A Profile in Muslim Social Consciousness: The Aga Khan Development Network

by TAUFIQ RAHIM & QAHIR DHANANI

If you visited the Darb al-Ahmar district in Old Cairo a few years ago, you would have found a neglected neighborhood replete with economic and social difficulties, dilapidated houses and large-scale unemployment. Adjacent to it, you would have seen a massive landfill, which had been accumulating debris and other waste for five centuries.

Today, in that very same location stands the majestic Al-Azhar Park, a 30 hectare green space decorated by over 600,000 plants and trees. The park has served as a catalyst for development of the old city, revitalizing the area and drawing in over a million domestic and foreign visitors in less than two years.

Constructed by the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN), Al-Azhar Park is the centerpiece of a larger project of social and economic regeneration. It includes rehabilitation of houses and training of local workers, as well as provision of microcredit, healthcare and vocational education.

Al-Azhar Park is an illustration of a successful development intervention inspired by the vibrant tradition of social conscience in Islam. It represents, however, just one of the many examples blazing a path of sustainable development throughout the Muslim world and beyond.

The Qur’anic Call for Social Consciousness

Islam enjoins upon every Muslim the need to balance din and dunya, spiritual devotion with worldly responsibilities. For each individual the spiritual and material are intertwined in Islam, as faith informs and enlightens interactions within society.

For instance, the Qur’an exhorts: “Be good to parents and near of kin and orphans and the needy and to the neighbor who is related to you and the neighbor who is alien and to the companion by your side and the wayfarer” (4:36). It is important to note that the Qur’anic verse does not differentiate among gender, ethnicity, religion or background.

This empathy is accompanied by an ethic of societal responsibility that Muslims embrace as vicegerents of God to be dutiful stewards of the resources that have been bestowed upon us.

Muslims are thus required to go beyond charity and foster conditions that empower individuals to become equal partners in society. Furthermore, Islam not only prescribes the sharing of material wealth, but also calls upon Muslims to share their time and intellectual resources. Additionally, it encourages the establishment of sustainable institutions and infrastructure that fundamentally alter the forces that generate poverty.

The social conscience of Islam leads to a more nuanced understanding of the notion of “quality of life.” As a result, any endeavor contributing to the wellbeing of people must be holistic, preserve human dignity, and promote self-reliance.

Realizing Muslim Social Conscience

One particular individual who has heeded Islam’s call for social consciousness is the Aga Khan, the spiritual leader of the world’s Shi’a Ismaili Muslim community, who established AKDN, or the Network. The AKDN is a group of nine agencies with individual mandates in three broad categories: social development, economic development, and culture.

Employing over 70,000 in more than 30 countries in Asia and Africa, its activities benefit tens of millions of people. The Aga Khan has described these activities as “investing in people, in their pluralism, in their intellectual pursuit, and search for new and useful knowledge… inspired by the ethics of Islam.”

Under the leadership of the Aga Khan, AKDN strives to realize the social conscience of Islam through institutional action. The Network’s activities are unique in their approach, which target every level of human enterprise including individuals, communities, and economies, without regard to race, origin, gender or faith.

Enhancing Self-Reliance

Empowering communities to direct their own development while maintaining confidence in their own abilities of creating positive change, is integral to realize the social conscience of Islam. Indeed, the Qur’an (13:11) declares that God does not change peoples’ conditions unless they, themselves, take charge of changing their own condition.

The AKDN takes a participatory approach to development in rural communities. Rather than implement externally-conceived aid programs, each development priority is debated at the village level. The village organization then decides what to address first, and AKDN provides multi-sectoral technical assistance including access to microfinance to enable the development process.

The results of this approach have been significant. For example, the Aga Khan Rural Support Program (AKRSP) in the remote Northern Areas and Chitral regions of Pakistan has empowered local communities, facilitating income growth of over 300 percent and collective savings of over $8 million since its inception in the early 1980s. Literacy rates have also soared. Today, over 900,000 people in 1100 villages benefit from the Program, which also serves as a national model for rural development in Pakistan.

Based on the successes of AKRSP, similar programs were launched in India, Central Asia and Africa, with substantial results. In remote northeastern Tajikistan, for example, AKDN facilitated an increase of food self-sufficiency from 10 percent shortly after the collapse of communism to over 70 percent in recent years.

Building Capacity

In addition to empowering local communities, AKDN seeks to foster the long-term capacity of individuals in a number of ways ranging from conventional education and training to organizational strengthening and development.
In keeping with the ethic of intellectual pursuit, AKDN currently operates over 300 pre-primary, primary, and secondary schools across Asia and Africa. A new initiative is establishing around twenty means-blind, merit-based, Academies of Excellence that will concentrate resources on educating and developing a new cadre of leaders in the developing world.

In higher education, the Aga Khan University (AKU) and University of Central Asia address key professional gaps in the areas of medicine, nursing, teaching, and continuing education. Over the last 25 years, AKU has established programs and campuses in eight countries as far afield as East Africa and Europe. It has emerged as a premier institution of higher learning in the developing world. A faculty of arts and sciences at AKU will soon provide undergraduate and graduate degrees in a broad range of disciplines beyond medicine and education.

Catalyzing Economies

AKDN’s social programs are complemented by economic enterprises which it operates in collaboration with local and international development partners. The Network invests in fragile or post-conflict economies with an eye to development, but project companies are expected to make a profit over time.

In Afghanistan, AKDN established Roshan, a GSM mobile telephone service provider. Now recognized as the premier mobile phone operator in the country, it is the largest employer outside of government. It has over 1.2 million subscribers. Roshan has connected Afghans to one another, facilitated commerce and enabled economic progress.

In West Africa, AKDN helped to create a regional airline, establishing vital air links – a critical component of the transport infrastructure in a region where roads are impassable much of the year. Whereas it once took over 18 hours with a stopover in Paris to travel between Bamako, Mali and Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, it now takes only a few hours, and costs much less. These new transport links have facilitated commerce and enabled economic progress across the two countries.

Inspired by the social conscience of Islam and united by a vision to enable people, their communities, and their economies to progress together, AKDN has worked for over fifty years to foster a sustainable legacy of development and is a living example of the transformational power of the social conscience of Islam.

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TAUFIQ RAHIM and QAHIR DHANANI are students in the Graduate Public Policy Program at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
Source: http://www.islamicamagazine.com/Online-Analysis/AKDN-Profile.html

The Aga Khan Economic Planning Board for the United States Welcomes you to the Ismaili Business Conference

A unique Ismaili Business Conference is to be held in Houston, Texas on Saturday February 16th and Sunday February 17th, 2008. All Ismaili business owners, professionals, and those interested in joining the dynamic and exciting business world are encouraged to attend this event.  This conference will encompass a wide range of topics including important keynote sessions, sessions on traditional businesses such as convenience stores and fast food restaurants to real estate investments, hotel management, and sessions on emerging businesses. There will also be parallel sessions on financing, marketing and how to get the next generation engaged in family business.

The objectives of this conference are to introduce to the participants:

Methods of improving and enhancing the performance and value of their businesses by means of technology, professionalism, diversification and other innovative strategies.
To introduce to the attendees the spectrum of opportunities in the business world; in both traditional and emerging businesses.
Provide an exceptional opportunity for networking with other Ismaili entrepreneurs and professionals.

Teaching English as a Second Language Overseas

Teaching English as a Second Language (ESL) has evolved into a global industry. Teaching English abroad has become a great way to spend a few years overseas and experience the world before returning home. From Japan to Bulgaria, from Swaziland to Brazil, you will find a market for ESL almost anywhere.For workers in many countries, fluency in English is a ticket into the best high schools and universities, as well as into the global economy. Which helps explain why every day, with classes starting as early as 6 a.m. and continuing through to 10 p.m., millions and millions of students all over the world attend English classes. And they all need teachers to help them do it.

The Aga Khan builds a better world

Kelvin Browne, National Post Published: Saturday, January 12, 2008

UNDER THE EAVES OF ARCHITECTURE

THE AGA KHAN: BUILDER AND PATRON

By Philip Jodidio

“This book is not about architecture,” says Philip Jodidio, author of Under the Eaves of Architecture, the Aga Khan: Builder and Patron. He explains that, “It’s about a man and his commitment to bettering the life of many through improvements to the physical environment.”

The man is Prince Karim Aga Khan. He’s the 49th hereditary iman, or spiritual leader, of the Shia Imami Ismaili Muslims. He succeeded his grandfather in this role in 1957 at the age of 20. Approximately 15 million Ismailis live in more than 25 countries, including Canada and the United States.

Among other things, the book documents the winners of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture that began in 1977, illustrates the successes of the Aga Khan Historic Cities Program, and describes four fascinating new projects in Canada. These include the delegation of the Ismaili Imamat in Ottawa, the Ismaili Centre and Jamatkhana, the Aga Khan Museum, and the gardens that unite these two projects on a single site in Toronto. What’s unexpected is not the architecture the book showcases, which is mostly excellent, but the philosophy of the Aga Khan that maintains good architecture is a foundation for a better life.

This belief is beyond a narrow sense of architecture contributing to a spiritual life via religious buildings as you might as sume the Aga Khan’s focus might be. In an interview in the book from March, 2007, His Highness says, “In much of Islamic architecture you find a sense of spirituality. You find that spirituality not only in religious building. If you think of the history of landscape architecture and you relate that to references to heaven in the Koran, you find very strong statements about the value of the environment, the responses to the senses, to scent, to noise, music or water. You do not treat these spaces as theological spaces, you treat them as spaces that aim to give you a sense of spiritual happiness.”

The environment, built and natural, is intrinsic to our quality of life. This isn’t just rhetoric or someone getting on a trendy bandwagon. The Aga Khan was a pioneer environmentalist. One of his first projects in the early 1960s was on the beautiful but largely undeveloped Costa Smeralda. He gave himself the dual mandate of raising the standard of living of people there and, at the same time, protecting the remarkable landscape. Only recently have other developers tried to do both.

The Aga Khan says that when he first assumed his role and began to travel the world, he came into contact with poverty that was indescribable. Because of this, it’s understandable his interest in architecture was initially driven by how it could help improve the quality of life of the really poor. Ahead of his time again, he then realizes that, “Whereas in the consumer societies of the West you can build and then pull things down, in these ultra-poor societies you cannot afford to do that. What you have to do is to modify buildings or adjust them; therefore, the flexibility of the plan that you put into place has to be conceived with a different view of time than it would be in other parts of the world.”

He goes on to explain the difficulties of a western conception of architecture in poor countries and how important it is not impose this approach in terms of what is needed from a programmatic perspective or how a building should look. With the overwhelming influence of the modern (and western) approach to building in the 1960s and ’70s, literally using the local vernacular or the lessons it could give vis-a-vis sustainability seldom happened. While it seems obvious now, this insight was truly enlightened 40 years ago.

When Mr. Jodidio asks why the Aga Khan created an award for architecture, the notion of sustainability is implicit in his response. “One of the factors leading to the award was what I would call the deconstruction of the cultural inheritance … We worried about the loss of cultural continuity in the physical environment … there was no serious analysis of traditions and how they came into place, or how they could be revived and used in modern buildings.”

At the conclusion of the interview, the Aga Khan reiterates his holistic notion of the place of architecture in life. He says, “You cannot conceive of quality of life change without integrating the physical environment. Everyday you live under a roof.”

Source: http://www.nationalpost.com/life/homes/story.html?id=232191&p=2

Libraries Are a Key Part of Cities’ Revitalization Plans

January 6, 2008
The Daily Herald

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While on a recent trip to Atlanta, Georgia, I visited the Atlanta Botanical Garden. On exhibit was the Aga Khan Historic Cities Programme Exhibition.

I was fascinated by large before and after photographs of historic sites around the Muslim world such as the Gardens of Humayun’s Tomb in Delhi, the Citadels of Aleppo and Masyaf in Syria. For more information go to www.akdn.org and click on “historic cities” in the column on the far left of the page.

Since l992, the Aga Khan Historic Cities Programme (AKHCP) has been undertaking restoration of historic structures and public spaces. Our tour guide explained the thinking behind this initiative by noting that rehabilitation of urban areas sparks social, economic, and cultural development within communities where Muslims have a significant presence. The projects go beyond mere refurbishment of the site addressing questions of the social and environmental context of the site to the local population. Each project includes adaptive re-use, an effort toward institutional sustainability and training of local people.
These projects impressed me as an enlightened way to preserve culture, engage in urban renewal, and give an economic boost to the local population.

Public libraries often serve a similar function. In Schaumburg, an old shopping center near the center of the village was shuttered and had become a real eyesore. In l995, new Mayor Al Larson saw an opportunity. By l998, the new 166,500 square foot Schaumburg Township District Library was dedicated and became the anchor for the revitalized shopping center.

Libraries are really good in this capacity because they are open long hours and are fun places of learning and culture that one visits again and again. Libraries are places where the community comes together.

The Schaumburg story was repeated in Des Plaines. Downtown Des Plaines was a collection of small shops and assorted buildings facing the railroad tracks. It had merely grown up over the years and was neither beautiful nor impressive. City planners wanted a project that would give identity to the downtown so, naturally, the library was selected as an anchor for this redevelopment. The current 82,000 square foot Des Plaines Public Library was dedicated on September 24, 2000.
The City of Chicago has long used libraries as an impetus for economic development. Mayor Richard M. Daley has said, “In Chicago, we look at schools and libraries as the anchors of society. Learning is key to success in this information and technology economy. Libraries are key to safe neighborhoods. That is why we have built so many libraries and why they also are architecturally beautiful.”

Starting with the downtown Harold Washington Library Center, completed in l991, in the once less than trendy South Loop neighborhood, Chicago library construction has been credited with the building of about 10,000 units of new housing, improvement to streetscapes, schools and parks, expansion of educational institutions and redevelopment with uses as diverse as blues clubs and trendy hotels.

Since Mayor Daley has been in office, 52 of the system’s 79 branches have been reconstructed or seriously renovated. Library Commissioner Mary Dempsey said, “I’ve purchased and knocked down more liquor stores, more no-tell motels, more really crummy and dilapidated, burned-out buildings in neighborhood after neighborhood and replaced them with libraries than I’d ever thought I’d do in my life.”

What do forward-thinking library planners have in common with His Highness, the Aga Kahn? Both believe in and have seen the positive effects of investing in cultural institutions that have deep roots in the community. A new or refurbished building is nice, but it takes a building plus an ongoing program to really have an impact.