Aga Khan Foundation

Aga Khan Foundation

Health

The goal of the Foundation's health programme is to achieve sustainable improvements in health status among vulnerable groups, especially the geographically remote, women of childbearing age and children under five.

The Foundation promotes improvements in health policies, financing mechanisms and basic services while enabling communities to adopt effective health practices.

In the past, deficiencies in health policy, financing and service availability undermined attempts to achieve lasting improvements in health status among poor communities. Free-standing, community-based health programmes supported by the Foundation and other donors succeeded in achieving health improvements for a limited time at a relatively low cost. However, communities often did not have the financial resources to sustain improvements, the quality of care and patient referral were not assured, and basic services were often inaccessible and rarely equitable or lasting.

The Foundation now supports interventions that build the institutional capacity of health systems by:

• Strengthening and developing partnerships between all stakeholders from the state to the community;

• Promoting policy dialogue and mechanisms to develop and sustain health systems and services;

• Documenting and disseminating best practices.

Health is more than health care. While the Foundation works to strengthen health systems and services, it also promotes initiatives that offer people the knowledge and skills to avoid illness. These measures include educating women and girls and enabling families to adopt appropriate hygiene practices. In addition, the Foundation supports testing and implementation of income-generating strategies that allow households and communities to acquire better nutrition and health status. Increased income enables communities to improve nutritional status, particularly that of women and children, and to build and maintain water and sanitation systems.

Education

A major goal of the Foundation is to improve the quality of basic education by a programme of grants to governments and NGOs. Four objectives set the wider agenda: ensuring better early caring and learning environments for young children; increasing access to education; keeping children in school longer; and raising levels of academic achievement. In common with other donor agencies, the Foundation intends that girls, the very poor, and geographically remote populations should receive special attention. Of the many factors that influence the quality of basic education, four in particular are the focus of current grants:

• The location, timing and content of teacher training;

• Professional development for all categories of educators and caregivers;

• The role of governments, NGOs, communities and parents in financing and managing education;

• The cultural and economic relevance of the curriculum.

AKF's education portfolio is distinctive in one other respect. It interprets 'basic education' as the continuation of learning which stretches from birth to adolescence. Thus roughly half the education projects it supports and half the financial investment is concentrated on stimulating the development of the young child. In developing countries, the Young Children and the Family portfolio is experimenting in both rural and urban settings with various community-based approaches that enhance early childcare and education opportunities, while work in Europe and the USA focuses on newly immigrant or economically marginalised families. A common concern across most of these projects is the quality of experience received as a child moves from home to early childhood development settings to primary school.

Research in western countries indicates that successful educational change is achieved by treating the individual school as a unit and ensuring that the school principal is a key player who mentors teachers repeatedly as they deploy new skills in their classrooms. Foundation projects are testing how far this formula holds true in contexts where many teachers have no more than primary-level education themselves and where the extreme shortage of funds dictates that materials and training have to be concentrated in Resource Centres to which individual schools and teachers have access.

The increasing inability of governments to fund even the primary cycle of schooling from tax revenue is producing an ad hoc set of 'cost-sharing' arrangements. The Foundation is attempting to turn this unsatisfactory situation to advantage by experimenting with mechanisms, such as mini-endowments, which allow parents and communities a wider role in managing and co-financing their children's education within specific cultural, social and economic contexts. The rapid growth of the private education sector in Africa and Asia, as well as in the former Soviet Union and western countries, calls for projects which reassess and redefine the respective roles and responsibilities of government and other stakeholders.

Rural Development

Please see below for news.

The Aga Khan Foundation is committed to reducing rural poverty, particularly in resource-poor, degraded or remote environments. It concentrates on a small number of programmes of significant scale. The model of participatory rural development it has pioneered combines a set of common development principles with the flexibility to respond to specific contexts and needs.

Programmes typically link elements such as rural savings and credit, natural resource management, productive infrastructure development, increased agricultural productivity and human skills development with a central concern for community-level participation and decision-making. The ultimate goal is to enable community members to make informed choices from a range of appropriate options for sustainable and equitable development

A central strategy has been to create or strengthen an institutional structure at the village level through which people can determine priority needs and decide how best to manage common resources in the interests of the community as a whole. Whether broad-based or task-specific, these village organisations also serve to represent the community to the government and to other development partners, including NGOs and the private sector.

Social capital built at the local level provides a supportive environment for enlarging the economic assets of a community and for harnessing individual self-interest to generate income growth in an equitable and sustainable manner.

Assets are typically built through community management of natural resources - water storage, irrigation infrastructure, soil conservation or forestry - or the construction of basic economic infrastructure, such as rural roads or agricultural storage facilities.

Income growth is promoted by increasing agricultural productivity through improved farming methods, input supply, marketing, land development and management reform or by increasing off-farm incomes and supporting enterprise development.

Local capital is mobilised by promoting savings and developing financial services to enable broad access to credit on a sustainable basis.

Training programmes support the effectiveness and sustainability of the village-level institutions by providing the management and technical skills needed to plan, implement and maintain local development activities.

The Foundation is committed to building the knowledge base in rural development through learning, analysing and disseminating lessons learned from field experience. Models it has promoted have already been adapted and replicated by governments and international donors in a wide spectrum of environments and economies.

News:

Strategies for Development and Food Security in Mountainous Areas of Central Asia, a conference held 6-10 June 2005 in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, was sponsored by the Aga Khan Foundation, Capacity Building International, Germany (InWEnt), and Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ) GmbH.

Civil Society

For the latest developments in this thematic area, please click here.

This newest theme draws together two long-standing Foundation concerns. First, it provides an umbrella for the Foundation's response to the oft-expressed needs of many of its partners for advice and related institutional strengthening services. It also seeks to promote an "enabling environment" for the emerging non-profit citizen sector in countries where the Foundation works.

His Highness the Aga Khan first used the term "enabling environment" in 1983 in Kenya, initiating dialogue that led to an Africa-wide Enabling Environment Conference in 1986. Since then, the Foundation has monitored those aspects of the wider environment that most directly shape the attitudes and behaviour of governments and business toward citizen organisations. It seeks to promote laws and corporate policies that favour indigenous philanthropic giving, thereby facilitating a break from dependency on foreign aid. It also actively promotes volunteerism as a vital way for local organisations to root themselves in a renewable "citizen base".

The Foundation is keenly interested in forging new models for partnerships involving government, business and citizen organisations to extend, improve and sustain health, education and welfare services for the poor.

From its earliest work in rural development, the Foundation has emphasised the crucial role of strong grassroots organisations. Its rural support programmes became successful intermediary vehicles to facilitate a village-driven approach to increasing rural incomes. The Foundation found in them an institutional mechanism that enabled it to channel effective support to resource-poor settings. The original model of social organisation developed in northern Pakistan has been replicated by a host of actors in diverse national settings. The diffusion process continues as the Foundation in East Africa, for instance, promotes the concept of community-generated "mini-endowments". It is encouraging community members to adapt and apply traditional savings and social investment practices to create a sustaining financial base for early childhood programmes.

The independent citizen sector is composed of a great variety of such community groups. Because nearly all of them require support services, the Foundation helps establish "resource centres" to promote their sustainable and equitable growth.

The first two NGO Resource Centres, launched in Pakistan in 1993 and Zanzibar in 1996, have four inter-related functions: capacity building for development-oriented groups; management training to increase their efficiency; information and communications activities to arm them with needed information and to raise public awareness of their vital role in society; and stimulation of an enabling legal, fiscal and regulatory environment.

A third grantee in Kenya combines the objective of capacity building with a brief to introduce national philanthropy for development. Systematic capacity building has also been integrated into multi-million dollar sectoral development programmes in India, Pakistan and Kenya. All these efforts are designed to enhance the capacity of citizens to effect meaningful, dignified and sustainable change in the quality of their lives.

Cross-Cutting Issues

The Civil Society programme inherited the Foundation's long-standing concern for the organisational well-being of its grantees, but four major cross-cutting issues remain. The following are so important to all Foundation programmes that they cannot be addressed in isolation.

Human Resource Development

The Foundation supports a great variety of education and training activities for its partners. These range from upgrading technical skills to providing scholarships for degree programmes, from instructing managers of women's organisations in accounting to providing internships to young development professionals in certain countries. Human capacity to make a difference can indeed be nurtured and taught, and "can do" attitudes are needed everywhere.

Community Participation

The benefits of community participation in development programmes have been richly demonstrated. Local people can acquire the organised capacity to define and meet common needs on a sustainable basis.

Each year the range of problems poor communities address through participatory efforts grows - as does the Foundation's understanding of what is needed to champion local initiative.

Full participation comes most quickly when there are immediate, tangible benefits from community action. Projects that bring economic rewards, for instance, move forward faster than those aimed solely at preventing health problems. As community organisations created for economic benefit mature, however, they gain the confidence and vision to address longer-term social needs successfully. The potential of these groups is vast.

Support organisations need to listen carefully. Community groups want to be heard, to be offered choices, to have central roles in project management and a genuine stake in the outcome. As the Foundation monitors community initiatives in different cultural and geographical settings, it is learning what combinations of these factors bring maximum social and economic benefits over time.

It is also learning the limits to the effectiveness of community participation. Experience shows, for example, that small enterprises are best run by individuals or partners rather than by community organisations.

Gender and Development

The Foundation is committed to highlighting the key role of women in the development process and to facilitating their participation. Research and experience have shown that taking gender considerations into account in planning economic and social interventions greatly increases the probability of their success. In most countries and communities, gender determines both domestic and productive roles. Women generally have responsibilities for both, but their ability to contribute to society is constrained by social, cultural and political traditions. Compared to men, they tend to be less educated, more limited in their options and paid less.

Yet women manage households, raise children, pass knowledge to the next generation, tend livestock, grow and process crops and often run businesses to supplement family income.

Families and communities benefit exponentially when women reap greater rewards for their own efforts and labour. Once sustenance needs are covered, women quickly address the health and education needs of other generations. To raise the competence and confidence of women - and, correspondingly, to open up the thinking of men - is a long-term commitment of the Foundation. In addition to supporting research and action aimed at making women's participation a reality, the Foundation supports women with village credit schemes, training in forestry, masonry, crop and livestock management, accounting and marketing. It encourages education and careers for women.

It looks for ways to engage with men around the attitudinal and structural changes that flow from programmes that benefit women.

The Environment

In resource-poor areas, people and the environment are often trapped together in a downward spiral. Penury of natural resources forces the less privileged to consume the few resources available to them. The result is deeper poverty, depleted soils, deforested hills, polluted water, disease and despair. The Foundation's rural development programmes combine local organisation, appropriate technology and investment in efforts to reverse this destructive course.

Health, education and capacity development programmes also help to raise awareness of environmental issues and encourage people to manage change in the best interests of the community.

The environment includes natural, built, and cultural factors that cut across virtually all development programmes. Each profoundly affects the human condition, and all are interrelated. The Foundation cooperates with the Aga Khan Planning and Building Services to help poor communities overcome environmental problems and to plan growth even in remote villages and towns.

Environmental problems are complex and often extremely difficult to solve. Even the smallest steps in the right direction have positive implications for rich and poor alike.

Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN): An Ethical Framework

Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN): An Ethical Framework

Prepared for the Aga Khan Development Network by The Institute of Ismaili Studies, 2000.

The AKDN Mandate

The Aga Khan Development Network is a contemporary endeavour of the Ismaili Imamat to realise the social conscience of Islam through institutional action. It brings together, under one coherent aegis, institutions and programmes whose combined mandate is to help relieve society of ignorance, disease and deprivation without regard to the faiths or national origins of people whom they serve. In societies where Muslims have a significant presence, its mandate extends to efforts to revitalise and broaden the understanding of cultural heritage in the full richness of its diversity, as the quality of life in its fullest sense extends beyond physical well-being. The primary areas of concern are the poorest regions of Asia and Africa. The institutions of the Network derive their impetus from the ethics of Islam which bridge the two realms of the faith, din and dunya, the spiritual and the material. The central emphasis of Islam's ethical ideal is enablement of each person to live up to his exalted status as vicegerent of God on earth, in whom God has breathed His own spirit and to whom He has made whatever is in the heavens and the earth, an object of trust and quest.

Din and Dunya

A person's ultimate worth depends on how he or she responds to these Divine favours. Din is the spiritual relationship of willing submission of a reasoning creature to his Lord who creates, sustains and guides. For the truly discerning, the earthly life, dunya, is a gift to cherish inasmuch as it is a bridge to, and preparation for, the life to come. Otherwise it is an enticement, distracting man from service of God which is the true purpose of life. Service of God is not only worship, but also service to humanity, and abiding by the duty of trust towards the rest of creation. Righteousness, says the Quran, is not only fulfilling one's religious obligations. Without social responsibility, religiosity is a show of conceit. Islam is, therefore, both din and dunya, spirit and matter, distinct but linked, neither to be forsaken.

The Guidance of the Imam

The challenge of choice is moral and individual, but meaningful in a social context. For while personal morality is a paramount demand of the faith, Islam envisions a social order which is sustained by the expectation of each individual's morally just conduct towards others. The function of ethics is to foster self-realisation through giving of one's self, for the common good, in response to God's benevolent majesty.

By grounding societal values in the principle of human moral responsibility to the Divine, Islam lifts the sense of public and social order to a transcendent level. The lasting legacy of the Prophet Muhammad is the strong suffusion of the mundane, of daily life, with the sense of the spiritual. This prophetic example remains a source of emulation for Muslims everywhere, in every age. Within Shia Islam, it is the mandate of each hereditary Imam from the Prophet's progeny, as the legatee of the Prophet's authority, to seek to realise that paradigm through an institutional and social order which befits the circumstances of time and place. In a world of flux, the Imam gives leadership in the maintenance of balance between the spiritual and the material in the harmonious context of the ethics of the faith, of which he is the guardian.

Ethical Foundations of AKDN Institutions

Notionally, the AKDN seeks the ideal of social action, of communitarian strategy, to realise the social vision of Islam. Although the outcome of its action is pragmatic, the motivation for it is spiritual, a universal ethic whose purpose is to elicit the noble that inheres in each man and woman. The abiding traits which define this ethic, inform the principles and philosophies of AKDN institutions: their collective focus on respect for human dignity and relief to humanity; the reach of their mandates beyond boundaries of creed, colour, race and nationality; their combined endeavour towards empowering individuals, male and female, to become self-reliant and able to help those weaker than themselves; their policy of nurturing and harnessing a culture of philanthropy and voluntary sharing of time and talent; the transparency of their governance based on the values of trust, probity, equity and accountability; and their overall aim generally to seek to engender, or contribute to other efforts which seek to engender, a fraternal ethos of enlightenment, peace, "large-hearted toleration", mutual aid and understanding.

What are the abiding traits of Islam's ethical ideal which inform the AKDN mandate?

Ethic of Inclusiveness

Islam's is an inclusive vision of society. The divine spark that bestows individuality also bonds individuals in a common humanity. Humankind, says the Quran, has been created from a single soul, as male and female, communities and nations, so that people may know one another. It invites people of all faiths to a common platform, to vie for goodness. The Prophet sought to harness individual and group differences and talents to serve common needs of different religious groups, among whom he encouraged a spirit of harmony and toleration as constituents of a larger community of his time.

Ethic of Education and Research

The Prophet and Hazrat Ali

The key to the nature of society that Islam espouses is an enlightened mind, symbolised in the Quran's metaphor of creation, including one's self, as an object of rational quest. The very first revelation to the Prophet is a command to read. Those who believe and have knowledge are the exalted ones. Such cannot be equated with those who are ignorant. "My Lord! Increase me in knowledge", is a cherished prayer it urges upon the believers, men and women alike. Learning ennobles, whatever its source, even if that be distant China, and is obligatory upon every Muslim man and woman, the Prophet is reported to have said. "One's greatest ornament is erudition", and "the most self-sustaining wealth is the intellect" which "gives one mastery over one's destiny", are among the sayings attributed to Hazrat Ali, the first Shia Imam. "Knowledge is a shield against the blows of time", wrote Nasir-i Khusraw, an eleventh century Iranian poet-philosopher. But the person of knowledge and wisdom carries the greater obligation of sharing it. The Prophet likens the knowledge which is kept from others to a girdle of fire round one's neck. "One dies not", said Hazrat Ali, "who gives life to learning".

Early Muslim Scholars

The teachings of Islam were a powerful impulse for a spiritually liberated people. It spurred them on to new waves of adventure in the realms of the spirit and the intellect, among whose symbols were the universities of al-Azhar and dar al-'Ilm in Fatimid Ismaili Cairo and their illustrious counterparts in Baghdad, Cordova, Bukhara, Samarqand and other Muslim centres. Reflecting the spirit of the culture which honoured the pursuit of knowledge, Al-Kindi, a ninth century philosopher and student of Greek philosophy, saw no shame in acknowledging and assimilating the truth, whatever its source. Truth, he wrote, never abases. It only elevates its seeker. As a result, sciences flourished in their different domains: mathematics, astronomy, botany, medicine, optics, pharmacology, zoology and geography. In his History of Science, George Sarton traces, from 750 onwards, an unbroken stretch of six centuries of Muslim pre-eminence in the world of science.

The spirit of inquiry

Scientific research was considered a meritorious duty. It was the response of the faithful to the persistent call of the Quran to ponder creation in order to understand God's greatness. This attitude helped to cultivate an open yet inquiring bent of mind. Ancient sages were esteemed but their legacy was critically appraised. Ar-Razi (d. 925), philosopher and medical scientist, while in admiration of Galen, wrote: "But all this reverence will not and should not prevent me from doubting what is erroneous in his theories". Ibn Haytham (Al-Hazen), al-Biruni and Ibn Sina (Avicenna), in challenging the long held view of Euclid and Ptolemy that the eye sent out visual rays to the object of vision, laid the foundations for modern optics.

Research was recognised as a way of intellectual growth, an ethical duty since the human intellect is a divine gift to be cherished and cultivated. "Accept whatever adds to your wisdom, regardless of the nature of its source", is a well-attested Prophetic tradition. "Wisdom sustains the intellect" whose "natural disposition is to learn from experience", are among the sayings of Hazrat Ali. Jurists and mystics, from the classical Middle Ages to the 20th century, from al-Ghazali, Ibn Khallikan and Sanai to Shaykh Shalut and Mohammad Iqbal, have upheld and celebrated the never-ending duty of the mind to push the frontiers of its gaze to ever expanding horizons to capture glimpses of a flawless, continuing creation.

Ethic of Compassion and Sharing

A truly enlightened society urges the care of the weak and restraint in their sway by the rich and powerful. Scriptural tradition regards wealth as a blessing, and its honest creation one's duty for it can aid the general welfare of society. "When the prayer is finished, scatter in the land and seek God's bounty, and remember God frequently; haply you will prosper". But when misused or hoarded, wealth is a derisory pittance, an illusory source of power. The pious are the socially conscious who recognise in their wealth a right for the indigent and the deprived whom they help for the sake of God alone, without any desire for recompense or thankfulness from those whom they help.

Charity is not just sharing one's material wealth. Generosity with one's intellectual, spiritual, material or physical wherewithal is highly commended. When withheld, such gifts are a futile burden, "a twisted collar tied to the miser's neck". "One who is more blessed by God", goes an Alid tradition, "is needed more for people". The ethic of voluntary service is, thus, a strongly marked trait of Muslim tradition, celebrated in the example of the Ansar, the Helpers, the honourable title for those citizens of Medina who gave succour to Muhammad and his fellow fugitives when they had to emigrate from Makkah to escape persecution.

Ethic of Self-reliance

The poor, the deprived and those at the margin of existence have a moral right to society's compassion, the tradition reminds frequently. But Muslim ethic discourages a culture of dependency since it undermines one's dignity, preservation of which is emphatically urged in Muslim scripture. "Man shall have only that for which he labours", says the Quran. That encouragement to self-help is reinforced in Prophetic traditions: "Man cannot exist without constant effort". "The effort is from me, its fulfilment comes from God". From the time of the Prophet, therefore, the greater emphasis of the charitable effort has been to help the needy to become self-reliant. It has been narrated, for instance, that the Prophet would rather that a mendicant was helped to equip himself for gathering and selling wood to earn sustenance. During his tenure as the last of the four rightly-guided caliphs, Hazrat Ali helped, for instance, to fund a self-help scheme, voluntarily proposed by a group of residents of an area, to improve its irrigation potential. He preferred that people should prosper, he explained, to their remaining economically weak.

Ethic of Respect for Life and Health Care

As the care of the poor, so that of the sick and disabled is a frequently articulated duty. Good health, like knowledge, is a divine gift, says the Quran, which forcefully urges the sanctity of human life, equating the saving of one life to the saving of the entirety of humanity. "God has sent down a treatment for every ailment", is an oft-quoted saying of the Prophet. People achieve happiness because of the gift of reason, of which medicine is a salient fruit, so wrote a tenth century physician al-Majusi in the introduction to his canon. Learning medicine, according to Muslim jurists, is a "duty of sufficiency", which is incumbent upon, not every individual, but a sufficient number of people to serve the health needs of a community. Under Muslim patronage medicine made far reaching strides. Encyclopaedic treatises on medicine, particularly of Ibn Sina (Avicenna in Latin) and ar-Razi enjoyed a pre-eminent status in the medical literature of learned societies as far apart as Central Asia and Europe. Hospitals flourished as did mobile dispensaries, which were, not uncommonly, staffed by both male and female health personnel.

The science of medicine was supported by meticulous research. In the late 14th century, when the great plague, the Black Death, struck Europe and Asia, Muslim physicians rejected the widely entrenched superstition that the scourge was a divine retribution. Explaining their scientific hypothesis of contagion, Ibn al-Khatib, an eminent statesman and physician of Granada, wrote that the existence of contagion was established by experience, study of the evidence of the senses, by trustworthy reports of transmission, by the spread of it by persons, by infection of a healthy sea-port by an arrival from an infected land, by the immunity of isolated individuals. "It must be a principle that a proof taken from the tradition has to undergo modification when in manifest contradiction with the evidence of the perception of the senses".

Ethic of Sound Mind

An equal, if not greater, emphasis was placed on mental heath since preservation of sound mind is among the foundational principles of Islam's ethical code. The principle was seriously applied in practice. In designating a ward of the Mansuria Hospital, built in Cairo in 1284, for mental patients, its endowment deed stipulated: "The foremost attention is to be paid to those who have suffered loss of mind and hence loss of honour". The principle has had a wider application in tradition. Any substance abuse which interferes with the normal functioning of the mind is a greater violation of the ethical code for it amounts to self-inflicted loss of personal dignity and of the ability to fulfil one's responsibility to oneself, to one's family and to society. "Do not be cast into ruin by your hands", is a recurring admonition.

Ethic of Sustainable Environment: Physical, Social and Cultural

Care of the environment, in its comprehensive meaning, is a duty of trusteeship which humankind owes by virtue of its vicegerency over creation. Each generation of people are described as both "viceroys and successors in the earth", stewards over its resources for the benefit of all living beings. Profligacy, wastage and acts that corrupt the balanced order of nature, which is a sign of divine beneficence, earn a severe reproach. The evil that people do "vanishes as jetsam and what profits men abides in the earth." Hence, those who create wealth in its diverse forms, intellectual and spiritual, cultural and material, are raised to a position of honour, but only if they recognise and respect the element of trust in what they create. To squander in vanity or to withhold in jealousy what they are able to create, amounts to usurping the rights of those, including the generations yet to be born, who need the fruits of their talents. Each generation is, thus, ethic bound to leave behind a wholesome, sustainable social and physical environment.

Ethic of Governance

Those who control and administer resources for the benefit of others are bound by the duty of trusteeship. In Shia Islam, this duty is owed to the Imam. The Muslim tradition of religious law, thus, firmly grounds the ethic of governance in the principles of trust, probity, equity and accountability. The scripture, for instance, sternly warns corruptly inclined citizens and authorities against collusion to defraud others. Guardians of orphans and the weak are similarly warned not to compromise their fiduciary obligations, and to keep away from their wards' property "except to improve it". The tradition, hence, obliges administrators of a charitable foundation not only to maintain, but to seek to enhance, the value of its corpus and maximise its yield in order to sustain its charitable commitments.

Prepared for the Aga Khan Development Network by The Institute of Ismaili Studies, London.

Material Intelligence and Spiritual Enlightenment -Sir Sultan Muhammad Shah Aga Khan

Material Intelligence and Spiritual Enlightenment

An Address at the Platinum Jubilee Ceremony
Sir Sultan Muhammad Shah Aga Khan
February 20, 1955 Cairo, Egypt

On this unique occasion when you make this wonderful offering of platinum and its equivalent as an unconditional gift, I must immediately tell you that I give it to the Diamond Jubilee Investment Trust as further addition to its capital. You have referred to my seventy years Imamat which, indeed, is unique in the history of the 48 Ismaili Imams by its long duration, but also it began in another world, the world of horse carriages and candle lights, and today we are in the world of nuclear power, physics, jet air-travel and serious discussion amongst the most learned as to how and when we can visit the stars and the moon.

But, as I have explained in my Memoirs for the whole world to understand there are two worlds - the world of material intelligence and the world of spiritual enlightenment. The world of spiritual enlightenment is fundamentally different from the world of material intellectualism and it is the pride of the Ismailis that we firmly believe that the world of spiritual enlightenment has come as a truth from the inception of Islam to this day with the Imamat and carries with it as one of its necessary consequences love, tenderness, kindliness and gentleness towards first, our brother and sister Muslims of all sects and, secondly, to those who live in righteousness, conscience and justice towards their fellow men. These religious principles of Ismailism are well known to you for you have heard them from me and through your fathers and grandfathers and from my father and grandfather until I fear that by long familiarity with these teachings some of you forget the necessity of re-examination of your heart and religious experience.

But, as I started by telling you, there is also the world of matter and intellect which go side by side with reason and deductive and inductive powers. I have never, as you say in your own address, neglected to encourage schools and universities, and by welfare societies for the health of children, maternity, and more and more up to date needs that you may have, as far as it is possible in the areas in which you live, to get both mental and physical training that will make you capable of meeting the more and more difficult conditions of life and competition...

Muslim Education in India-Sir Sultan Muhammad Shah Aga Khan

Muslim Education in India

Presidential Address to the All India Muhammadan Educational Conference
Sir Sultan Muhammad Shah Aga Khan
1902 Delhi, India

My first duty and pleasure is to thank you for the honour you have done me in asking me to preside at the meeting of the Conference. To sit in this chair is a signal honour of which any Muslim may be proud, but you have conferred upon me a very particular distinction in inviting me to be your President in this Imperial city and upon this historic occasion. For this honour, gentlemen, I tender you my deep and sincere thanks.

As, gentlemen, you have given me the right to speak in your name, I will lose no time in giving expression to a sentiment which is, I know, in the hearts of all of us. On behalf of the Mahomedan Educational Conference I welcome the guests and delegates who have come from a distance - I thank them that they have borne the discomfort of so much travel in order to confer by their attendance distinction upon this meeting.

And, in particular, I wish to offer the thanks of this Mahomedan assembly to those distinguished Governors of Provinces and Rulers of great States who have promised to honour this occasion with their presence, the fact that our great statesmen and administrators, amid the burden of public cares, should find time to show their interest in the religious, educational and social problems of a community, not their own, confers upon this assembly a very conspicuous honour, for which our heart-felt thanks and gratitude are due to their patronage.

It is, indeed, a matter of surprise as well as congratulation that any one of all this distinguished company should have entered this modest building at all, when a few paces from here all the pomp and splendour of this glorious Empire is unrolled before our dazzled sight. Never before have the Princes of India shone forth in so superb a pageant, never have we beheld, concentrated with equal magnificence, all the might and splendour of the Empire of India, and never have the antique battlements of this imperial City witnessed the proclamation of so great or just an Emperor.

IThat you have attended this Conference at all, in spite of all these splendid attractions, is due, I believe, to the fact that, though education is our theme, we are deliberating upon something more important than the suitability of this or that textbook, or this or that course of study. We are, if I understand the purpose of this Conference aright, considering what in modern times are the ideals we must hold before our people and the paths by which they attain them; and upon the right answer to these questions depends no trifling matter, but nothing less than the future of Indian Moslems.

We are undertaking a formidable task when we attempt to correct and remodel the ideals of our people. But for the task before us, we Indian Musalmans possess many advantages; we have the advantage of living under a Government which administers justice evenly between rich and poor and between persons of different creeds and classes; in the second place, we enjoy complete freedom to devise plans for the amelioration of our people. We have no reason to fear that our deliberations will be abruptly closed if we propose schemes of education other than those approved by Government. We know that no book and no branch of knowledge will be forbidden to us by official command; and, lastly, we know that, under the protection of British rule, we shall be allowed to work out to the end any plans for social and economic salvation which we may devise. Our wealth will not excite rapacity, nor our advancement in learning awaken the jealousy of our rulers. More than all this, we are members of a polity in which the opportunities for advancement in wealth and learning are greater, perhaps, than in any country in Asia, if only we have the energy and wisdom to make a right use of those opportunities.

These are privileges which our co-religionists in Turkey or Persia, who are not British subjects, do not possess. In those countries the opportunities for growing wealthy in commerce and industries or in the independent liberal professions can hardly be said to exist, and in both of them the pursuit of learning and freedom of thought are fettered by restrictions. We Moslems of India, therefore, enjoy unparalleled advantages, and we occupy among our co-religionists a unique position, and, if we properly utilise them and realise our duties, we ought to lead the way and constitute ourselves the vanguard of Islamic progress throughout the world. Here in India we can develop our own ideals of society, we have freedom in which to deliberate upon them, and we have security from internal and external enemies. We may carry our plans to maturity without fear of internal trouble or external aggression. Our brethren in Turkey and Persia must give their first thoughts and unceasing attention to military preparations and diplomatic arrangements, lest, whilst they are evolving schemes of progress, illiberal and autocratic European States should swallow up their independence, and thus they should at one blow lose for ever all chance of future develop-ment. But we, who live beneath the liberal rule of England, have here all the chances that a people require of developing our own individuality according to our own ideas.

And now, gentlemen, let us direct our attention to a question with which your Conference is intimately concerned, namely, how have the Indian Moslems taken advantage of the chances which Providence has placed in their way? We must all acknow-ledge with shame and regret that so far we have failed. Throughout the whole length and breadth of India how many national schools are there in existence which educate Moslem boys and girls in their faith and at the same time in modern secular science? Is there even one to every hundred that our nation needs and which we should have established had we been like any other healthy people? There are, indeed, a certain number of old-fashioned Maktabs and Madrassahs which con-tinue to give a parrot-like teaching of the Koran, but even in these places no attempt is made either to improve the morals of the boys or to bring before them the eternal truths of the faith. As a rule, prayers are but rarely repeated, and when said, not one per cent. of the boys understand what they say or why.

Let me take another example of our failure to fulfil our obvious duties towards our co-religionists. During the recent famines no national effort was made to save Moslem children or to bring up to [sic] the Moslem orphans of famine-striken parents in some special technical or elementary school. This surely was a public duty which could never have been neglected in a healthy society.

Again, in Mahomedan society, we too often hear futile laments over the loss of political power, but we must remember that in the modern world a monopoly of political power, such as Moslems once held in India, is neither possible nor even desirable. Now that general liberty is given to all, the monopoly, or even a desire for the monopoly, of political power is both immoral and of no benefit. The just man does not even wish to possess privileges to the necessary exclusion of others. On the other hand, a desire for industrial and financial pre-eminence is perfectly legitimate because it is obtained by the free competition of the energies of individuals without which rapid progress is perhaps impossible. But here again our community has signally failed to take advantage of that peace, justice and freedom which we all enjoy under British rule. We have neglected industry and commerce just as we have neglected every other opportunity of progress.

This general apathy which pervades every walk of life is the sign of a moral disease, and what I will ask you to consider with me today are the causes of this terrible disease, and I will especially invite your attention to this point. Are the causes of this disease, to use a medical phrase, congenital and necessary, i.e., are they part of the faith or are they accidental and acquired? That this disease is accidental and no necessary development of the faith, is shown not only by political progress made by Islam during the first twenty-five years of the Hijra, but by the high standard of duty, morality, truthfulness, justice and charity that was general in Arabian society during the glorious reigns of Abu Bakr and Omar, and this high standard prevailed, mind you, amongst men whose early youth had been passed either like the Koraish aristocrats in the lazy and dissolute society of Mecca before the conquest, or like the rank and file, in Bedouin brig-andage, in revengeful murder and in deeds of violence. Islam made heroes of such men, not only in the battlefield but in the more difficult daily sacrifices of [a] healthy and patriotic society. As a body they were law-abiding, just, full of charity, and true to their engagements, so that the conquered Persian peasants looked upon their just Arab conquerors as a godsend, very much as the Indian agriculturists welcomed the English whenever they overthrew a corrupt and cruel native State from 1760 to 1858.

So Islam, as a faith, when it was best understood, did not lead to apathy but to extraordinary devotion and self-sacrifice which it elicited even from such wretched material as the dissolute and immoral Meccan aristocrats of the days of ignorance; for these very men under the purifying influence of Islam distinguished themselves above all the Arabs by their loyalty and devotion. Witness the way in which the great Khalid and Amru, son of Al Ass, conquerors of Syria and Egypt, respectively, accepted the judgment of Omar and Othman in such a remarkably patient and uncomplaining fashion when removed from governments which they had founded and commands of troops whom they had led to glorious victory. Both these men were actuated by profound moral obedience to authority and devotion to duty, and yet both had been in their youth like the usual worthless Meccan aristocrats.

All this shows that Islam does not necessarily lead to apathy and want of devotion to duty. We must, therefore, consider what the real causes are of this supineness which we are compelled to recognise as universal in Moslem society of today, a supineness all the more remarkable under the benign rule of England, where a little self-sacrifice would enable us to achieve greatness; for through greatness in modern times consists in pre-eminence in learning, wealth, and such pre-eminence we might attain with constant effort [sic].

I believe that this disease cannot be assigned to any one single cause, but I will, with your permission, enumerate four causes which, in my judgment, have had a paramount influence in introducing this apathy, this moral torpor, into Moslem society; and you will notice that all the causes of which I speak have been in operation for a very long time.

For the first cause I must go back to the very early days of our faith. The disastrous murder of Omar was an irreparable misfortune. Omar was removed at the most important moment in the history of Islam when vast additions had been made not only to the Empire but to the wealth of every individual Moslem. And he was, above all, the one man whose intense piety and faith and justice made him not only obeyed by all, but made him above everything the model of perfect manhood to the Moslems. The rising generation who had suddenly found themselves pos-sessed not only of Empire but of enormous wealth, when every Arab was richer than he had ever dreamed it possible, lost in Omar in that critical period that example of saintly virtue on a throne which is perhaps amongst every people, modern or ancient, one of the most precious assets of society.

The very absence of Omar at that period was itself a loss which no impartial historian who has studied Moslem society of that period, can possibly doubt, however he may believe that history is influenced by general causes rather than by individual charac-ters. But when his successor was assassinated and again the next head of the Moslem world had to contend against rebellion, a new element forced its way into Islamic society which has curi-ously not often been noticed by even the best historians, although its effects are visible to this day in the apathy which we are discussing. Many of the most intimate friends of the Prophet and the most pious and distinguished of the "companions" doubted which side they should take in the civil wars, and how they should act so as not to be responsible for any harm that might come, and so were led to adopt the most dangerous principle of all. They retired each into his private home and did not use their influence one way or the other, but passed the rest of their lives in prayer and pilgrimage. This example has ever since been unconsciously followed by some of the best and purest in every Moslem society. The most genuine and the most moral of Moslems often tell you, as they have a thousand times told me almost in identical terms at Constantinople or Cairo, at Bombay or Zanzibar, that as long as they spent their energies in prayer and pilgrimage they are certain that though they do not do the best, yet they do no harm, and thus they give up to prayer and pilgrimage the lives which should have been devoted to the well-being of their people.

It is to this class in India that I appeal and desire most earnestly to impress upon them my conviction that, if they continue in their present attitude of aloofness, it means the certain extinction of Islam, at least, as a world-wide religion. We of this Conference appeal to the pious for their cooperation and assistance, and we warn them solemnly and in all earnestness that, if they give all their time to prayer and their money to pilgrimages, the time will come when that piety, which they so highly prize, will pass away from our society, and (for want of timely assistance at this most critical period) not one of our descendants will know how to pray or put any store upon the merit of pilgrimage. It is to this genuine class of pious men that we appeal here; let them come forward and take their legitimate place in the advancement of their co-religionists and in the moral and religious education of their brethren and children. In the strenuous life of modern times, a people that does not get help from its most pious and most moral sections has as little chance of success as a man who tries to swim with his arms tied behind his back.

A great, but silent, crisis has come in the fortunes of Islam and unless this class wake up to the altered conditions of life and to the necessity of superintending and educating the rising generation, the very existence of Islam is at stake. This class of pious Moslems must understand that what Islam now demands of them is that they should surrender to the training of the young a portion of the time hitherto given to prayer and a portion of the money hitherto spent in pilgrimages or celebrations of martyr-doms, long since past, which only help to keep alive those terrible sectarian differences which are one of the misfortunes of Islam. The example of the Prophet and of Abu Bakr and Omar and Ali should convince these pious people that the first duty of a Moslem is to give his time to the service of his nation and not merely to silent prayers.

A second cause of our present apathy is the terrible position of Moslem women . . . There is absolutely nothing in Islam, or the Koran, or the example of the first two centuries, to justify this terrible and cancerous growth that has for nearly a thousand, years eaten into the very vitals of Islamic society. The heathen Arabs in the days of ignorance, especially the wealthy young aristocrats of Mecca, led an extremely dissolute life, and before the conquest of Mecca the fashionable young Koraishites spent most of their leisure in the company of unfortunate women, and often married these same women and, altogether, the scandals of Mecca before the conquest were vile and degrading. The Prophet not only by the strictness of his laws put an end to this open and shameless glorification of vice, but by a few wise restrictions, such as must be practised by any society that hopes to exist, made the former constant and unceremonious com-panionship of men and strange women impossible.

From these necessary and wholesome rules the jealousy of the Abbassides, borrowing from the practice of the later Persian Sassanian kings, developed the present system . . . which means the permanent imprisonment and enslavement of half the nation. How can we expect progress from the children of mothers who have never shared, or even seen, the free social intercourse of modern mankind? This terrible cancer that has grown since the 3rd and 4th century [sic] of the Hijra must either be cut out, or the body of Moslem society will be poisoned to death by the permanent waste of all the women of the nation. But Pardah, as now known, itself did not exist till long after the Prophet's death and is no part of Islam. The part played by Moslem women at Kardesiah and Yarmuk the two most momentous battles of Islam next to Badr and Honein, and their splendid nursing of the wounded after those battles, is of itself a proof to any reasonable person that Pardah, as now understood, has never been con-ceived by the companions of the Prophet. That we Moslems should saddle ourselves with this excretion of Persian custom, borrowed by the Abbassides, is due to that ignorance of early Islam which is one of the most extraordinary of modern con-ditions. As if the two causes already mentioned were not enough to strangle Mahomedan society, the Abbassides set a terrible example of personal ambition which has left a deep impression on Islamic history. These unworthy relatives of the Prophet, ever jealous of the superior merit of the Ommiades, to whom they had sworn allegiance, beaten time after time in the field, made an unholy alliance with the newly-conquered men of Khorasan, led them astray by the so-called traditions in praise of their own family (invented by the thousand to mislead the newly-concerted [sic] and non-Arab Moslems who understood little of the liberal and democratic spirit of Islam), and with the aid of these allies overthrew the house of Ommia. This example of treachery for the sake of self-aggrandisement, coming from a family nearly related to the Prophet, throws great light on the fact that, time after time for the sake of furthering individual or family ambition, Moslems have sacrificed the welfare of their Sovereigns or States or peoples, for it is easy for those who are not naturally pious to forget the welfare of the nation for the sake of their own advancement.

The fourth cause of the general apathy of modern times which we are considering is undoubtedly the doctrine of necessity. No fair or reasonable-minded person who has read the Koran can for a moment doubt that freedom of the will and individual human responsibility is there insisted upon, but Abul Hassan Alashari (a direct descendant of that Abu Musa who was respons-ible for the fiasco at the arbitration at Doomah) - Abul Hassan, whose piety and learning and genius cannot be doubted – has placed the stamp of his unfortunately misapplied but great genius on Islam and given to Moslem thought that fatal fatalism which discourages effort and which has undoubtedly been one of the principal causes of the non-aggressive spirit of modern Islam. It was not till about the year 200 A.H. that the question of Jabr or Taqdeer, i.e., freedom of the will or necessity, began first to agitate Moslem thought. Had the matter come before the world of Islam during the Caliphate of some good and virtuous Caliph who was universally respected, and whose piety and faith were beyond doubt (such, for instance, as the saintly and exemplary Omar-ibn-e Abdul Aziz) an authoritative judgment in favour of freedom of the will would have finally laid this question at rest, but unluckily this true doctrine of Islam found, for its champion, Mamoon. Now, Mamoon's extraordinary ideas and very curious behaviour towards some principles of the Shariat had made the pious suspicious, and the very fact that Mamoon was the champion of the doctrine of the freedom of the will was enough to make the pious prejudiced against all those who held, and rightly held, that this was a fundamental doctrine and that no society that accepted fatalism and carried it to its logical conclusion could possibly succeed. It is the fashion to place all the responsi-bility for the downfall of Islam to Chengiz and the Tartar invasion.

But in my humble opinion - an opinion held also by many of the most learned who have given the matter serious study - it was, first, the bad example and selfishness of the Abbassides; secondly, the fatal system... with its restrictions on the intellec-tual development of the women; thirdly, the constant and silent withdrawal of the most pious and moral Moslems into a life of private prayer and devotion; and, lastly, this doctrine of necessity, that brought about our downfall. I say it was in my opinion these four causes that have brought Moslem society down to its present low and degraded level of intellect and character. How low we have fallen, one can easily find out by comparing Moslem general intelligence of today to that which exists even in the most back-ward of Slavic-European States. If this downward tendency is not arrested, there is danger that the best minds amongst the present- day Moslems in India will be brought up without any knowledge of the purity and beauty of Islam, and this loss will mean the certain estrangement of all the ablest of the community and the consequent loss of character, honesty and devotion amongst the intelligent, and this will mean, further, that our intellectual and social leaders will not possess the moral qualities most necessary for permanent success.

If, then, we are really in earnest in deploring the fallen condition of our people, we must unite in an effort for their redemption, and, first and foremost of all, an effort must now be made for the foundation of a University where Moslem youths can get, in addition to modern sciences, a knowledge of their glorious past and religion and where the whole atmosphere of the place (it being a residential 'Varsity) may, like Oxford, give more attention to character than mere examination.

Moreover, Moslems in India have legitimate interests in the intellectual development of their co-religionists in Turkey, Persia, Afghanistan and elsewhere, and the best way of helping them is by making Aligarh a Moslem Oxford, where they can all send their best students not only to learn the modern sciences, but that honesty and self-sacrifice which distinguished the Moslems of the first century of the Hijra. Gentlemen, it is not only my opinion, it is the opinion of all the best minds that guide Moslem thought in India, that such a University would restore the faded glories of our people. There is no doubt of the efficacy of the remedy, the element of doubt lies in the preparation of it. Will the Mussalmans of today exert themselves so much as to found such a University? Have we so wholly lost the noble disregard of self, the generous devotion to the good of Islam which character-ised the early Moslems, as not to be able to set aside some of our wealth for this great cause? We are sure that by founding the University we can arrest the decadence of Islam, and if we are not willing to make sacrifices for such an end, must I not con-clude that we do not really care whether the faith of Islam is dead or not?

Gentlemen, I appeal to all of you who hear me today to give not only your money, but your time and your labour to this great end. And especially I would most urgently adjure those who, in obedience to the precepts of our religion, give large sums in the way of God to consider whether it is not more in accordance with the commands and examples of the Prophet to help their Moslem brethren than to undertake pilgrimages and celebrate costly anniversaries.

The sum which we ask for is one crore of rupees, for we propose to establish an institution capable of dealing with the enormous interests involved; we want to be able to give our Moslem youths not merely the finest education that can be given in India, but a training equal to that which can be given in any country in the world. We do not wish that in future our Moslem students should be obliged to go to England or Germany if they wish to attain real eminence in any branch of learning or scholarship, or in the higher branches of industrial and technical learning. Now, we want Aligarh to be such a home of learning as to command the same respect of scholars as Berlin or Oxford, Leipsig or Paris. And we want those branches of Moslem learning,which are too fast passing into decay, to be added by Moslem scholars to the stock of the world's knowledge.

Above all, we want to create for our people an intellectual and moral capital; a city which shall be the hope of elevated ideas and pure ideals; a centre from which light and guidance shall be diffused among the Moslems of India, aye, and out of India too, and which shall hold up to the world a noble standard of the justice and virtue and purity of our beloved faith.

Gentlemen, do you think that the restoration of the glory of Islam would be too dear at one crore of rupees? If you really care for the noble faith which you all profess, you can afford the price. Why, if the Moslems of today did their duty as did the Moslems of the first century, in three months you would collect this money to pay for the ransom of Islam. Bethink you that there are in India 60 million Moslems, and of these at least ten million, or one crore, can afford one rupee a head; from the head of every Moslem family we only ask for one rupee, whereas we all know well that there are people who can pay Rs. 1,000 or Rs. 10,000 with ease.

Gentlemen, these are facts; if our ideal is not realised, it will be because the ape within has swallowed the angel; it will be because, though we profess veneration for the faith and for the Prophet, it is but a lip-loyalty that will not make this small sacrifice to revive in its purity the glorious faith of Islam.