by Taliban insurgents, who are yet to accept defeat five years after they were deposed from power post-9/11. Second is the long-thriving growing of opium poppy has ensured that the country remains the chief producer of the heroin worldwide.

The deliberations gave birth to eight action points, whose implementation was seen as key to the country’s development:

1. Enactment of laws to establish the basic legal and regulatory framework that will encourage private sector involvement in social and economic development.

2. Strengthening the governance and operations of civil society organisations to enhance their contributions to the country’s social and economic development.

3. Alleviation of constraints hampering the operations of the private and public sectors.

4. Involvement of the private sector in the provision of public services through private-public partnerships (PPPs) and other means in areas such as power generation and distribution, water supply, transportation infrastructure and social development.

5. Facilitating access to land by clarifying property rights, simplifying procedures for the transfer of titles and allowing for longer-term leases.

6. Significantly expanding the outreach of a broad range of financial services throughout the country.

7. Building the structures, systems and capacity of mediation and arbitration tribunals to ensure efficient and impartial resolution of disputes.

8. Instilling active practice of social responsibility and philanthropy that leads to the institutionalisation of private (business and individual) support for economic and social development through civil society.

Setting the pace at the beginning of the conference, the Aga Khan called for a “great alliance” of government, communities and business to help drive growth in the developing world.

He said that while there are plenty of cases of good work by each of the three, their potential to improve lives is watered down by the fact that they apply their efforts separately.

The Aga Khan, the 49th hereditary Imam (spiritual leader) of the Shia Ismaili Muslims, was joined by several world leaders in calling on governments in developing countries to pursue policies that drive development by accelerating business growth.

“Laying the state’s political foundation is a necessary first step for an enabling environment, but even effective government can take us only so far,” said the Aga Khan, who marks his 50th anniversary as the leader of the Ismaili Community this year. “And that is why we have been talking more in recent years about two other sectors: first, what I often call the role of civil society; and, second, the capacities of the private sector.”

He said one of the major obstacles to development today “is that the efforts of all three sectors are too often scattered and fragmented”.

President Karzai told the conference that the long-term future of Afghanistan would depend on Afghans themselves. “Afghanistan’s prosperity today and in the future will be linked to our ability to attract and support private business,” he said. 

Malaysian Premier Badawi said one of his country’s key decisions in the 1980s was to progressively reduce the role of the state in conducting business. “We made the private sector, not the public sector, the primary engine of growth. We opened and liberalised our economy,” he said.

Speaking to journalists later, the Aga Khan urged patience with emerging countries as they work on reconstructing their economies.

“Society does not change that quickly,” he said. “I don’t expect a country that has just come out of decades of civil war to change within a few years,” the Aga Khan said in response to reports that some local businessmen had misgivings about the Kabul Government’s commitment to implementing the conference’s action points.

He discussed AKDN’s involvement in organising the Enabling Environment Conference as part of efforts to rebuild Afghanistan.

“Here we are talking about a young government working with a constitution that has not been tested?. What people are looking for is confidence in the process of change,” he said.

The Aga Khan said it was important for development agents to understand the value systems that drive poor communities and to find ways of working with them to improve their living standards.

He added that there is a need to develop civil society at the community level to help in driving growth.

“Ultimately, it is civil society that brings development. It is not the money, it is the institutions. You need money, but what changes lives are the institutions,” said the Aga Khan.

He said there were instances where international development agents have misled emerging countries, citing Africa, where countries that attained independence 50 years ago were discouraged from investing in higher education.

“Experts looked at the cost of producing a Bachelor of Arts graduate on a balance sheet and realised the individual would never bring back the money put into higher education. As a result, many African countries did not invest in higher education. 

“Several years later, experts came back and declared higher education in Africa a disaster,” he said, adding that many of the affected countries were today turning to civil society to help them provide decent higher education.

When he took the floor, Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz said the key to growth for the developing world were bold policy reforms, each country’s diaspora and the repeal of foreign investment caps.

Mr Aziz said most of these decisions required great courage, adding that experience around the world shows that the three things have helped emerging countries sustain development.

“In Pakistan, we are already seeing the benefit of the government having insisted on reforms that saw ministries solely focused on policy formulation, new institutions created for regulation and business left to the private sector,” he said.

He said the second thing was tapping the often immense potential inherent in a nation’s diaspora, citing the case of China: “The single-most important factor that propelled China’s growth initially was the Chinese diaspora.” 

The third point, he said, was allowing unlimited access for foreign investment in national economies. He discounted investment caps favoured by some countries to limit the level of equity that foreign investors can hold in different sectors.

“I call it the investment rate card. They tell you that as a foreign investor, you can only hold 30 per cent in this sector and 50 per cent in the other. In Pakistan, we have no such rate card,” he said in a keynote address during the closing of the conference.

Mr Aziz said developing countries should compare equity and debt: “If you go for equity, you pay back if the investment makes money, but if you go for debt, you pay back either way.” 

The PM said such policies have helped his country sustain annual growth for eight years, consistently registering more than 7 per cent in the past five years.

Aga Khan

His Highness the Aga Khan became Imam of the Shia Imami Ismaili Muslims on July 11, 1957 at the age of 20, succeeding his grandfather, Sir Sultan Mahomed Shah Aga Khan. He is the 49th hereditary Imam of the Shia Imami Ismaili Muslims and a direct descendant of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) through his cousin and son-in-law, Ali, the first Imam, and his wife Fatima, the Prophet’s daughter.

Introduction

Son of Prince Aly Khan and Princess Tajuddawlah Aly Khan, the Aga Khan was born on December 13, 1936, in Geneva. He spent his early childhood in Nairobi, Kenya, and then attended Le Rosey School in Switzerland for nine years. He graduated from Harvard University in 1959 with a BA Honors Degree in Islamic history.Like his grandfather Sir Sultan Mahomed Shah Aga Khan before him, the Aga Khan has, since assuming the office of Imamat in 1957, been concerned about the well-being of all Muslims, particularly in the face of the challenges of rapid historical changes. Today, the Ismailis live in some twenty-five countries, mainly in West and Central Asia, Africa and the Middle East, as well as in North America and Western Europe. Over the four decades since the present Aga Khan became Imam, there have been major political and economic changes in most of these areas. He has adapted the complex system of administering the Ismaili Community, pioneered by his grandfather during the colonial era, to a new world of nation-states, which even recently has grown in size and complexity following the newly acquired independence of the Central Asian Republics of the former Soviet Union.

View of Islam

The Aga Khan has emphasised the view of Islam as a thinking, spiritual faith, one that teaches compassion and tolerance and that upholds the dignity of man, Allah’s noblest creation. In the Shia tradition of Islam, it is the mandate of the Imam of the time to safeguard the individual’s right to personal intellectual search and to give practical expression to the ethical vision of society that the Islamic message inspires. Addressing, the International Conference on the Example (Seerat) of the Prophet Muhammad in Karachi in 1976, the Aga Khan said that the wisdom of Allah’s final Prophet in seeking new solutions for problems which could not be solved by traditional methods, provides the inspiration for Muslims to conceive a truly modern and dynamic society, without affecting the fundamental concepts of Islam.During the course of history, the Ismailis have, under the guidance of their Imams, made contributions to the growth of Islamic civilisation. Al-Azhar University and the Academy of Science, Dar al-Ilm, in Cairo and indeed the city of Cairo itself, exemplify their contributions to the cultural, religious and intellectual life of Muslims. Among the renowned philosophers, jurists, physicians, mathematicians, astronomers and scientists of the past who flourished under the patronage of Ismaili Imams are Qadi al-Numan, al-Kirmani, Ibn al-Haytham (al-Hazen), Nasir e-Khusraw and Nasir al-Din Tusi.

Achievements of the Fatimid Empire

Achievements of the Fatimid Empire dominate accounts of the early period of Ismaili history, roughly from the beginnings of Islam through the 11th century.Named after the Prophet’s daughter Fatima, the Fatimid dynasty created a state that stimulated the development of art, science, and trade in the Mediterranean Near East over two centuries. Its centre was Cairo, founded by the Fatimids as their capital. Following the Fatimid period, the Ismaili Muslims’ geographical centre shifted from Egypt to Syria and Persia. After their centre in Persia, Alamut, fell to Mongol conquerors in the 13th century, Ismailis lived for several centuries in dispersed communities, mainly in Persia and Central Asia but also in Syria, India and elsewhere. In the 1830s, Aga Hassanaly Shah, the 46th Ismaili Imam, was granted the honorary hereditary title of Aga Khan by the Shah of Persia. In 1843, the first Aga Khan left Persia for India, which already had a large Ismaili community. Aga Khan II died in 1885, only four years after assuming the Imamat. He was succeeded by the present Aga Khan’s grandfather, and predecessor as Imam, Sir Sultan Mahomed Shah Aga Khan.

A Tradition of International Service

In recent generations, the Aga Khan’s family has followed a tradition of service in international affairs. The Aga Khan’s grandfather was President of the League of Nations and his father, Prince Aly Khan, was Pakistan’s Ambassador to the United Nations. His uncle, Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan, was the longest-serving United Nations’ High Commissioner for Refugees, United Nations’ Coordinator for assistance to Afghanistan and United Nations’ Executive Delegate of the Iraq-Turkey border areas. The Aga Khan’s brother, Prince Amyn, worked at the United Nations Secretariat, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, following his graduation from Harvard in 1965. Since 1968, Prince Amyn has been closely involved with the governance of the principal development institutions of the Imamat. The Aga Khan’s eldest child and daughter, Princess Zahra, who graduated from Harvard in 1994 with a BA Honors Degree in Third World Development Studies, heads the Social Welfare Department at the Secretariat of His Highness the Aga Khan at Aiglemont, France. His elder son, Prince Rahim, who graduated from Brown University (USA) in 1995, and holds a business degree from the University of Navarra, Spain, has similar responsibilities in the Imamat’s economic development institutions. His younger son, Prince Hussain, who graduated from Williams College (USA) in 1997 and holds an M.A. in Economic and Political Development from Columbia, has been involved the cultural and environmental projects of the Aga Khan Development Network.In consonance with this vision of Islam and their tradition of service to humanity, wherever Ismailis live, they have elaborated a well-defined institutional framework to carry out social, economic and cultural activities. Under the Aga Khan’s leadership, this framework has expanded and evolved into the Aga Khan Development Network, a group of institutions working to improve living conditions and opportunities in specific regions of the developing world. In every country, these institutions work for the common good of all citizens regardless of their origin or religion. Their individual mandates range from architecture, education and health to the promotion of private sector enterprise, the enhancement of non-government organisations and rural development.

Recognition for the Aga Khan’s Work
 
Over the years, the Aga Khan has received numerous decorations, honorary degrees, and awards in recognition of the various dimensions of his work. He has received civilian decorations on one or more occasions from the governments of France, Portugal, Côte d’Ivoire, Upper Volta, Madagascar, Iran, Pakistan, Italy, Senegal, Morocco, Spain, and Tajikistan. In October 1998, on the occasion of the Award Ceremony of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, he was presented with the Gold Medal of the City of Granada.

His Highness has been awarded honorary degrees by universities in Pakistan, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. He has also received numerous awards and prizes from various professional organisations in recognition of his work in architecture and the conservation of historic buildings.

The title His Highness was granted by Her Majesty the Queen of Great Britain in 1957, and His Royal Highness by His Imperial Majesty the Shah of Iran in 1959.

Source: http://www.akdn.org/about.html