The University of Texas has established a five-year exchange agreement with Aga Khan University in Pakistan.

The agreement will expand UTeach-Liberal Arts’ Muslim Histories and Cultures Program, a training program for Texas high school teachers. The program offers seminars and workshops on Muslim history and cultures. More than 80 secondary school teachers from school districts in Austin, Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston have participated in the program.

Under the agreement with AKU, the program will train additional Texas teachers from an expanded number of districts during the next three years.

“The agreement formalizes many relationships that are already in place between our two universities,” says Richard Flores, senior associate dean of the College of Liberal Arts. “Our hope is that the collaborations will help to dispel many of the myths and stereotypes about Islam that persist, and foster greater understanding between Texas and the Muslim world.”

AKU has 11 campuses in eight countries, including Afghanistan, Kenya, Pakistan, Tanzania, Uganda, Syria, Egypt and the United Kingdom.

Source: http://www.bizjournals.com/austin/stories/2008/04/14/daily10.html 

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  Posted in         Ismaili News

The Associated Press | Published: April 11, 2008

AUSTIN, Texas: The Aga Khan, spiritual leader of 20 million Ismaili Muslims worldwide, was to begin an eight-day U.S. visit Friday in Texas that will be highlighted by the announcement of a nearly $1 billion (€630 million) initiative to establish residential schools in 14 countries in Africa, the Middle East, Central and South Asia.

The visit was the latest in a series of trips by the Aga Khan to mark his 50th anniversary, or Golden Jubilee, as imam of the Shia Ismaili Muslim community. He previously visited East and Southern Africa, and will later be traveling to Dubai.

Tens of thousands of Ismaili Muslims live in Texas, and many of them are expected to hear their spiritual leader speak in San Antonio on Sunday.

The 71-year-old Aga Khan, one of the world’s richest men and a major philanthropist, was also planning to visit California, Illinois and Georgia.

On April 18, the Aga Khan was scheduled to deliver the annual Peterson Lecture at a conference in Atlanta marking the 40th anniversary of the International Baccalaureate program that is now offered to more than 600,000 students in nearly 2,300 schools in 127 countries.
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In the speech, he plans to announce plans to establish 18 Aga Khan Academies, with each school expected to cost around $50 million (€31.6 million), in 14 countries, according to his spokesman Nazim Karim. One academy has already opened in Kenya, and others are being constructed in Tanzania, Uganda and India so far.

The academies, which will offer the International Baccalaureate program, reflect the Aga Khan’s “commitment to education and the need for excellence to promote civil society and encourage democracy and pluralism in developing countries,” Karim said in an e-mail to The Associated Press.

In Texas, the Aga Khan was scheduled to meet with Gov. Rick Perry on Saturday and attend the signing of a student and faculty exchange agreement between the University of Texas and the Aga Khan University, which has campuses in Pakistan and other countries.

The governor was scheduled to host a private dinner Saturday night and then a fireworks show near Austin for the Aga Khan, a Harvard-educated businessman and philanthropist who traces his lineage to the Prophet Muhammad.

Perry and the Aga Khan became friends nearly a decade ago. Their friendship resulted in a University of Texas program that exposes state teachers to Muslim history and culture. It is funded by the Aga Khan Development Network, one of the world’s largest private development agencies.

The Aga Khan was also scheduled to attend an event Saturday at an exotic game ranch in Buda.

The present Aga Khan succeeded his grandfather as the 49th hereditary imam of the Ismaili Muslims in 1957. Ismaili Muslims are a branch of the Shiite community.

Source: http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/04/11/america/NA-GEN-US-Aga-Khan-Golden-Jubilee.php

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  Posted in         Ismaili News

April 8th, 2008 | By Jon Boone

Afghanistan businesses are moving cash reserves overseas after learning that the government claimed it was owed more than $285,000 in back taxes from the Aga Khan’s luxury hotel development in Kabul.

A fortnight after eight guests and staff were killed by a terrorist attack at the city’s most upmarket hotel on January 14, the ministry of finance took the money from the dollar account of the Serena hotel without warning.

After two years in operation, the Serena, an elegant five-star hotel set up by the Aga Khan in the hope that it would spur other international investors, has yet to make healthy profits.

The ministry of finance said it was within Afghan law to settle tax disputes by freezing or “making transfers” from private accounts. But Christopher Newbery, the hotel’s general manager, said the sudden withdrawal of funds could not have come at a worse time. The hotel’s revenue had dried up after a team of suicide bombers detonated themselves in front of the compound in central Kabul and it needed cash to repair the damage.

“We were absolutely furious because having been attacked on January 14, on January 29 we had a second attack when the government took our money at just the moment we needed it most.”

The case has highlighted the risks of starting businesses in a country where entrepreneurs say government interference and “nuisance taxes” are as big a problem as declining security and a decrepit national electricity supply.

Three companies, which declined to be named, told the Financial Times that they were taking cash out of the country to protect their businesses.

The Serena is one of two businesses that the Aga Khan Development Network has invested in as part of a private sector-led development programme. Frantic lobbying of Hamid Karzai, the president, by the ambassador to the Aga Khan, the billionaire spiritual leader of the Ismaili Muslim community, led to the money being temporarily repaid.

The ministry of finance says it expects the money to be paid to the government in three tranches. But the Serena’s tax consultants say the amount owed, which related to tax accrued by the Indian construction company that built the hotel, is more like $50,000 (?25,000, 32,000).

At a meeting on December 31 they paid that sum as a goodwill gesture and were told by Sharifullah Ibrahimi, the deputy minister of finance, that the dispute would only be settled after a full audit by the country’s large taxpayer’s office.

“It was as if the meeting had never taken place,” Mr Newbery said. “Not only did they simply help themselves to money, they claimed that we had never paid the $50,000. That’s what they do to people who actually pay their taxes – they take whatever they can get.”

Cases such as these are, the Afghan business community says, damaging the country’s efforts to build its economy, so Afghanistan can pay its own way when the foreign cash that pays for almost everything the government does dries up.

But the private sector is so limited – and so reliant on money spent by international consultants, diplomats and aid workers – that a French restaurant in Kabul catering to the culinary needs of the city’s expats is one of the country’s 100 biggest taxpayers.

Taxes, along with crime and persistent power outages, are leading some businesses to stop projects or relocate some or all of their businesses to Dubai. Saad Mohseni, chief executive of Moby Media, which runs television and radio stations, says he recently had videotapes of imported Indian television programmes impounded at Kabul airport because a government agency believed they should be paying on the content.

“The government says it is dealing with these so-called nuisance taxes but it’s ridiculous that after seven years we are still facing these problems,” he said. “Why can’t the whole lot just be declared null and void?”

He says his frustration with Afghan government “incompetence” is so great that the company has set up a business division in Dubai.

One leading international logistics company came close to pulling out of Afghanistan last year after it discovered it had been paying taxes to the ministry of communications – technically illegal because only the ministry of finance is allowed to raise revenue.

Some efforts to improve the tax system have made the situation worse. Draft laws prepared in English by foreign consultants have been mistranslated into Dari, the official language of government. The garbled version is then treated as the law. A western official, who declined to be named but has worked closely on tax reform issues, said the “cheques had been made out to the ministry of post, which doesn’t exist, so God knows who actually got the money”.

Source: ANC News

judythpiazza@newsblaze.com

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  Posted in         Ismaili News