Transcript Aga Khan III Powerpoint

Aga Khan III
Sultan Mahommed Shah, Aga Khan III, GCSI, GCMG, GCIE, GCVO, PC was the
48th Imam of the Shia Ismaili Muslims. He was one of the founders and the first
president of the All-India Muslim League, and served as President of the League of
Nations from more..
Aga Khan III:It is said that we live, move and have our being in
God. We find this concept expressed often in the Koran, not in
those words of course, but just as beautifully and more
tersely... when we realize the meaning of this saying, we are
already preparing ourselves for the gift of the power of direct
[spiritual] experience. #Life and Living
Aga Khan III:Never, in my life - I may say with complete honesty
- have I for an instant been bored. Every day has been so short,
every hour so fleeting, every minute so filled with the life I love
that time for me has fled on far too swift a wing. A mind that is
occupied, in health or in sickness, with things outside itself
and its own concerns is, I believe, a perpetual source of true
happiness. #Happiness
Aga Khan III:Even a little knowledge of Islam will show that its religion is not only tolerant of
other Faiths, but most respectful, and indeed, fully accepts the divine inspiration of all theistic
Faiths that came before Islam. It does not only teach tolerance to its followers, but goes a step
further and enjoins on them all to create the godly quality of "Hilm" that is, tolerance,
forbearance, patience, calmness, and forgiveness. It is due to the spirit of tolerance of Islam
that even the smallest Christian and Jewish minorities survived and kept all their doctrines
during the thousand years of Muslim rule. Nothing like what happened to Muslims in Spain
after the Christian conquest has ever happened to a non-Muslim Faith in any Islamic dominion.
How, can Europeans be so ignorant as to have forgotten that in the first century of Islam the
Khalifs ordered that all that was best in Greek and Roman cultures should be assimilated; that
not only the philosophy, medicine and science of Greece, but its poetry and drama, were
carefully translated into Arabic and were generally sought not only by the learned but also by
the pious! The Muslim attitude towards the absorption of ideas was based on the principle of
Islam which enjoins to acquire knowledge wherever available, and there is a well-known and
authentic saying of the Prophet that "his followers should seek learning even if they have to go
to China."
#Mothers
Aga Khan III:There is a fundamental difference between the
Jewish idea of creation and that of Islam. The creation
according to Islam is not a unique act in a given time but a
perpetual and constant event; and God supports and sustains
all existence at every moment by His will and His thought.
Outside His will, outside His thought, all is nothing, even the
things which seem to us absolutely self-evident such as space
and time. Allah alone wishes: the Universe exists; and all
manifestations are as a witness of the Divine will. #Mothers
Aga Khan III:Islamic doctrine goes further than the other great
religions, for it proclaims the presence of the soul, perhaps
minute but nevertheless existing in an embryonic state, in all
existence - in matter, in animals, trees, and space itself. Every
individual, every molecule, every atom has its own spiritual
relationship with the All-Powerful Soul of God. But men and
women, being more highly developed, are immensely more
advanced than the infinite number of other beings known to us.
#Freedom
Aga Khan III:All men, rich and poor, must aid one another
materially and personally. The rules vary in detail, but they all
maintain the principle of universal mutual aid in the Muslim
fraternity. This fraternity is absolute, and it comprises men of
all colours and all races... all are the sons of Adam in the flesh
and all carry in them spark of the Divine Light. Everyone
should strive his best to see that this spark be not
extinguished but rather developed to that full "Companionshipon-High" which was the vision expressed in the last words of
the Prophet [Muhammad] on his deathbed, the vision of that
blessed state which he saw clearly awaiting him. #Boxing
Aga Khan III:Life in the ultimate analysis has taught me one
enduring lesson. The subject should always disappear in the
object. In our ordinary affections one for another, in our daily work
with hand or brain, we most of us discover soon enough that any
lasting satisfaction, any contentment that we can achieve, is the
result of forgetting self, or merging subject with object in a
harmony that is of body, mind and spirit. And in the highest realms
of consciousness all who believe in a Higher Being are liberated
from all the clogging and hampering bonds of the subjective self in
prayer, in rapt meditation upon and in the face of the glorious
radiance of Eternity, in which all temporal and earthly
consciousness is swallowed up and itself becomes the eternal.
#Death and Dying
Aga Khan III:I firmly believe that the higher [spiritual] experience
can to a certain extent be prepared for by absolute devotion in the
material world to another human being. Thus from the most
worldly point of view and with no comprehension of the higher life
of the spirit, the lower, more terrestrial spirit makes us aware that
all the treasures of this life, all that fame, wealth and health can
bring are nothing beside the happiness which is created and
sustained by the love of one human being for another... but as the
joys of human love surpass all that riches and power may bring a
man, so does that greater spiritual love and enlightenment, the
fruit of that sublime experience of the direct vision of reality which
is God's gift and grace, surpass all that the finest, truest human
love can offer. #Happiness
Aga Khan III:Seek communion with that Eternal Reality which I
call Allah and you call God! For that is the twin problem of
existence – to be at once entirely yourself and altogether at one
with the Eternal. #Song and Singing
Aga Khan III:Islam is fundamentally in its very nature a natural
religion. Throughout the Quran God's signs (Ayats) are referred to
as the natural phenomenon, the law and order of the universe, the
exactitudes and consequences of the relations between natural
phenomenon in cause and effect. Over and over, the stars, sun,
moon, earthquakes, fruits of the earth and trees are mentioned as
the signs of divine power, divine law and divine order. Even in the
Ayeh of Noor, divine is referred to as the natural phenomenon of
light and even references are made to the fruit of the earth. During
the great period of Islam, Muslims did not forget these principles
of their religion.
#Mothers
Aga Khan III:It was silly of the poet Omar to write: "Ah love,
could you and I with Him conspire, to grasp this sorry scheme
of things entire. Would we not shatter it to bits, and then
remold it nearer to the heart's desire?" That way lies
unhappiness, destruction. It is not a sorry scheme of things,
and the business, the duty of man, is to get himself into
harmony with it. I would counsel my heirs to seek satisfaction,
not in the flux of circumstances, but within themselves... I say
you should endeavor to suit your desire to the event and not
the event to your desire. #Individuality
Aga Khan III:Never forget this: The society in which we live
cannot give a man happiness... Society can give a man space
to breathe and freedom to move in it; it can afford him the
means of keeping himself healthy and making himself strong.
But happiness never depends on one's surroundings; it
depends altogether and exclusively on oneself. #Freedom
Aga Khan III:Imam Hassan has explained the Islamic doctrine
of God and the Universe by analogy with the sun and its
reflection in the pool of a fountain; there is certainly a
reflection or image of the sun, but with what poverty and with
what little reality; how small and pale is the likeness between
this impalpable image and the immense, blazing, white-hot
glory of the celestial sphere itself. Allah is the sun; and the
Universe, as we know it in all its magnitude, and time, with its
power, is nothing more than the reflection of the Absolute in
the mirror of the fountain. #Mothers
Aga Khan III:Consider, for example, the opening declaration of
every Islamic prayer: "Allah-o-Akbar". What does that mean?
There can be no doubt that the second word of the declaration
likens the character of Allah to a matrix which contains all and
gives existence to the infinite, to space, to time, to the
Universe, to all active and passive forces imaginable, to life
and to the soul. #Mothers
Aga Khan III:There is a right and legitimate Pan-Islamism to which every sincere
and behaving Muslim belongs - that is, the theory of the spiritual brotherhood and
unity of the children of the Prophet. It is a deep, perennial element in that PersoArabian culture, that great family of civilisation to which we gave the name Islam.
Islam connotes charity and goodwill towards fellow-believers everywhere...It
means an abiding interest in the literature of Islam, in her beautiful arts, in her
lovely architecture, in her entrancing poetry. It also means true reformation, a
return to the early and pure simplicity of the faith, to its preaching by persuasion
and argument, to the manifestation of a spiritual power in individual lives, to
beneficent activity for mankind. A famine or a desolating fire in the Moslem
quarters of Kashgar or Sarajevo would immediately draw the sympathy and
material assistance of the Muslims of Karachi or Cairo. The real spiritual and
cultural unity of Islam must ever grow, for to the follower of the Prophet it is the
foundation of the life of the soul. #Freedom
Aga Khan III:I should have a word to say to those who deem
themselves unfortunate from a worldly point of view. I should
say to them, do not look up and lament that you are not as well
off as those above you, look down and congratulate yourself
that you are better off than those below you. To a man who
looks with such eyes upon the world it is not a prison but a
garden. A marvelous garden – the garden of the Lord. #Death
and Dying
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