Aga Khan’s success lay in melding the deeply spiritual and temporal
The Aga Khan, spiritual leader of Ismaili Muslims, at Massey Hall in Toronto, February 28, 2014.
What you need to know:
- I am convinced that the Aga Khan’s extraordinary accomplishments, in a blessedly long life, lived without a single allegation of wrongdoing, emerged out of a God-given capacity, utterly rare among leaders, to blend his spiritual, intellectual and temporal passions.
- The place of Islam in the global village was central to the late Aga Khan’s fulfilment.
Reading Raila Odinga’s deeply felt tribute to the late Aga Khan took me back to the only time I had met His Highness, as he was universally known.
It was in July 2009, when Raila was Prime Minister and had convened a meeting in his office to explore how the Aga Khan’s myriad, world-renowned health institutions in East Africa and Pakistan could help stem the brain drain of Kenyan doctors who sought more medically advanced environments in the West.
When Raila began to introduce me as one of his aides, the Aga Khan laughed and said you don’t need to say much, we all know Salim. I was absolutely thrilled that a leader I had revered for decades for his exceptional services to humanity was familiar with my work and writing.
I am convinced that the Aga Khan’s extraordinary accomplishments, in a blessedly long life, lived without a single allegation of wrongdoing, emerged out of a God-given capacity, utterly rare among leaders, to blend his spiritual, intellectual and temporal passions.
These were pivotal to his “felt calling” of serving Islam, Africa and the ancient Shi’a Ismaila community he led, which traces its lineage directly from the Prophet Mohammed, and the Prophet’s cousin and son-in-law, the Caliph Ali ibn Abi Talib, whom the Shi’a consider the first Imam. The Aga Khan IV was the 49th Imam, and in his will, he designated his son Rahim Al-Hussaini as the 50th hereditary Imam, and will formally be known as Aga Khan V.
His Highness The Aga Khan addresses Nation Media Group Staff during the 50th Anniversary Celebrations on March 19, 2010.
The place of Islam in the global village was central to the late Aga Khan’s fulfilment. As I wrote almost two decades ago, he will forever remain one of the world’s best-known exemplars of Islam’s core values of peace, compassion and inclusion. The Aga Khan also embodied its ecumenical orientation to engage with all peace believing groups, a goal which this charismatic, dashing and steeped-in-knowledge leader was easily able to achieve.
He saw these qualities symbolically and visually captured in Islamic architecture, for which he endowed the renowned Islamic Architecture Programme at Harvard University.
The divide between faith and world is foreign to Islam
According to the late Basheer Mauladad, who as a young Muslim leader fought Kenya’s colonial colour bar (apartheid) and was my first mentor, the Aga Khan inherited these orientations from his renowned, path-breaking grandfather and predecessor, Sir Sultan Mohammed Shah.
Sir Sultan had from the early 1900s led a revolutionary, modernizing drive for his Ummah (community), which had historically been tradition-bound and initially centred in mountainous regions of Pakistan, Afghanistan, India and southern central Asia. He was influenced no doubt by his experiences as one of the founders, and the first permanent president, of the All-India Muslim League
It is likely that he was strongly influenced by Kemal Atta Turk, the legendary Turkish leader who had embarked a bit earlier on a sweeping programme of progressive reforms to lift Turkiye out of its traditional Islam, and modernised the country into a powerful industrializing nation that shook the regional order, and still does.
Mr Mauladad, not an Ismaili, was close to the just departed Aga Khan, and served him in several senior positions from the early 1970s to the 1990s. He recounted to me that in July 1955, he had travelled for the elder Aga Khan’s Jubilee Ball in London. There he asked for his autograph and was both surprised and deeply moved by what Sir Sultan wrote: “Don’t ever forget the progress of African Muslims.”
His Highness the Aga Khan address guests during the official unveiling a plaque of the Aga Khan University graduate school of Media and Communication on July 27 2011.
It was as part of his modernising zeal that Sir Sultan took the bold and potentially risky step of bypassing his children and anointing his grandson Prince Karim as his successor, who was only 20 years old and studying at Harvard University, majoring in Islamic Studies. Sir Sultan had clearly picked up the strains of both temporal and spiritual greatness in the young prince.
In his will, Sultan Mohamed Shah said he had chosen to skip a generation in part because the “fundamentally altered conditions in the world” — including advances in atomic science — required a “young man who has been brought up and developed during recent years and in the midst of the new age, and who brings a new outlook on life to his office.”
That bold decision paid off spectacularly, with the new Aga Khan’s genius and innovations seeing him make ground-breaking advances in providing some of the most crucially needed services in the newly independent African countries. His record of service to humanity has few equals in the world. While early programmes focused on services to his community, he was rapidly able to expand these life-enhancing interventions to wider populations.
In the process, he was able to imbue his community with politically nationalistic goals, and a global, entrepreneurship culture. He ended up creating a whole new cadre of brilliant progressive technocrats, whose successes in turn inspired the Aga Khan to ever more ambitious economic and social goals. Leaders of course achieve only what their followers deliver.
These successes were underpinned by the Aga Khan’s principal responsibility of protecting both the spiritual and physical wellbeing of his community. I am not aware of any other similarly large group in Africa which has created a strong safety net that has virtually wiped out poverty among its members, and at the same time provided vital health and educational services to millions of others.
The Aga Khan has sometimes been criticised for focusing too strongly on financial enterprise. He explained early on that an Imam was “not expected to withdraw from everyday life. He’s expected to protect his community and contribute to their quality of life. The divide between faith and the world is foreign to Islam.”
The Aga Khan Development Network’s services to East Africans are legion, in health and education in particular. His starting Nation media in the run-up to independence was a prescient initiative, as the two largest newspapers then, The Standard and the Sunday Post, held sway with their representing essentially settler views.
His Highness the Aga Khan addresses Nation Media Group staff on March 19, 2010.
But for me personally, what has captivated me most was the Aga Khan’s commitment to Islamic Architecture's revival, which he established at Harvard University as a full Programme.
I first felt its magic in the mid-1970s at the newly opened Serena Beach Hotel in Mombasa, which was designed to replicate a traditional Coast Swahili village, abetted by a stunning setting on the Indian Ocean. I had never realised one could feel proud when staying at a hotel! It’s still among the most beautiful small hotels in the world.
Other Serena hotels, especially those in the Gilgit and Skardu towns in Himalayan Pakistan, which are the ancestral homes of the Aga Khans, all have dramatic regional aura and settings. Thank you, Your Highness!