Remarks by His Highness the Aga Khan at the Foundation Stone Laying Ceremony of the Aga Khan Academy, Kampala, Uganda – 22 August 2007:
"......The Quran tells us that signs of Allah’s Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation - in the heavens and the earth, the night and the day, the clouds and the seas, the winds and the waters. I am confident that future generations of students and teachers - who will come to this Academy from around the region and around the world - will feel a profound sense of inspiration as they look out on this superb landscape.
As you have heard, the new Academy in Kampala will be one of 18 Academies in 14 countries which will be developed over the next 15 years. Together, they will constitute an inter-related community of learning - exchanging students and teachers, sharing ideas and insights. And they will also share a variety of environmental experiences. Some, like the first Academy at Mombasa, will be in ocean-side settings, other will be placed in high mountain environments, still others will be built in desert terrains or forested areas - or, as in Kampala, at the side of a beautiful lake. As our students and teachers experience these remarkable surroundings, I hope they will develop what I would call a sense of “environmental pluralism”- to accompany the appreciation for cultural pluralism which we will also hope will be one of the programme’s hallmarks.......
.........A strong commitment to learning has been at the very root of Ismaili and Islamic culture, going back to the first Imam of the Shia Muslims, the fourth Caliph, Hazrat Ali ibn Abi Talib, and his emphasis on knowledge. The tradition was renewed over many centuries in many places by the Abbasids, the Fatimids, the Safavids – the Mughals, the Uzbeks and the Ottomans. During his Imamat, my late Grandfather started some 300 schools in this region. The Academies Programme is thus planted in rich historic soil........
.........One of the central precepts of the International Baccalaureate Programme is to honour world-class standards, while also respecting cultural diversity. In this respect, its approach mirrors that of the Aga Khan Academies - to help students combine a cosmopolitan spirit on the one hand, with a strong sense of cultural identity on the other........
...........This is why so many of the long-term investments we have been making, throughout the developing world, are investments in education. They have ranged from Madrasa programmes for early childhood development, to primary schools in disadvantaged communities, to leadership training programmes and scholarships for promising young professionals. At the tertiary level, we have recently launched the University of Central Asia. This is an international agreement between Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan and the Ismaili Imamat to create a new institution of higher learning specialised in mountain societies. And, as you may know, we are also planning to expand the Aga Khan University - founded almost 25 years ago in Pakistan - and now an active presence in nine different countries. Just this week, the Aga Khan University announced its plans for a new Faculty of Health Sciences in Nairobi, as well as a major new East African campus in Arusha.
All of our initiatives are built around a pragmatic, experience-based, and innovative approach to education - an effort to refresh and replace narrower approaches which have sometimes mis-served the developing world. Education, in the past, has too often been a matter of indoctrination - advancing the demands of dogma instead of the disciplines of reason.
What is required today, in my view, is an educational approach which is the polar opposite of indoctrination - one that nurtures the spirit of anticipation and agility, adaptability and adventure.
To this end, the Academies curriculum will encourage its students in the practice of what I would call “Intellectual Humility, “ recognizing that what they do not know will always be greater than what they know - and launching an ardent, lifelong search for the knowledge they will need. In an age of accelerating change, the most important thing any student can learn is how to go on learning.........
...........We look forward to working with the government and the people of Uganda as we pursue these great objectives. I know we will all remember this important ceremony at this beautiful place as a special moment in this process. Again, we are most grateful to all of you for sharing it with us."
http://www.akdn.org/speeches/2007Aug22.htm
easynash
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)
All human beings, by their nature, desire to know(Aristotle, The Metaphysics, a few hundred years BC)
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
244)Selected quotes from Mowlana Hazar Imam, Aga Khan IV's current East African visit, Aug 12-23 2007, that are relevant to the title of my blogsite.
1)Remarks by His Highness the Aga Khan at the Commemoration of the 25th Anniversary of the Madrasa Programme, Mombasa – 14 August 2007:
".......A deep concern for Knowledge - and the best ways of sharing Knowledge - goes back to the very roots of the Islamic tradition. When we think of our proud educational traditions, however, we often think first about the great Universities and Libraries which became centers of Islamic culture down through the centuries - including in our time the Aga Khan University which now has teaching centres in eight different countries. Or we think of schools which prepare students for university life - as our Aga Khan Academy programme is designed to do.
But we sometimes give too little attention to the schools which prepare young children for life itself - in all of its holistic dimensions. And yet the evidence accumulates steadily showing that an investment made in the earliest, pre-school years can bring enormous dividends as a child proceeds from one level of education to another.
We have particularly strong evidence that this has been the case for the Madrasa programme in this community - and in the other communities and the other countries to which these concepts now have spread. From the seed that was planted here in the Coastal Region some 25 years ago - when Bi-Swafiya Said received her grant from the Aga Khan Foundation - the East African Madrasa Programme has grown to include 203 pre-schools, with nearly 800 teachers, reaching some 30,000 households and serving more than 54,000 children. This is truly an inspiring story.
It is also important to note some additional distinctions concerning this program. One is the Programme’s pluralistic, inclusive approach - embracing Muslim and non-Muslim children alike – and helping all of them to learn important lessons about diversity. Indeed, it is good to see that parents of different faiths are represented on the School Management Committees.
It is striking that modern neuro-sciences have demonstrated that long before the age of 6, children are aware of the different cultural backgrounds amongst each other in their classes. It is thus before that age that pluralism can be instilled as a life value........"
http://www.akdn.org/speeches/2007Aug14_madrasa.htm
2)Remarks by His Highness the Aga Khan at the Inauguration of the Faculty of Health Sciences of the Aga Khan University,Nairobi, Kenya – 13 August 2007:
".........A golden jubilee is a valuable opportunity for putting the present into historical perspective. In that spirit, I would begin today by emphasizing how my concern for education grows intimately out of my family history. It was just a century ago that my late Grandfather, Sir Sultan Mahomed Shah Aga Khan, began to build a network of educational institutions which would eventually include some 300 schools, many of them in East Africa.
My late Grandfather, who was also the founding figure of Aligarh University in India, was renewing a tradition which stretches back over 1000 years, to our forefathers, the Fatimid Imam-Caliphs of Egypt, who founded Al-Azhar University and the Academy of Knowledge in Cairo. And going back even further, I would cite the words of the first hereditary Imam of the Shia Muslims, Hazrat Ali Ibn Abi Talib, who emphasized in his teachings that “No honour is like knowledge.”.........":
http://www.akdn.org/speeches/2007Aug14_fhs.htm
The quote from Hazrat Ali comes from a speech given by Mowlana Hazar Imam at the Tutzing Evangelical Academy in Germany, upon receiving the Tolerance Award, May 20th 2006:
I cite Hazrat Ali's words....: "No belief is like modesty and patience, no attainment is like humility, no honour is like knowledge, no power is like forbearance, and no support is more reliable than consultation". Hazrat Ali's regard for knowledge reinforces the compatibility of faith and knowledge. And his respect for consultation is, in my view, a commitment to tolerant and open-hearted democratic processes(Aga Khan IV)
http://www.akdn.org/speeches/200506_Tutzing.htm
I wrote a piece on the uninterrupted thread of the search for knowledge in Shia Ismaili Islam here:
http://easynash.blogspot.com/2007/03/135the-uninterrupted-thread-of-search.html
3)Other quotes and speech excerpts that fall into the same category of knowledge, science, creation, intellect and religion:
http://easynash.blogspot.com/2007/07/213the-creation-according-to-prophet.html
http://easynash.blogspot.com/2007/07/208selected-speech-excerpts-of-aga-khan.html
http://easynash.blogspot.com/2007/02/129quotes-of-aga-khan-4-consolidated.html
http://easynash.blogspot.com/2007/02/133timeless-sayings-of-aga-khan-iii.html
http://easynash.blogspot.com/2007/08/234heartiest-mubarak-to-all-ismailis-in.html
easynash
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)
All human beings, by their nature, desire to know(Aristotle, The Metaphysics, a few hundred years BC)
".......A deep concern for Knowledge - and the best ways of sharing Knowledge - goes back to the very roots of the Islamic tradition. When we think of our proud educational traditions, however, we often think first about the great Universities and Libraries which became centers of Islamic culture down through the centuries - including in our time the Aga Khan University which now has teaching centres in eight different countries. Or we think of schools which prepare students for university life - as our Aga Khan Academy programme is designed to do.
But we sometimes give too little attention to the schools which prepare young children for life itself - in all of its holistic dimensions. And yet the evidence accumulates steadily showing that an investment made in the earliest, pre-school years can bring enormous dividends as a child proceeds from one level of education to another.
We have particularly strong evidence that this has been the case for the Madrasa programme in this community - and in the other communities and the other countries to which these concepts now have spread. From the seed that was planted here in the Coastal Region some 25 years ago - when Bi-Swafiya Said received her grant from the Aga Khan Foundation - the East African Madrasa Programme has grown to include 203 pre-schools, with nearly 800 teachers, reaching some 30,000 households and serving more than 54,000 children. This is truly an inspiring story.
It is also important to note some additional distinctions concerning this program. One is the Programme’s pluralistic, inclusive approach - embracing Muslim and non-Muslim children alike – and helping all of them to learn important lessons about diversity. Indeed, it is good to see that parents of different faiths are represented on the School Management Committees.
It is striking that modern neuro-sciences have demonstrated that long before the age of 6, children are aware of the different cultural backgrounds amongst each other in their classes. It is thus before that age that pluralism can be instilled as a life value........"
http://www.akdn.org/speeches/2007Aug14_madrasa.htm
2)Remarks by His Highness the Aga Khan at the Inauguration of the Faculty of Health Sciences of the Aga Khan University,Nairobi, Kenya – 13 August 2007:
".........A golden jubilee is a valuable opportunity for putting the present into historical perspective. In that spirit, I would begin today by emphasizing how my concern for education grows intimately out of my family history. It was just a century ago that my late Grandfather, Sir Sultan Mahomed Shah Aga Khan, began to build a network of educational institutions which would eventually include some 300 schools, many of them in East Africa.
My late Grandfather, who was also the founding figure of Aligarh University in India, was renewing a tradition which stretches back over 1000 years, to our forefathers, the Fatimid Imam-Caliphs of Egypt, who founded Al-Azhar University and the Academy of Knowledge in Cairo. And going back even further, I would cite the words of the first hereditary Imam of the Shia Muslims, Hazrat Ali Ibn Abi Talib, who emphasized in his teachings that “No honour is like knowledge.”.........":
http://www.akdn.org/speeches/2007Aug14_fhs.htm
The quote from Hazrat Ali comes from a speech given by Mowlana Hazar Imam at the Tutzing Evangelical Academy in Germany, upon receiving the Tolerance Award, May 20th 2006:
I cite Hazrat Ali's words....: "No belief is like modesty and patience, no attainment is like humility, no honour is like knowledge, no power is like forbearance, and no support is more reliable than consultation". Hazrat Ali's regard for knowledge reinforces the compatibility of faith and knowledge. And his respect for consultation is, in my view, a commitment to tolerant and open-hearted democratic processes(Aga Khan IV)
http://www.akdn.org/speeches/200506_Tutzing.htm
I wrote a piece on the uninterrupted thread of the search for knowledge in Shia Ismaili Islam here:
http://easynash.blogspot.com/2007/03/135the-uninterrupted-thread-of-search.html
3)Other quotes and speech excerpts that fall into the same category of knowledge, science, creation, intellect and religion:
http://easynash.blogspot.com/2007/07/213the-creation-according-to-prophet.html
http://easynash.blogspot.com/2007/07/208selected-speech-excerpts-of-aga-khan.html
http://easynash.blogspot.com/2007/02/129quotes-of-aga-khan-4-consolidated.html
http://easynash.blogspot.com/2007/02/133timeless-sayings-of-aga-khan-iii.html
http://easynash.blogspot.com/2007/08/234heartiest-mubarak-to-all-ismailis-in.html
easynash
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)
All human beings, by their nature, desire to know(Aristotle, The Metaphysics, a few hundred years BC)
243)Aga Khan Development Network and The Ismaili websites have an excellent exposition of Mowlana Hazar Imam, Aga Khan IV's East African visit so far.
Two of our three official Shia Ismaili Muslim websites, those of the Aga Khan Development Network and The Ismaili, have laid out clearly and methodically the sequence of events, accompanied by marvellous sequential picture collages, relating to the visit of Mowlana Hazar Imam, Aga Khan IV(August 12-23 2007), to East Africa so far:
http://www.akdn.org/
http://www.akdn.org/news/2007ea.htm
http://www.theismaili.org/
The Ismaili Mail website has also reported extensively upon this visit and other related articles:
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/
easynash
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)
All human beings, by their nature, desire to know(Aristotle, The Metaphysics, a few hundred years BC)
http://www.akdn.org/
http://www.akdn.org/news/2007ea.htm
http://www.theismaili.org/
The Ismaili Mail website has also reported extensively upon this visit and other related articles:
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/
easynash
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)
All human beings, by their nature, desire to know(Aristotle, The Metaphysics, a few hundred years BC)
Monday, August 20, 2007
242)A Shia Ismaili Muslim cosmological exposition from the pre- to early Fatimid era(10th century CE).
Excerpt from the book "Abu Yakub al-Sijistani: Intellectual Missionary", written by Paul Walker, historian of ideas currently affiliated with the University of Chicago; published by the Institute Of Ismaili Studies, 1996:
In defense of the link between science and religion(my words):
"For al-Sijistani, the truth is known and its roots are four. Between God and the individual human thinker, there are exactly four sources that provide truth, that define and give meaning to existence and that keep the whole universe-from the smallest particle to the grandest creation-in place and continuing to do what each was intended to do. These four are the pillars for the architecture of the intelligible universe as he, and the Ismailis who followed him, saw it. His vision is thus comprehensive and inclusive. Studying al-Sijistani's thought is inherently interesting if only for the breadth of his aspirations and the complexity of his way of viewing the structure of truth.
The four wellsprings, then, are in descending order of rank: first, the intellect, which in other terms could be called universal reason or the mind; second, soul and, third, legislating prophecy, these latter two occupying parallel but distinct positions; and, finally, at the base, in fourth place, the Founder of interpretation.The preceding approach is, of course, rather abstract. In more ordinary terms the four wellsprings are intellect, soul, Speaking-prophet and his executor. In the Islamic period, the latter two are the Prophet Muhammad and Ali ibn Abi Talib, his cousin and successor. In another, earlier, era they would have been the founding prophet, as for example, Moses or Jesus, and an executor for the religions instigated by each in turn.
Of the four wellsprings, intellect is the least comprehensible in modern terms; it was the most abstract even for the Neoplatonists who accepted it as a philosophical principle. In strictly Ismaili language the intellect is more often called the Preceder(al-Sabic), a term which indicates its pre-eminent rank rather than what it is. Soul, which like intellect nears a name that both suggests what it is and yet might be confused with many other notions of soul, is also known as the Follower(al-Tali) to show its close association with intellect as the Preceder. Speaking-prophet is a translation of the Arabic word natiq. It denotes a special type of prophet who conveys God's revelation by composing a law. Other prophets might merely provide wisdom orally but not in written form. The latter function, as formally present in the system of roots, belongs to the Speaking-prophet's executor, the Founder, who is resposible for the creation of an explanatory teaching to accompany the written scripture.
Much more needs to be said about these four wellsprings. The details of what they do and how they do it forms, after all the basis both of religion and of science. Prior to that, however, it is useful to emphasize the structure of the system as a whole.
Significantly, God is not a member of this structure, nor for that matter is the divine command by which He initiates it and brings into being from nothing. Discussions that concern either God or the divine command fall outside intellectual reality and are not, therefore, a subject for science. What can and should be said must be dealt with separately.The system itself with its four foundations does not have a visual image, nor should it. Intellect is, as it were, more encompassing than the others. Soul and Speaking-prophet function at a lower rank each parallel to the other and, at the base, the Founder is literally the point of contact for ordinary mortals. He is their primary means of access to the system as a whole.
Al-Sijistani employs four Arabic terms for the roots which are each a part of a technical vocabulary designed to explain the respective functions of these four source. They are 'tayid', 'tarkib', 'talif' and 'tawil'. These terms belong, in all likelihood, primarily to the Ismaili tradition and not to philosophy. Each has an origin in Quranic materials. 'Tayid' means to provide support, corroboration, inspiration, or an infusion of spirit. Jesus, as an example, is, according to the Quran, 'infused with the holy spirit'(muayyad bil-ruh al-quds). 'Tarkib' is composition as in the compounding of elements in the process of making more complex things, that is, of adding together two things to form a synthesis, a compound. 'Talif' is composition in another sense; it is to compile words into a scripture or a religious law, to compose as in writing, that is, to add together words in order to express complex meanings. Finally, 'tawil' is interpretation.
The four roots are each responsible for one of these four functions. Intellect controls 'tayid'; it inspires. Soul composes in the sense of 'tarkib'; it is the animating force that combines the physical elements of the natural universe into beings that move and act. The Speaking-prophet, similarly, composes scripture and creates law, the act of 'talif'. The Founder interprets('tawil') what the others compose.Note how the four functions are related. The infusion or inspiration of intellect stands at the top; all beings below it receive its benefits, though some in greater proportion than others. The two parallel sources, soul and Speaking-prophet, as the sources closest to intellect, most perfectly acquire that benefit. They are as infused with reason as any being can be that is not itself pure intellect. Since there is no other intellect, they are as near to perfect as possible. Both of these parallel sources act on what is less than they by incorporating what they have received from intellect. Incorporating is an especially apt word in this instance. It means to turn something into a body, as in 'composing'. But it is actually the conversion of an intellectual object, a thought, into a physical thing. Soul acts by incorporating reason into physical objects, the natural matter of the universe and all the things composed of it. The Speaking-prophet creates law and law is an embodiment of reason; the scripture of a messenger-prophet is therefore an incorporation of intellect also.
At the base of the system, a slight alteration occurs. Each of the higher three forces influence the lower ones. They instil the benefits that they each provide downward through the system until reaching the base. The Founder, from the bottom, so to speak, looks upward. The Founder must direct the thoughts of creatures upward and must guide them in reverse. The function of 'tawil' is to move back up the system, to 'un-incorporate' what has become physical by removing its body and finding the spiritual reality of its origin.
In his book 'The Wellsprings', al-Sijistani offers a stunning- all the more so for being ecumenical -iconic image of this system of roots. The Christian cross, he says, resembles the four points defined by the four roots. At its base fastened in the ground is the Founder, its foundation, the symbolic access for ordinary humans. Above to the left and to the right are the associated members, soul and Speaking-prophet. At the top is the intellect."
easynash
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)
All human beings, by their nature, desire to know(Aristotle, The Metaphysics, a few hundred years BC)
In defense of the link between science and religion(my words):
"For al-Sijistani, the truth is known and its roots are four. Between God and the individual human thinker, there are exactly four sources that provide truth, that define and give meaning to existence and that keep the whole universe-from the smallest particle to the grandest creation-in place and continuing to do what each was intended to do. These four are the pillars for the architecture of the intelligible universe as he, and the Ismailis who followed him, saw it. His vision is thus comprehensive and inclusive. Studying al-Sijistani's thought is inherently interesting if only for the breadth of his aspirations and the complexity of his way of viewing the structure of truth.
The four wellsprings, then, are in descending order of rank: first, the intellect, which in other terms could be called universal reason or the mind; second, soul and, third, legislating prophecy, these latter two occupying parallel but distinct positions; and, finally, at the base, in fourth place, the Founder of interpretation.The preceding approach is, of course, rather abstract. In more ordinary terms the four wellsprings are intellect, soul, Speaking-prophet and his executor. In the Islamic period, the latter two are the Prophet Muhammad and Ali ibn Abi Talib, his cousin and successor. In another, earlier, era they would have been the founding prophet, as for example, Moses or Jesus, and an executor for the religions instigated by each in turn.
Of the four wellsprings, intellect is the least comprehensible in modern terms; it was the most abstract even for the Neoplatonists who accepted it as a philosophical principle. In strictly Ismaili language the intellect is more often called the Preceder(al-Sabic), a term which indicates its pre-eminent rank rather than what it is. Soul, which like intellect nears a name that both suggests what it is and yet might be confused with many other notions of soul, is also known as the Follower(al-Tali) to show its close association with intellect as the Preceder. Speaking-prophet is a translation of the Arabic word natiq. It denotes a special type of prophet who conveys God's revelation by composing a law. Other prophets might merely provide wisdom orally but not in written form. The latter function, as formally present in the system of roots, belongs to the Speaking-prophet's executor, the Founder, who is resposible for the creation of an explanatory teaching to accompany the written scripture.
Much more needs to be said about these four wellsprings. The details of what they do and how they do it forms, after all the basis both of religion and of science. Prior to that, however, it is useful to emphasize the structure of the system as a whole.
Significantly, God is not a member of this structure, nor for that matter is the divine command by which He initiates it and brings into being from nothing. Discussions that concern either God or the divine command fall outside intellectual reality and are not, therefore, a subject for science. What can and should be said must be dealt with separately.The system itself with its four foundations does not have a visual image, nor should it. Intellect is, as it were, more encompassing than the others. Soul and Speaking-prophet function at a lower rank each parallel to the other and, at the base, the Founder is literally the point of contact for ordinary mortals. He is their primary means of access to the system as a whole.
Al-Sijistani employs four Arabic terms for the roots which are each a part of a technical vocabulary designed to explain the respective functions of these four source. They are 'tayid', 'tarkib', 'talif' and 'tawil'. These terms belong, in all likelihood, primarily to the Ismaili tradition and not to philosophy. Each has an origin in Quranic materials. 'Tayid' means to provide support, corroboration, inspiration, or an infusion of spirit. Jesus, as an example, is, according to the Quran, 'infused with the holy spirit'(muayyad bil-ruh al-quds). 'Tarkib' is composition as in the compounding of elements in the process of making more complex things, that is, of adding together two things to form a synthesis, a compound. 'Talif' is composition in another sense; it is to compile words into a scripture or a religious law, to compose as in writing, that is, to add together words in order to express complex meanings. Finally, 'tawil' is interpretation.
The four roots are each responsible for one of these four functions. Intellect controls 'tayid'; it inspires. Soul composes in the sense of 'tarkib'; it is the animating force that combines the physical elements of the natural universe into beings that move and act. The Speaking-prophet, similarly, composes scripture and creates law, the act of 'talif'. The Founder interprets('tawil') what the others compose.Note how the four functions are related. The infusion or inspiration of intellect stands at the top; all beings below it receive its benefits, though some in greater proportion than others. The two parallel sources, soul and Speaking-prophet, as the sources closest to intellect, most perfectly acquire that benefit. They are as infused with reason as any being can be that is not itself pure intellect. Since there is no other intellect, they are as near to perfect as possible. Both of these parallel sources act on what is less than they by incorporating what they have received from intellect. Incorporating is an especially apt word in this instance. It means to turn something into a body, as in 'composing'. But it is actually the conversion of an intellectual object, a thought, into a physical thing. Soul acts by incorporating reason into physical objects, the natural matter of the universe and all the things composed of it. The Speaking-prophet creates law and law is an embodiment of reason; the scripture of a messenger-prophet is therefore an incorporation of intellect also.
At the base of the system, a slight alteration occurs. Each of the higher three forces influence the lower ones. They instil the benefits that they each provide downward through the system until reaching the base. The Founder, from the bottom, so to speak, looks upward. The Founder must direct the thoughts of creatures upward and must guide them in reverse. The function of 'tawil' is to move back up the system, to 'un-incorporate' what has become physical by removing its body and finding the spiritual reality of its origin.
In his book 'The Wellsprings', al-Sijistani offers a stunning- all the more so for being ecumenical -iconic image of this system of roots. The Christian cross, he says, resembles the four points defined by the four roots. At its base fastened in the ground is the Founder, its foundation, the symbolic access for ordinary humans. Above to the left and to the right are the associated members, soul and Speaking-prophet. At the top is the intellect."
easynash
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)
All human beings, by their nature, desire to know(Aristotle, The Metaphysics, a few hundred years BC)
Sunday, August 19, 2007
241)Lets play a game of catch up in cyberspace; our futures could depend on it.
This is an interesting article that appears in Saturday's Globe and Mail and it shows how far ahead in the cybergame jihadists really are. Clearly there is a lot of catching up to do by non-jihadist cyberplayers, the like-minded group of websites and blogsites that I feel I and the ones I link to are operating at the present time.
Speaking specifically in reference to Shia Ismaili Islam, North America is very well represented, with websites like Ismaili Mail(Illinois), Ismaili Web(Texas and California), Ismaili Heritage Net(Western Canada) and blogsites like Easynash(Toronto, Ontario), Jalaledin(California), Ismailiworld(God knows where), etc. The official Shia Ismaili Muslim websites are based in England, France and Switzerland.
We need many more individual bloggers from more disparate parts of the world, esp, Pakistan, Central Asia, India, South East Asia, Australia, New Zealand, Africa, parts of the Middle East, Western China, even South America(not a day goes by when my blog is not visited by readers from somewhere in South America). We need even more from North America and Europe. We need about two to three thousand bloggers worldwide to be blogging 2 or 3 times a week on a topic of interest relating to Islam and Shia Ismaili Islam. We especially need a dedicated blog or three by someone very knowledgeable in the ginans of the Ismaili Pirs, someone who can bring us to a better understanding of the highest order knowledge that this corpus represents:
MIND FIELD: Terror goes digital. With Canadian help
Across the Internet, extremist Islamist propaganda is circulating to alienated, Western-born kids, trying to foster potential 'homegrown terrorists.' In Nova Scotia, a web-domain registration service unintentionally helps these terror proponents hide their tracks. Police, spies and lawyers are hamstrung: How to fight back without risking everyone's civil liberties?
Omar El Akkad reports
OMAR EL AKKAD
The Globe and Mail, Canada's National Newspaper
August 18, 2007
Welcome to Yarmouth, Nova Scotia - pivotal battleground in the global jihad.
The town of 7,000 doesn't look the part. Its quietly beautiful downtown lives and dies by tourists. The coastline puts postcards to shame. The New York Islanders have held their training camp here for the past two years. But unwittingly, Yarmouth has become an example of the sort of unassuming places that are serving as relay stations in a virtual war.
The town is home to a branch of Register.com, one of its largest employers and one of the most popular Internet domain-name registration services in the world. For a fee, the company allows users to register website names - the .com, .net or .org addresses you type into your web browser to surf the Internet. Normally, when anyone signs up new domains, they have to provide a name, address and contact information, all of which become publicly available to anyone who's even remotely net-savvy. (The information is copied to one of the central databases that form the backbone of the Internet, to ensure there are no conflicts, such as two separate entities owning the same domain.) But for a few extra dollars, Register.com also offers an anonymous registration service: Try to find out who registered any one of these websites, and you'll be handed the same address and phone number in Yarmouth.
This service is hugely popular: Civil-liberties advocates and anyone else who values their privacy flock to it. But it's also very useful to another group of people, halfway around the globe: On one of the world's largest pro-Hamas websites, viewers can download martyrdom videos that feature the diatribes of masked men shortly before they launch deadly attacks. Look up the registration info for that site, and you'll get that Yarmouth address and phone number.
The challenge this situation poses is not unprecedented. Years ago, authorities noticed that child pornography websites, though often operated from outside North America, made use of North American anonymous-registration services. In response, a large number of watchdog groups began hunting down such sites to force the registration firms to shut them down.
"There's nothing near that level [of public monitoring] with terrorist websites," says Wade Deisman, Director of the National Security Working Group at the University of Ottawa. Government intelligence services don't have the resources to manage the scale of the problem. "I haven't seen anything that comes even close to addressing this issue," he says.
The FBI estimates somewhere in the range of 6,000 terrorism-supporting websites are currently active. Last week, the Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies published a report stating that, in terms of nefarious online activity, terrorism promotion had eclipsed hatemongering.
This is the new jihad - the evolution of a propaganda effort that, just a decade ago, consisted mostly of Osama bin Laden speeches on video tapes smuggled out of a hideout in Afghanistan. Today, the public-relations arms of terrorist organizations - run less by grizzled warriors than by 20-something computer geeks - deal in digital currency, getting their messages out instantly and universally using the scope and anonymity of the web.
The process is borderless. A beheading video moves from a hideout in Peshawar to a server in London to a computer screen in Toronto unhindered, fuelling a global radicalization juggernaut that intelligence agencies describe as perhaps the biggest threat facing the West today.
All manner of video, audio and even interactive propaganda have found an audience among many disaffected Muslim youth around the world. But while the majority of people who download such content may only fuel a passive resentment of the West, for others the audiovisual diatribes of Mr. bin Laden and his kin have served as a sort of gateway drug to a more violent worldview. That was the case among some of the alleged ringleaders of the Toronto terrorist group arrested during a sweep last summer - a trail led from some of those arrested to a massive, and now defunct, web forum where angry youth traded incendiary content.
In another case, a young British man named Younis Tsouli was arrested in England in 2005 and charged with "conspiracy to murder, conspiracy to cause an explosion, conspiracy to obtain money by deception, fundraising and possession of articles for terrorist purposes." Mr. Tsouli, now 23, had never so much as fired a rifle - his agitation was purely online. The computer hacker got his start moving propaganda videos around the web for al-Qaeda in Iraq and soon popped up in connection with at least three alleged terrorist plots, including one in Canada. For Mr. Tsouli, it was not a great stretch from posting beheading videos to sending out suicide-bomb-belt manuals.
Besides the anonymous registries, many effective terrorist-propaganda producers rely on the hugely popular public blogging and file-sharing sites used by millions to rant about their bosses and share barbecue recipes. That leaves law-enforcement officials in the uncomfortable position of trying to catch a wisp of an enemy without trampling on everyone else's civil liberties.
And so a battle rages in Ottawa, as Canadian police and spy agencies complain that the legislation governing online crime is a historical relic. Privacy advocates, on the other hand, fear a world where every 0 and 1 is visible to Big Brother.
Meanwhile, terrorist propaganda operations have come to rival the PR departments of multinational corporations, complete with publishing houses, movie-editing studios and video-game developers. This is the ammunition in a battle of ideas that all sides agree may end up being more important than any blood-and-bullets conflict - a battle that, so far, the West is losing.
Al-Qaeda's spin doctor
It started with a single memo, dated June 20, 2000. Abu Huthayfa, a member of al-Qaeda's inner circle, was writing to his mentor, Osama bin Laden, about the importance of public relations. The writer was struck by some of the tactics already in use by Hamas, especially the practice of videotaping statements of soon-to-be "martyrs." A year earlier, the Al Jazeera television network had aired an interview with Mr. bin Laden, and the public response convinced Mr. Huthayfa that there were many people around the world hanging on the soft-spoken Saudi's every word.
He asked his leader, why wasn't al-Qaeda taking better advantage? Why was it that two years after the U.S. embassy bombings in Dar Es Salaam and Nairobi, many people knew little about "the heroes of this magnificent undertaking"?
Abu Huthayfa's solution to al-Qaeda's PR shortfalls would serve as the foundation for the single most important advance in the terrorist group's history. He proposed the creation of a separate informational branch of al-Qaeda. At the time, the group's communiqués flowed freely around much of Afghanistan, but that was a form of preaching to the converted - elsewhere in the world, al-Qaeda was still a small fish.
To remedy this, Mr. Huthayfa set his sights on the Internet, especially e-mail and file-sharing websites. He touted the advantages of instant communication, the massive amount of information that could be sent around the world in a blink.
"The importance of establishing a website for you on the Internet in which you place all your legible, audible, and visible archives and news must be emphasized," he wrote. "It should not escape the mind of any one of you the importance of this tool in communicating with people."
It didn't. Within a year, Mr. bin Laden would declare that up to 90 per cent of al-Qaeda's battles would be fought not with guns, but words and images. (The memo, recovered in a raid on an al-Qaeda hideout, is now a public document found on several terrorism-studies databases.)
After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, a flood of videos glorifying the carnage began appearing online. In many cases the producer was al-Sahab ("the Clouds"), the newly created media arm of al-Qaeda. The hijackers appeared superimposed over images of the planes crashing into New York's twin towers, reading their wills and issuing stern warnings to the U.S. This time, the propaganda opportunity would be fully exploited.
The post-9/11 videos showcased many of al-Qaeda's major talking points. Over and over, would-be martyrs and senior leaders glorified the attacks and the attackers - the idea of a fast-track to eternal paradise being a significant selling point for disaffected Muslim youth and other possible recruits. Another refrain was to warn of further attacks, citing a list of demands that combined legitimate and illegitimate grievances from across the Muslim world in a patchwork of outrage.
"If you look at the messaging and narrative, it's aimed at a Western audience," says Frank Cilluffo, director of the Homeland Security Policy Institute at George Washington University, and a former special assistant on security to the president. "I look at al-Qaeda as a brand, and you have to look at what makes brands flourish - there has been a big improvement in use of symbols."
One of the most oft-repeated symbols is the Arabic word ummah, meaning "Muslim nation." Among many Muslims worldwide, it conjures halcyon images of a global empire ruled by religion, where borders of race, ethnicity and nationality are obliterated and the only common denominator is the word of God. But the ummah also has come to serve a second purpose, as justification for violence. If Muslims everywhere are one, the thinking goes, then a car bombing in Bali is a legitimate response to the killing of a child in Gaza.
In geographic reality, there is no ummah; perhaps the most recent attempt at one was the Ottoman empire. But from another view, there is perhaps the largest ummah in the history of Islam, composed of chat rooms and file servers from Islamabad to Antigua. In this cyber-ummah, race, ethnicity and nationality are invisible; the common denominator is the digitized word of God. There are segments of the cyber-ummah that have nothing to do with terrorism: Many mainstream Muslim youth groups in Canada use web forums. But, as with neo-Nazi and child-porn rings, the qualities that make Internet forums legitimately useful also empower the bad guys.
After the Sept. 11 attacks, the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan scattered much of al-Qaeda's leadership - its literal Arabic name, "the base," was no longer apt. At that point, al-Qaeda morphed from a group into a mindset: Where there once was one well-defined organization, there sprung up dozens of relatively unconnected cells, not just in Iraq and Afghanistan, but in London and Madrid. The founders of those cells were, in many cases, Western-born young men whose parents were immigrants but who had never set foot themselves in any war zone. Instead, this new generation of jihadis had grown up watching the fruits of al-Sahab's labour - the propaganda and martyrdom videos floating freely across the cyber-ummah.
"You have a group of individuals who are distanced from their parents; don't necessarily feel fully embedded in their current society, so they look to one another to reaffirm their attitudes," says Mr. Cilluffo. "It really goads the bravado."
A new generation has taken over the informational arm Abu Huthayfa suggested some seven years ago. As comfortable at the keyboard as the original mujahedeen were with rifles, they have swapped the grainy video of past terrorist communiqués for a far more polished product. But it wasn't only the form of the message that took a generational leap forward. The target demographic also had come into focus: young, angry, Western kids.
Joystick jihad
By almost any measure, Night of Capturing Bush is an unbelievably awful video game.
In the first-person shooter, released in September of last year, you play the role of a hardcore, AK47-toting Islamic warrior. Your goal is to mow down feeble, eerily identical U.S. troops in Iraqi settings - Iraq being composed mainly of various heavily pixilated shades of brown. The difficulty levels are skewed to the point where the cloned U.S. troops could unload entire armouries of bullets on you and still not make much of a dent. As war songs play in the background, you make your way through six levels, culminating, as the title suggests, in a showdown with U.S. President George W. Bush. (Ironically, Night of Capturing Bush is a minor modification of Quest for Saddam, an equally mediocre 2003 game from right-wing U.S. activist Jesse Petrilla.)
But glitchy game-play and atrocious graphics did little to hinder Night of Capturing Bush's primary purpose, which was strictly ideological. In a press release hyping the game, its creators, an anonymous group called the Global Islamic Media Front, dubbed their desired audience "terrorist children." Within a few hours of its release, across thousands of online message boards, these "terrorist children" passed the game back and forth. The Media Front only had to initiate the craze; thousands of sympathizers around the planet did the rest.
It wasn't the first time Islamic extremist propaganda fused with pop culture. Two years previous, a young British man calling himself Sheikh Terra stepped in front of a camera, his face covered, carrying what appeared to be a pistol, and began dancing. The resulting rap video was called Dirty Kuffar (Kuffar is an Arabic word for disbeliever).
Since its release, Dirty Kuffar has been downloaded onto millions of computers and remixed by many like-minded web jihadists. You can find it on video-sharing sites such as YouTube.
"I saw a number of video games. I saw rap videos with a very good tune to them," says Mr. Cilluffo. "I can't tell you for a fact we're certain who's designing what, but I can tell you that when it comes to technology and its application, I think the younger generation has a leg up."
One common method of disseminating anything from a terrorist video game to a bomb-making manual to a beheading video is to make copies available on dozens of free websites at the same time. On these sites, which were created to help people transfer data files too large to e-mail, anyone can quickly create an account - when barred by the administrators of one site, the user just jumps to another. By the time all such sites wise up, the message is all over the world.
On the Global Islamic Media Front site, each newly produced video is quickly uploaded to a dozen or more free sites. The Front's own site is not hosted on an obscure or secret server, but on Wordpress, one of the most widely used blogging services in the world. Because registering with a blogging site such as Wordpress doesn't require domain registration, there is no publicly accessible address or phone number.
That's likely the same thinking behind Press-Release, a website chock full of communiqués from "the Islamic State Of Iraq." There, users can download high-quality videos featuring attacks on U.S. military vehicles, as well as detailed listings of American casualties. Look up the registration info and you're handed an address in Mountain View, Calif. - far removed from the killing fields of Iraq, but near the headquarters of Google Inc., which owns the popular blogging domain Blogspot, on which "Press Release" is hosted.
Anonymity isn't enough, however. There's an intense emphasis on secrecy evident in the various password-protected forums and message boards where jihad-minded teens gather. One of the most widely visited extremist forums subscribes to the country-club model - the only way in is to have a current member vouch for you.
This security consciousness is in large part due to the new emphasis police and intelligence agencies are placing on infiltrating such forums. But today the level of infiltration is so high that intelligence agencies face a recurring problem: An agent goes undercover on a web forum and finds dozens of users making violent, extremists statements, but to the agent's dismay, it soon becomes apparent that many of them are undercover operatives from other intelligence agencies.
Joining the fray
Frank Cilluffo sat before a dozen or so of the most powerful politicians in the world last May and told them they should consider broadcasting footage of dead children to the public.
Mr. Cilluffo had been called before the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee to talk about strategies for combatting online extremism. He presented a simple argument: Extremist videos often leverage footage of civilians killed by Israeli and U.S. troops. Why not show the world what happens to civilians - often Muslim civilians - when Islamic extremist groups carry out their attacks?
"I don't remember exactly [the committee's] response," Mr. Cilluffo recalls. "I think we did have some silence. It's a pretty provocative statement.
"The idea behind that was to take off any filters and demonstrate that the consequences of terror have a real impact: People are killed. This is not a theoretical set of issues."
The recommendation was part of a broader argument that if the U.S. government and its allies attempt to fight a war of ideas on their own, they're going to lose.
"Much of the solution comes from people with credibility in these constituencies, I don't think that can come from Western governments," Mr. Cilluffo says. "We need people who are versed in the Koran, who can show how it's being distorted. We need people who appreciate cultural nuances and norms. I think that governments have a role to play, but by no means the primary role."
What Mr. Cilluffo was pitching was the construction of a rival narrative to the one circulated in the cyber-ummah - one that would separate out the reasonable grievances from the specious ones circulated by extremists, and be delivered by someone credible. But his pitch wasn't an easy one to make, given that many Western governments, police and intelligence shops had long viewed the war on terror as just that - a war, which will be won or lost with old-fashioned techniques. Producing a rival message has been a low priority.
"This is the tip of a much bigger issue," says Mr. Deisman of the National Security Working Group in Ottawa. "The reason why we haven't matched the propaganda war is because we consider ourselves states characterized by tolerance and acceptance. For us to be saying what we stand for may be seen as infringing on someone else."
In England, where the problem of "homegrown terrorism" is far more urgent, Mr. Deisman points out the propaganda war has intensified: "England truly is an embattled country. The government is producing videos about what Englishness means," he says. "Can you imagine if we did that in Canada? People would be up in arms."
But even on the traditional counterterrorism front, law-enforcement officials are coming up against a major wall: For the most part, the legal system was not designed for cyberspace, as you can see by looking at the key case of the murder-conspiracy trial of Younis Tsouli in England this summer. Mr. Tsouli was alleged to have lived a double life on the Internet under the name "Irhabi007" (Irhabi means terrorist in Arabic), distributing tools of extremism. He had become one of the most important terrorism conduits in the world, and his trial marked a watershed moment in combatting cyber-crime.
However, in May, that trial hit an embarrassing bump. Justice Peter Openshaw, the supervising judge, turned to prosecutors and said: "The trouble is I don't understand the language. I don't really understand what a website is." A university professor was quickly brought into court to explain the Internet.
In the case of child pornography, Mr. Deisman points out, there was a lag of about five to seven years before independent groups began forming for the purpose of shutting illegal sites down. The delay might be equally long with terrorism sites.
"This stuff has happened so quickly," Mr. Deisman says. "Typically it takes a while to catch up."
In Canada, the onus is largely on the public to point out such websites - such as the pro-Hamas one registered in Yarmouth - to the domain-name firms.
Register.com is based in New York but has offices in many places; the municipality and province provided hundreds of thousands of dollars in perks to convince it to locate operations in Yarmouth. And it has a very specific policy for dealing with cases where someone reports a domain being used for illegal purposes.
"This policy includes reviewing the content to determine the validity of the report and, if applicable, disabling the domain and notifying the customer of the reason for this action," says Wendy Kennedy, the firm's manager of public relations and customer marketing. "At times, Register.com has also reached out to law enforcement to report suspicious activity."
But the servers in Yarmouth are by no means the only ones in Canada where terrorist-related content may be residing. Until a few weeks ago, the website for al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, one of the most extensive and regularly updated of its kind, was registered to a building near downtown Toronto. The address belongs to Contactprivacy, the anonymous-registration arm of Canadian domain-name provider Tucows Inc.
After its web-hosting service in Germany was alerted to the Maghreb site and pulled the plug earlier this year, Tucows followed suit. But in an environment where similar sites are popping up daily, it was a small victory.
It has been seven years now since Abu Huthayfa sent a memo to Osama bin Laden extolling the virtues of an online public-relations strategy. Their opponents have yet to catch up.
"We have been slow to recognize that we have to go beyond tactics and recognize there's a war of ideas," says Mr. Cilluffo. "I believe there's only one side that has stepped up to the battlefield, and it's not us."
Globe and Mail writer Omar El Akkad shared the 2007 National Newspaper Award for investigative journalism with colleague Greg McArthur for their examination of online activities by accused terrorists.
easynash
If there are 23,000 jihadist websites and blogsites out there, there is no reason why we should not create 100,000 non-jihadist websites and blogsites: easynash(2007).
Speaking specifically in reference to Shia Ismaili Islam, North America is very well represented, with websites like Ismaili Mail(Illinois), Ismaili Web(Texas and California), Ismaili Heritage Net(Western Canada) and blogsites like Easynash(Toronto, Ontario), Jalaledin(California), Ismailiworld(God knows where), etc. The official Shia Ismaili Muslim websites are based in England, France and Switzerland.
We need many more individual bloggers from more disparate parts of the world, esp, Pakistan, Central Asia, India, South East Asia, Australia, New Zealand, Africa, parts of the Middle East, Western China, even South America(not a day goes by when my blog is not visited by readers from somewhere in South America). We need even more from North America and Europe. We need about two to three thousand bloggers worldwide to be blogging 2 or 3 times a week on a topic of interest relating to Islam and Shia Ismaili Islam. We especially need a dedicated blog or three by someone very knowledgeable in the ginans of the Ismaili Pirs, someone who can bring us to a better understanding of the highest order knowledge that this corpus represents:
MIND FIELD: Terror goes digital. With Canadian help
Across the Internet, extremist Islamist propaganda is circulating to alienated, Western-born kids, trying to foster potential 'homegrown terrorists.' In Nova Scotia, a web-domain registration service unintentionally helps these terror proponents hide their tracks. Police, spies and lawyers are hamstrung: How to fight back without risking everyone's civil liberties?
Omar El Akkad reports
OMAR EL AKKAD
The Globe and Mail, Canada's National Newspaper
August 18, 2007
Welcome to Yarmouth, Nova Scotia - pivotal battleground in the global jihad.
The town of 7,000 doesn't look the part. Its quietly beautiful downtown lives and dies by tourists. The coastline puts postcards to shame. The New York Islanders have held their training camp here for the past two years. But unwittingly, Yarmouth has become an example of the sort of unassuming places that are serving as relay stations in a virtual war.
The town is home to a branch of Register.com, one of its largest employers and one of the most popular Internet domain-name registration services in the world. For a fee, the company allows users to register website names - the .com, .net or .org addresses you type into your web browser to surf the Internet. Normally, when anyone signs up new domains, they have to provide a name, address and contact information, all of which become publicly available to anyone who's even remotely net-savvy. (The information is copied to one of the central databases that form the backbone of the Internet, to ensure there are no conflicts, such as two separate entities owning the same domain.) But for a few extra dollars, Register.com also offers an anonymous registration service: Try to find out who registered any one of these websites, and you'll be handed the same address and phone number in Yarmouth.
This service is hugely popular: Civil-liberties advocates and anyone else who values their privacy flock to it. But it's also very useful to another group of people, halfway around the globe: On one of the world's largest pro-Hamas websites, viewers can download martyrdom videos that feature the diatribes of masked men shortly before they launch deadly attacks. Look up the registration info for that site, and you'll get that Yarmouth address and phone number.
The challenge this situation poses is not unprecedented. Years ago, authorities noticed that child pornography websites, though often operated from outside North America, made use of North American anonymous-registration services. In response, a large number of watchdog groups began hunting down such sites to force the registration firms to shut them down.
"There's nothing near that level [of public monitoring] with terrorist websites," says Wade Deisman, Director of the National Security Working Group at the University of Ottawa. Government intelligence services don't have the resources to manage the scale of the problem. "I haven't seen anything that comes even close to addressing this issue," he says.
The FBI estimates somewhere in the range of 6,000 terrorism-supporting websites are currently active. Last week, the Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies published a report stating that, in terms of nefarious online activity, terrorism promotion had eclipsed hatemongering.
This is the new jihad - the evolution of a propaganda effort that, just a decade ago, consisted mostly of Osama bin Laden speeches on video tapes smuggled out of a hideout in Afghanistan. Today, the public-relations arms of terrorist organizations - run less by grizzled warriors than by 20-something computer geeks - deal in digital currency, getting their messages out instantly and universally using the scope and anonymity of the web.
The process is borderless. A beheading video moves from a hideout in Peshawar to a server in London to a computer screen in Toronto unhindered, fuelling a global radicalization juggernaut that intelligence agencies describe as perhaps the biggest threat facing the West today.
All manner of video, audio and even interactive propaganda have found an audience among many disaffected Muslim youth around the world. But while the majority of people who download such content may only fuel a passive resentment of the West, for others the audiovisual diatribes of Mr. bin Laden and his kin have served as a sort of gateway drug to a more violent worldview. That was the case among some of the alleged ringleaders of the Toronto terrorist group arrested during a sweep last summer - a trail led from some of those arrested to a massive, and now defunct, web forum where angry youth traded incendiary content.
In another case, a young British man named Younis Tsouli was arrested in England in 2005 and charged with "conspiracy to murder, conspiracy to cause an explosion, conspiracy to obtain money by deception, fundraising and possession of articles for terrorist purposes." Mr. Tsouli, now 23, had never so much as fired a rifle - his agitation was purely online. The computer hacker got his start moving propaganda videos around the web for al-Qaeda in Iraq and soon popped up in connection with at least three alleged terrorist plots, including one in Canada. For Mr. Tsouli, it was not a great stretch from posting beheading videos to sending out suicide-bomb-belt manuals.
Besides the anonymous registries, many effective terrorist-propaganda producers rely on the hugely popular public blogging and file-sharing sites used by millions to rant about their bosses and share barbecue recipes. That leaves law-enforcement officials in the uncomfortable position of trying to catch a wisp of an enemy without trampling on everyone else's civil liberties.
And so a battle rages in Ottawa, as Canadian police and spy agencies complain that the legislation governing online crime is a historical relic. Privacy advocates, on the other hand, fear a world where every 0 and 1 is visible to Big Brother.
Meanwhile, terrorist propaganda operations have come to rival the PR departments of multinational corporations, complete with publishing houses, movie-editing studios and video-game developers. This is the ammunition in a battle of ideas that all sides agree may end up being more important than any blood-and-bullets conflict - a battle that, so far, the West is losing.
Al-Qaeda's spin doctor
It started with a single memo, dated June 20, 2000. Abu Huthayfa, a member of al-Qaeda's inner circle, was writing to his mentor, Osama bin Laden, about the importance of public relations. The writer was struck by some of the tactics already in use by Hamas, especially the practice of videotaping statements of soon-to-be "martyrs." A year earlier, the Al Jazeera television network had aired an interview with Mr. bin Laden, and the public response convinced Mr. Huthayfa that there were many people around the world hanging on the soft-spoken Saudi's every word.
He asked his leader, why wasn't al-Qaeda taking better advantage? Why was it that two years after the U.S. embassy bombings in Dar Es Salaam and Nairobi, many people knew little about "the heroes of this magnificent undertaking"?
Abu Huthayfa's solution to al-Qaeda's PR shortfalls would serve as the foundation for the single most important advance in the terrorist group's history. He proposed the creation of a separate informational branch of al-Qaeda. At the time, the group's communiqués flowed freely around much of Afghanistan, but that was a form of preaching to the converted - elsewhere in the world, al-Qaeda was still a small fish.
To remedy this, Mr. Huthayfa set his sights on the Internet, especially e-mail and file-sharing websites. He touted the advantages of instant communication, the massive amount of information that could be sent around the world in a blink.
"The importance of establishing a website for you on the Internet in which you place all your legible, audible, and visible archives and news must be emphasized," he wrote. "It should not escape the mind of any one of you the importance of this tool in communicating with people."
It didn't. Within a year, Mr. bin Laden would declare that up to 90 per cent of al-Qaeda's battles would be fought not with guns, but words and images. (The memo, recovered in a raid on an al-Qaeda hideout, is now a public document found on several terrorism-studies databases.)
After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, a flood of videos glorifying the carnage began appearing online. In many cases the producer was al-Sahab ("the Clouds"), the newly created media arm of al-Qaeda. The hijackers appeared superimposed over images of the planes crashing into New York's twin towers, reading their wills and issuing stern warnings to the U.S. This time, the propaganda opportunity would be fully exploited.
The post-9/11 videos showcased many of al-Qaeda's major talking points. Over and over, would-be martyrs and senior leaders glorified the attacks and the attackers - the idea of a fast-track to eternal paradise being a significant selling point for disaffected Muslim youth and other possible recruits. Another refrain was to warn of further attacks, citing a list of demands that combined legitimate and illegitimate grievances from across the Muslim world in a patchwork of outrage.
"If you look at the messaging and narrative, it's aimed at a Western audience," says Frank Cilluffo, director of the Homeland Security Policy Institute at George Washington University, and a former special assistant on security to the president. "I look at al-Qaeda as a brand, and you have to look at what makes brands flourish - there has been a big improvement in use of symbols."
One of the most oft-repeated symbols is the Arabic word ummah, meaning "Muslim nation." Among many Muslims worldwide, it conjures halcyon images of a global empire ruled by religion, where borders of race, ethnicity and nationality are obliterated and the only common denominator is the word of God. But the ummah also has come to serve a second purpose, as justification for violence. If Muslims everywhere are one, the thinking goes, then a car bombing in Bali is a legitimate response to the killing of a child in Gaza.
In geographic reality, there is no ummah; perhaps the most recent attempt at one was the Ottoman empire. But from another view, there is perhaps the largest ummah in the history of Islam, composed of chat rooms and file servers from Islamabad to Antigua. In this cyber-ummah, race, ethnicity and nationality are invisible; the common denominator is the digitized word of God. There are segments of the cyber-ummah that have nothing to do with terrorism: Many mainstream Muslim youth groups in Canada use web forums. But, as with neo-Nazi and child-porn rings, the qualities that make Internet forums legitimately useful also empower the bad guys.
After the Sept. 11 attacks, the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan scattered much of al-Qaeda's leadership - its literal Arabic name, "the base," was no longer apt. At that point, al-Qaeda morphed from a group into a mindset: Where there once was one well-defined organization, there sprung up dozens of relatively unconnected cells, not just in Iraq and Afghanistan, but in London and Madrid. The founders of those cells were, in many cases, Western-born young men whose parents were immigrants but who had never set foot themselves in any war zone. Instead, this new generation of jihadis had grown up watching the fruits of al-Sahab's labour - the propaganda and martyrdom videos floating freely across the cyber-ummah.
"You have a group of individuals who are distanced from their parents; don't necessarily feel fully embedded in their current society, so they look to one another to reaffirm their attitudes," says Mr. Cilluffo. "It really goads the bravado."
A new generation has taken over the informational arm Abu Huthayfa suggested some seven years ago. As comfortable at the keyboard as the original mujahedeen were with rifles, they have swapped the grainy video of past terrorist communiqués for a far more polished product. But it wasn't only the form of the message that took a generational leap forward. The target demographic also had come into focus: young, angry, Western kids.
Joystick jihad
By almost any measure, Night of Capturing Bush is an unbelievably awful video game.
In the first-person shooter, released in September of last year, you play the role of a hardcore, AK47-toting Islamic warrior. Your goal is to mow down feeble, eerily identical U.S. troops in Iraqi settings - Iraq being composed mainly of various heavily pixilated shades of brown. The difficulty levels are skewed to the point where the cloned U.S. troops could unload entire armouries of bullets on you and still not make much of a dent. As war songs play in the background, you make your way through six levels, culminating, as the title suggests, in a showdown with U.S. President George W. Bush. (Ironically, Night of Capturing Bush is a minor modification of Quest for Saddam, an equally mediocre 2003 game from right-wing U.S. activist Jesse Petrilla.)
But glitchy game-play and atrocious graphics did little to hinder Night of Capturing Bush's primary purpose, which was strictly ideological. In a press release hyping the game, its creators, an anonymous group called the Global Islamic Media Front, dubbed their desired audience "terrorist children." Within a few hours of its release, across thousands of online message boards, these "terrorist children" passed the game back and forth. The Media Front only had to initiate the craze; thousands of sympathizers around the planet did the rest.
It wasn't the first time Islamic extremist propaganda fused with pop culture. Two years previous, a young British man calling himself Sheikh Terra stepped in front of a camera, his face covered, carrying what appeared to be a pistol, and began dancing. The resulting rap video was called Dirty Kuffar (Kuffar is an Arabic word for disbeliever).
Since its release, Dirty Kuffar has been downloaded onto millions of computers and remixed by many like-minded web jihadists. You can find it on video-sharing sites such as YouTube.
"I saw a number of video games. I saw rap videos with a very good tune to them," says Mr. Cilluffo. "I can't tell you for a fact we're certain who's designing what, but I can tell you that when it comes to technology and its application, I think the younger generation has a leg up."
One common method of disseminating anything from a terrorist video game to a bomb-making manual to a beheading video is to make copies available on dozens of free websites at the same time. On these sites, which were created to help people transfer data files too large to e-mail, anyone can quickly create an account - when barred by the administrators of one site, the user just jumps to another. By the time all such sites wise up, the message is all over the world.
On the Global Islamic Media Front site, each newly produced video is quickly uploaded to a dozen or more free sites. The Front's own site is not hosted on an obscure or secret server, but on Wordpress, one of the most widely used blogging services in the world. Because registering with a blogging site such as Wordpress doesn't require domain registration, there is no publicly accessible address or phone number.
That's likely the same thinking behind Press-Release, a website chock full of communiqués from "the Islamic State Of Iraq." There, users can download high-quality videos featuring attacks on U.S. military vehicles, as well as detailed listings of American casualties. Look up the registration info and you're handed an address in Mountain View, Calif. - far removed from the killing fields of Iraq, but near the headquarters of Google Inc., which owns the popular blogging domain Blogspot, on which "Press Release" is hosted.
Anonymity isn't enough, however. There's an intense emphasis on secrecy evident in the various password-protected forums and message boards where jihad-minded teens gather. One of the most widely visited extremist forums subscribes to the country-club model - the only way in is to have a current member vouch for you.
This security consciousness is in large part due to the new emphasis police and intelligence agencies are placing on infiltrating such forums. But today the level of infiltration is so high that intelligence agencies face a recurring problem: An agent goes undercover on a web forum and finds dozens of users making violent, extremists statements, but to the agent's dismay, it soon becomes apparent that many of them are undercover operatives from other intelligence agencies.
Joining the fray
Frank Cilluffo sat before a dozen or so of the most powerful politicians in the world last May and told them they should consider broadcasting footage of dead children to the public.
Mr. Cilluffo had been called before the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee to talk about strategies for combatting online extremism. He presented a simple argument: Extremist videos often leverage footage of civilians killed by Israeli and U.S. troops. Why not show the world what happens to civilians - often Muslim civilians - when Islamic extremist groups carry out their attacks?
"I don't remember exactly [the committee's] response," Mr. Cilluffo recalls. "I think we did have some silence. It's a pretty provocative statement.
"The idea behind that was to take off any filters and demonstrate that the consequences of terror have a real impact: People are killed. This is not a theoretical set of issues."
The recommendation was part of a broader argument that if the U.S. government and its allies attempt to fight a war of ideas on their own, they're going to lose.
"Much of the solution comes from people with credibility in these constituencies, I don't think that can come from Western governments," Mr. Cilluffo says. "We need people who are versed in the Koran, who can show how it's being distorted. We need people who appreciate cultural nuances and norms. I think that governments have a role to play, but by no means the primary role."
What Mr. Cilluffo was pitching was the construction of a rival narrative to the one circulated in the cyber-ummah - one that would separate out the reasonable grievances from the specious ones circulated by extremists, and be delivered by someone credible. But his pitch wasn't an easy one to make, given that many Western governments, police and intelligence shops had long viewed the war on terror as just that - a war, which will be won or lost with old-fashioned techniques. Producing a rival message has been a low priority.
"This is the tip of a much bigger issue," says Mr. Deisman of the National Security Working Group in Ottawa. "The reason why we haven't matched the propaganda war is because we consider ourselves states characterized by tolerance and acceptance. For us to be saying what we stand for may be seen as infringing on someone else."
In England, where the problem of "homegrown terrorism" is far more urgent, Mr. Deisman points out the propaganda war has intensified: "England truly is an embattled country. The government is producing videos about what Englishness means," he says. "Can you imagine if we did that in Canada? People would be up in arms."
But even on the traditional counterterrorism front, law-enforcement officials are coming up against a major wall: For the most part, the legal system was not designed for cyberspace, as you can see by looking at the key case of the murder-conspiracy trial of Younis Tsouli in England this summer. Mr. Tsouli was alleged to have lived a double life on the Internet under the name "Irhabi007" (Irhabi means terrorist in Arabic), distributing tools of extremism. He had become one of the most important terrorism conduits in the world, and his trial marked a watershed moment in combatting cyber-crime.
However, in May, that trial hit an embarrassing bump. Justice Peter Openshaw, the supervising judge, turned to prosecutors and said: "The trouble is I don't understand the language. I don't really understand what a website is." A university professor was quickly brought into court to explain the Internet.
In the case of child pornography, Mr. Deisman points out, there was a lag of about five to seven years before independent groups began forming for the purpose of shutting illegal sites down. The delay might be equally long with terrorism sites.
"This stuff has happened so quickly," Mr. Deisman says. "Typically it takes a while to catch up."
In Canada, the onus is largely on the public to point out such websites - such as the pro-Hamas one registered in Yarmouth - to the domain-name firms.
Register.com is based in New York but has offices in many places; the municipality and province provided hundreds of thousands of dollars in perks to convince it to locate operations in Yarmouth. And it has a very specific policy for dealing with cases where someone reports a domain being used for illegal purposes.
"This policy includes reviewing the content to determine the validity of the report and, if applicable, disabling the domain and notifying the customer of the reason for this action," says Wendy Kennedy, the firm's manager of public relations and customer marketing. "At times, Register.com has also reached out to law enforcement to report suspicious activity."
But the servers in Yarmouth are by no means the only ones in Canada where terrorist-related content may be residing. Until a few weeks ago, the website for al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, one of the most extensive and regularly updated of its kind, was registered to a building near downtown Toronto. The address belongs to Contactprivacy, the anonymous-registration arm of Canadian domain-name provider Tucows Inc.
After its web-hosting service in Germany was alerted to the Maghreb site and pulled the plug earlier this year, Tucows followed suit. But in an environment where similar sites are popping up daily, it was a small victory.
It has been seven years now since Abu Huthayfa sent a memo to Osama bin Laden extolling the virtues of an online public-relations strategy. Their opponents have yet to catch up.
"We have been slow to recognize that we have to go beyond tactics and recognize there's a war of ideas," says Mr. Cilluffo. "I believe there's only one side that has stepped up to the battlefield, and it's not us."
Globe and Mail writer Omar El Akkad shared the 2007 National Newspaper Award for investigative journalism with colleague Greg McArthur for their examination of online activities by accused terrorists.
easynash
If there are 23,000 jihadist websites and blogsites out there, there is no reason why we should not create 100,000 non-jihadist websites and blogsites: easynash(2007).
240)Updated index of my blogsite to the middle of August 2007.
Posts relating to religious doctrine: 1, 2, 3 ,4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 18, 20, 22, 27, 33, 34, 35, 46, 48, 49, 50, 59, 60, 63, 64, 65, 70, 71, 72, 74, 82, 86, 95, 98, 100, 103, 106, 112, 114, 129, 133, 135, 136, 145, 163, 180, 184, 189, 190, 191, 194, 197, 200, 204, 205, 208, 213, 223, 229, 234, 235, 242.
Posts relating to objects and events in nature(science): 13, 15, 16, 17, 23, 24, 25, 28, 32, 36, 40, 42, 47, 53, 54, 56, 57, 58, 66, 67, 68, 75, 79, 80, 83, 84, 87, 88, 90, 92, 94, 97, 99, 102, 107, 109, 110, 111, 115, 116, 117, 119, 120, 121, 123, 128, 130, 132, 137, 139, 140, 141, 142, 146, 147, 149, 159, 160, 164, 166, 169, 173, 175, 183, 185, 186, 187, 193, 196, 198, 199, 202, 212, 214, 218, 227, 237.
Posts relating to both: 12, 14, 19, 21, 26, 29, 30, 31, 37, 38, 39, 41, 43, 44, 45, 51, 52, 55, 61, 62, 69, 73, 76, 77, 81, 85, 89, 91, 93, 96, 104, 105, 108, 113, 118, 122, 124, 126, 127, 131, 134, 144, 148, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 161, 162, 167, 168, 170, 176, 177, 178, 179, 181, 182, 188, 192, 195, 201, 203, 206, 207, 209, 210, 217, 219, 220, 221, 222, 224, 225, 226, 228, 230, 231, 232, 233, 236, 238, 239, 240.
Posts relating to neither: 78, 101, 125, 138, 171, 172, 174, 211, 215, 216, 229, 241.
Special collections of posts:
A)Ayats(Signs) in the Universe Series: 19, 29, 31, 38, 39, 41, 127, 229.
B)Posts relating specifically to the subject of Astronomy: 23, 24, 25, 28, 32, 36, 42, 47, 56, 57, 58, 66, 67, 75, 83, 84, 85, 90, 92, 94, 99, 102, 107, 109, 110, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 123, 128, 130, 132, 134, 137, 139, 140, 141, 142, 151, 159, 161, 164, 165, 166, 169, 185, 186, 187, 202, 225, 236, 237, 238, 239.
C)Posts relating to individual scientists, philosophers, cosmologists and poets, both inside and outside the Islamic tradition: 1, 11, 16, 20, 26, 27, 43, 44, 48, 55, 56, 57, 104, 108, 128, 130, 135, 150, 157, 158, 162, 178, 192, 210, 218, 219, 221, 224, 227.
D)Posts relating to my China Series(April, May 2007): 171, 172, 174, 229.
E)Posts relating to or made during my 14,000km, 14 U.S. State, 4 Canadian Province road trip(July, August 2007): 229, 231, 232, 233, 234, 235, 236, 237, 238, 239.
easynash
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)
All human beings, by their nature, desire to know(Aristotle, The Metaphysics, a few hundred years BC)
Posts relating to objects and events in nature(science): 13, 15, 16, 17, 23, 24, 25, 28, 32, 36, 40, 42, 47, 53, 54, 56, 57, 58, 66, 67, 68, 75, 79, 80, 83, 84, 87, 88, 90, 92, 94, 97, 99, 102, 107, 109, 110, 111, 115, 116, 117, 119, 120, 121, 123, 128, 130, 132, 137, 139, 140, 141, 142, 146, 147, 149, 159, 160, 164, 166, 169, 173, 175, 183, 185, 186, 187, 193, 196, 198, 199, 202, 212, 214, 218, 227, 237.
Posts relating to both: 12, 14, 19, 21, 26, 29, 30, 31, 37, 38, 39, 41, 43, 44, 45, 51, 52, 55, 61, 62, 69, 73, 76, 77, 81, 85, 89, 91, 93, 96, 104, 105, 108, 113, 118, 122, 124, 126, 127, 131, 134, 144, 148, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 161, 162, 167, 168, 170, 176, 177, 178, 179, 181, 182, 188, 192, 195, 201, 203, 206, 207, 209, 210, 217, 219, 220, 221, 222, 224, 225, 226, 228, 230, 231, 232, 233, 236, 238, 239, 240.
Posts relating to neither: 78, 101, 125, 138, 171, 172, 174, 211, 215, 216, 229, 241.
Special collections of posts:
A)Ayats(Signs) in the Universe Series: 19, 29, 31, 38, 39, 41, 127, 229.
B)Posts relating specifically to the subject of Astronomy: 23, 24, 25, 28, 32, 36, 42, 47, 56, 57, 58, 66, 67, 75, 83, 84, 85, 90, 92, 94, 99, 102, 107, 109, 110, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 123, 128, 130, 132, 134, 137, 139, 140, 141, 142, 151, 159, 161, 164, 165, 166, 169, 185, 186, 187, 202, 225, 236, 237, 238, 239.
C)Posts relating to individual scientists, philosophers, cosmologists and poets, both inside and outside the Islamic tradition: 1, 11, 16, 20, 26, 27, 43, 44, 48, 55, 56, 57, 104, 108, 128, 130, 135, 150, 157, 158, 162, 178, 192, 210, 218, 219, 221, 224, 227.
D)Posts relating to my China Series(April, May 2007): 171, 172, 174, 229.
E)Posts relating to or made during my 14,000km, 14 U.S. State, 4 Canadian Province road trip(July, August 2007): 229, 231, 232, 233, 234, 235, 236, 237, 238, 239.
easynash
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)
All human beings, by their nature, desire to know(Aristotle, The Metaphysics, a few hundred years BC)
Thursday, August 16, 2007
239)Latest quote by Mowlana Hazar Imam, Aga Khan IV, in Nairobi, Kenya, August 13th 2007.
1)Remarks by His Highness the Aga Khan at the Inauguration of the Faculty of Health Sciences of the Aga Khan University,Nairobi, Kenya – 13 August 2007:
"A golden jubilee is a valuable opportunity for putting the present into historical perspective. In that spirit, I would begin today by emphasizing how my concern for education grows intimately out of my family history. It was just a century ago that my late Grandfather, Sir Sultan Mahomed Shah Aga Khan, began to build a network of educational institutions which would eventually include some 300 schools, many of them in East Africa.
My late Grandfather, who was also the founding figure of Aligarh University in India, was renewing a tradition which stretches back over 1000 years, to our forefathers, the Fatimid Imam-Caliphs of Egypt, who founded Al-Azhar University and the Academy of Knowledge in Cairo. And going back even further, I would cite the words of the first hereditary Imam of the Shia Muslims, Hazrat Ali Ibn Abi Talib, who emphasized in his teachings that “No honour is like knowledge.”"
The quote from Hazrat Ali comes from a speech given by Mowlana Hazar Imam at the Tutzing Evangelical Academy in Germany, upon receiving the Tolerance Award, May 20th 2006:
I cite Hazrat Ali's words....: "No belief is like modesty and patience, no attainment is like humility, no honour is like knowledge, no power is like forbearance, and no support is more reliable than consultation". Hazrat Ali's regard for knowledge reinforces the compatibility of faith and knowledge. And his respect for consultation is, in my view, a commitment to tolerant and open-hearted democratic processes(Aga Khan IV)
I wrote a piece on the uninterrupted thread of the search for knowledge in Shia Ismaili Islam here:
http://easynash.blogspot.com/2007/03/135the-uninterrupted-thread-of-search.html
2)"God has given us the miracle of life with all its attributes: the extraordinary manifestations of sunrise and sunset, of sickness and recovery, of birth and death, but surely if He has given us the means with which to remove ourselves from this world so as to go to other parts of the Universe, we can but accept as further manifestations the creation and destructions of stars, the birth and death of atomic particles, the flighting new sound and light waves"(Aga Khan IV, 24th November 1963, Mindanao University, Phillipines)
3)"Education has been important to my family for a long time. My forefathers founded al-Azhar University in Cairo some 1000 years ago, at the time of the Fatimid Caliphate in Egypt. Discovery of knowledge was seen by those founders as an embodiment of religious faith, and faith as reinforced by knowledge of workings of the Creator's physical world"(Aga Khan IV, 27th May 1994, Cambridge, Massachusets, U.S.A.)
Speaking about the "workings of the Creator's physical world" and "the creation and destruction of stars", here is an article that appears in today's Toronto Star about a dying star that began to shed material from itself about 30,000 years ago, when the Neanderthals were beginning to die out in Europe. Much of the material being shed are the elements carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and others, all created inside the star through the process of nuclear fusion and all of which are elements essential to life as we know it:
"A golden jubilee is a valuable opportunity for putting the present into historical perspective. In that spirit, I would begin today by emphasizing how my concern for education grows intimately out of my family history. It was just a century ago that my late Grandfather, Sir Sultan Mahomed Shah Aga Khan, began to build a network of educational institutions which would eventually include some 300 schools, many of them in East Africa.
My late Grandfather, who was also the founding figure of Aligarh University in India, was renewing a tradition which stretches back over 1000 years, to our forefathers, the Fatimid Imam-Caliphs of Egypt, who founded Al-Azhar University and the Academy of Knowledge in Cairo. And going back even further, I would cite the words of the first hereditary Imam of the Shia Muslims, Hazrat Ali Ibn Abi Talib, who emphasized in his teachings that “No honour is like knowledge.”"
The quote from Hazrat Ali comes from a speech given by Mowlana Hazar Imam at the Tutzing Evangelical Academy in Germany, upon receiving the Tolerance Award, May 20th 2006:
I cite Hazrat Ali's words....: "No belief is like modesty and patience, no attainment is like humility, no honour is like knowledge, no power is like forbearance, and no support is more reliable than consultation". Hazrat Ali's regard for knowledge reinforces the compatibility of faith and knowledge. And his respect for consultation is, in my view, a commitment to tolerant and open-hearted democratic processes(Aga Khan IV)
I wrote a piece on the uninterrupted thread of the search for knowledge in Shia Ismaili Islam here:
http://easynash.blogspot.com/2007/03/135the-uninterrupted-thread-of-search.html
2)"God has given us the miracle of life with all its attributes: the extraordinary manifestations of sunrise and sunset, of sickness and recovery, of birth and death, but surely if He has given us the means with which to remove ourselves from this world so as to go to other parts of the Universe, we can but accept as further manifestations the creation and destructions of stars, the birth and death of atomic particles, the flighting new sound and light waves"(Aga Khan IV, 24th November 1963, Mindanao University, Phillipines)
3)"Education has been important to my family for a long time. My forefathers founded al-Azhar University in Cairo some 1000 years ago, at the time of the Fatimid Caliphate in Egypt. Discovery of knowledge was seen by those founders as an embodiment of religious faith, and faith as reinforced by knowledge of workings of the Creator's physical world"(Aga Khan IV, 27th May 1994, Cambridge, Massachusets, U.S.A.)
Speaking about the "workings of the Creator's physical world" and "the creation and destruction of stars", here is an article that appears in today's Toronto Star about a dying star that began to shed material from itself about 30,000 years ago, when the Neanderthals were beginning to die out in Europe. Much of the material being shed are the elements carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and others, all created inside the star through the process of nuclear fusion and all of which are elements essential to life as we know it:
http://www.thestar.com/sciencetech/Science/article/246705
Dying star's huge, comet-like tail amazes scientists
Aug 15, 2007 07:15 PM
Will Dunham
Reuters
WASHINGTON – A large star in its death throes is leaving a huge, turbulent tail of oxygen, carbon and nitrogen in its wake that makes it look like an immense comet hurtling through space, astronomers said Wednesday.
Nothing like this has ever previously been witnessed in a star, according to scientists who detected it using NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer, an orbiting space telescope that observes the cosmos in ultraviolet light.
This tail, spanning a stunning distance of 13 light-years, was detected behind the star Mira, located 350 light-years from Earth in the "whale" constellation Cetus.
"There's a star with a tail in the tail of the whale," said one of the researchers, astronomer Mark Seibert of the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington in Pasadena, California.
A light year is about 6 trillion miles, the distance light travels in a year.
Rocketing through our Milky Way galaxy at 80 miles per second – literally faster than a speeding bullet – the star is spewing material that scientists believe may be recycled into new stars, planets and maybe even life.
"We believe that the tail is made up of material that is being shed by the star which is heating up and then spiralling back into this turbulent wake," said astronomer Christopher Martin of California Institute of Technology, one of the researchers in the study published in the journal Nature.
Mira is a so-called "red giant" star near the end of its life. Astronomers believe our sun will become a similar red giant in 4 to 5 billion years, but they doubt it will develop such a tail because it is not moving through space as quickly.
"It's giving us this fantastic insight into the death processes of stars and their renewals – their phoenix-like revivals as their ashes get cycled backed into the next generation of stars," added Michael Shara of the American Museum of Natural History and Columbia University in New York.
Shara said he expects that as this telescope continues mapping the cosmos in ultraviolet light for the first time, other similar stars may be discovered. "There must be lots more of these things," Shara said.
NASA images show the tail as a glowing light-blue stream of material including oxygen, carbon and nitrogen.
This material has been blown off Mira gradually over time – the oldest was released roughly 30,000 years ago as part of a long stellar death process – and is enough to form at least 3,000 future Earth-sized planets, the scientists said.
The astronomers were surprised to find this unique feature in Mira, a well-known star studied since the 16th century. Mira (pronounced MY-rah) stems from the Latin word for "wonderful."
Despite having about the same mass as the sun, Mira has swollen up to over 400 times the size of the sun, meaning the force of gravity is having a hard time holding it together, Seibert said.
The tail stretching 13 light-years is thousands of times the length of our solar system. The nearest star to Earth, called Proxima Centauri, is located 4 light-years away.
While this star looks like a comet, stars and comets are quite different celestial bodies. Comets in our solar system are relatively small objects made up of rock, dust and ice trailed by a tail of gas and dust.
Unlike our solitary sun, Mira is a so-called binary star traveling through space orbiting a companion believed to be the burnt-out, dead core of a star, known as a white dwarf.
Scientists think Mira in time will eject all its gas, leaving a colourful shell known as a planetary nebula that also gradually will fade leaving behind a white dwarf(end of newspaper article).
The NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day Archive also put up this picture of the above dying star and its remarkable tail:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070817.html
easynash
Back home-sweet-home in Toronto, Ontario, Canada after a 14,000km, 14 U.S. State, 4 Canadian Province road trip.
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)
All human beings, by their nature, desire to know(Aristotle, The Metaphysics, a few hundred years BC)
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
238)Another remarkable picture by the NASA website of a clear night sky.
The NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day website put up this remarkable picture today of the night sky as seen against the backdrop of the Grand Teton mountain range, part of the northern Rocky Mountains. This is particularly pleasing for me personally because I just drove by this mountain range during my travels in recent days:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070814.html
Clearly seen in this picture are the Milky Way in the vertical plain, planet Jupiter, star Arcturus and the famous Big Dipper grouping of stars. I blogged about the Big Dipper here:
http://easynash.blogspot.com/2007/01/102big-dipper-and-little-dipper-in.html
The Arabic names of the stars in the above post speaks to a time many centuries ago during the Islamic Golden Age when Astronomy was ascendant.
easynash
In Winnipeg, Manitoba on the way home to Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)
All human beings, by their nature, desire to know(Aristotle, The Metaphysics, a few hundred years BC)
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070814.html
Clearly seen in this picture are the Milky Way in the vertical plain, planet Jupiter, star Arcturus and the famous Big Dipper grouping of stars. I blogged about the Big Dipper here:
http://easynash.blogspot.com/2007/01/102big-dipper-and-little-dipper-in.html
The Arabic names of the stars in the above post speaks to a time many centuries ago during the Islamic Golden Age when Astronomy was ascendant.
easynash
In Winnipeg, Manitoba on the way home to Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)
All human beings, by their nature, desire to know(Aristotle, The Metaphysics, a few hundred years BC)
Sunday, August 12, 2007
237)Now is the time to go outside to see those Perseid meteor showers and an old friend lives his dream and builds an observatory in his backyard.
Someone took this picture of the the Perseid Meteor Shower on August 11/12 2004:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070812.html
This year's shower, expected to be most visible over the next few hours in Canadian night skies, must already be well under way since it is just past midnight in eastern Canada. Now would be a good time to go outside and take a good look.
On an aside, a former classmate of mine from the University of Toronto and an amateur astronomer and astrophotographer built a mini-astronomical observatory for himself in his backyard in a suburb of Toronto. A picture of it can be seen on his website at
http://ccdimager.net/
Most recently he imaged a beautiful picture of the spiral galaxy M81 from his backyard, as shown in this picture:
http://ccdimager.net/M81-19X10min-20cLUM.jpg
Other astrophotographs taken by Arun can be seen by clicking on the photoalbum at the bottom of his website. As he descibes on his website he has a remote control next to his bedside. When there is a clear night sky he programs the remote then enjoys a night of pleasant slumber as the powerful telescope in his backyard observatory takes pictures all night and produces a composite picture in the morning to post on his website. Hows that for learning about our Universe(What is it made up of?, How does it operate?) in style. Well done Arun; I'll be keeping my eye on your website. Looking forward to seeing more pictures from you.
easynash
Back on Canadian soil(Calgary) after crossing over from Montana, Wyoming and Idaho, U.S.A.
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)
All human beings, by their nature, desire to know(Aristotle, The Metaphysics, a few hundred years BC)
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070812.html
This year's shower, expected to be most visible over the next few hours in Canadian night skies, must already be well under way since it is just past midnight in eastern Canada. Now would be a good time to go outside and take a good look.
On an aside, a former classmate of mine from the University of Toronto and an amateur astronomer and astrophotographer built a mini-astronomical observatory for himself in his backyard in a suburb of Toronto. A picture of it can be seen on his website at
http://ccdimager.net/
Most recently he imaged a beautiful picture of the spiral galaxy M81 from his backyard, as shown in this picture:
http://ccdimager.net/M81-19X10min-20cLUM.jpg
Other astrophotographs taken by Arun can be seen by clicking on the photoalbum at the bottom of his website. As he descibes on his website he has a remote control next to his bedside. When there is a clear night sky he programs the remote then enjoys a night of pleasant slumber as the powerful telescope in his backyard observatory takes pictures all night and produces a composite picture in the morning to post on his website. Hows that for learning about our Universe(What is it made up of?, How does it operate?) in style. Well done Arun; I'll be keeping my eye on your website. Looking forward to seeing more pictures from you.
easynash
Back on Canadian soil(Calgary) after crossing over from Montana, Wyoming and Idaho, U.S.A.
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)
All human beings, by their nature, desire to know(Aristotle, The Metaphysics, a few hundred years BC)
Saturday, August 11, 2007
236)Spectacular show in Canadian and Northern Hemispheric skies this weekend.
"God has given us the miracle of life with all its attributes: the extraordinary manifestations of sunrise and sunset, of sickness and recovery, of birth and death, but surely if He has given us the means with which to remove ourselves from this world so as to go to other parts of the Universe, we can but accept as further manifestations the creation and destructions of stars, the birth and death of atomic particles, the flighting new sound and light waves"(Aga Khan IV, 24th November 1963, Mindanao University, Phillipines)
"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"(Aga Khan III, 4th April 1952, Karachi, Pakistan)
Meteor shower puts on weekend spectacular
TENILLE BONOGUORE
From the Globe and Mail, Canada's National Newspaper
August 9, 2007 at 1:49 PM EDT
Canadian skies will be streaked with hundreds of meteors Sunday evening as the annual Perseid meteor shower reaches its peak.
The month-long natural light show began on July 17, but it is this weekend that sky watchers will be most eagerly scouring the heavens.
The Royal Astronomical Society of Canada is predicting 100 meteors an hour will burn trails across the atmosphere, starting about midnight Sunday night and lasting until the first light of dawn on Monday.
And the added bonus of having a new moon at the same time means there will not be any bright moonlight to spoil the spectacular, which can be easily seen with the naked eye.
North America will be perfectly placed to enjoy the Perseid meteors, named after the constellation Perseus where they appear to originate.
Sky and Telescope Magazine recommends people that find a dark place with a wide-open view of the sky, and sit back in a reclining lawn chair or lie on a blanket to avoid neck strain.
The later you stay up, the more meteors you are likely to see, the magazine's senior editor, Alan MacRobert, said.
Perseids can appear anywhere in the sky, so it is best to look at whatever section of the sky is darkest in your area.
Faint Perseid meteors appear as tiny, quick streaks, but brighter ones can sail across the sky for several seconds, leaving a glowing trail among the stars.
If cloud blocks the view, do not give up – some of the best showers of the Perseid show will be in the pre-dawn hours from Friday through Wednesday.
Each year, Earth passes through rubble left behind by the Swift-Tuttle Comet. According to Sky and Telescope Magazine, the debris slams into the upper atmosphere about 130 kilometres above Earth's surface, travelling about 60 kilometres a second, creating a quick, white-hot streak of superheated air.
The meteor shower is basically confined to the northern hemisphere: Few if any Perseids can ever be seen from countries like Australia, where the area of sky where the meteors appear is always near or below the horizon.
easynash
Idaho Falls, near the Craters of the Moon Monument, Idaho, U.S.A.
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)
All human beings, by their nature, desire to know(Aristotle, The Metaphysics, a few hundred years BC)
"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"(Aga Khan III, 4th April 1952, Karachi, Pakistan)
Meteor shower puts on weekend spectacular
TENILLE BONOGUORE
From the Globe and Mail, Canada's National Newspaper
August 9, 2007 at 1:49 PM EDT
Canadian skies will be streaked with hundreds of meteors Sunday evening as the annual Perseid meteor shower reaches its peak.
The month-long natural light show began on July 17, but it is this weekend that sky watchers will be most eagerly scouring the heavens.
The Royal Astronomical Society of Canada is predicting 100 meteors an hour will burn trails across the atmosphere, starting about midnight Sunday night and lasting until the first light of dawn on Monday.
And the added bonus of having a new moon at the same time means there will not be any bright moonlight to spoil the spectacular, which can be easily seen with the naked eye.
North America will be perfectly placed to enjoy the Perseid meteors, named after the constellation Perseus where they appear to originate.
Sky and Telescope Magazine recommends people that find a dark place with a wide-open view of the sky, and sit back in a reclining lawn chair or lie on a blanket to avoid neck strain.
The later you stay up, the more meteors you are likely to see, the magazine's senior editor, Alan MacRobert, said.
Perseids can appear anywhere in the sky, so it is best to look at whatever section of the sky is darkest in your area.
Faint Perseid meteors appear as tiny, quick streaks, but brighter ones can sail across the sky for several seconds, leaving a glowing trail among the stars.
If cloud blocks the view, do not give up – some of the best showers of the Perseid show will be in the pre-dawn hours from Friday through Wednesday.
Each year, Earth passes through rubble left behind by the Swift-Tuttle Comet. According to Sky and Telescope Magazine, the debris slams into the upper atmosphere about 130 kilometres above Earth's surface, travelling about 60 kilometres a second, creating a quick, white-hot streak of superheated air.
The meteor shower is basically confined to the northern hemisphere: Few if any Perseids can ever be seen from countries like Australia, where the area of sky where the meteors appear is always near or below the horizon.
easynash
Idaho Falls, near the Craters of the Moon Monument, Idaho, U.S.A.
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)
All human beings, by their nature, desire to know(Aristotle, The Metaphysics, a few hundred years BC)
Friday, August 10, 2007
235)An important distinction between rational intellect of the mind and transcendental knowledge of the divine.
On July 20th 2007 I posted an article on my blog as well as on Ismaili Mail in which I talked about the creation according to the Quran and leading personalities in the world of Islam. In it I tried to show the cascading upward sequence of types of knowledge ranging from the rational intellect of the mind to the transcendental knowledge of the divine. One commenter posted 2 splendid quotes to underscore the clear difference between these two types of knowledge. My response was to quote our present Imam on how one specific kind of rational knowledge(among others), namely, that involved with learning about our universe-what is it made of and how does it operate-can be used as a springboard or platform to facilitate the search for the higher knowledge referred to in those 2 quotes:
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2007/07/20/the-creation-according-to-quran-prophet-muhammad-pbuh-aga-khan-iv-aga-khan-iii-imam-jafar-as-sadiq-al-kirmani-al-sijistani-nasir-khusraw-et-al/#comment-13948
I spoke about this topic at greater length in another article posted to Ismaili Mail:
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2007/03/07/the-uninterrupted-thread-of-the-search-for-knowledge/
Excerpt of speech made by Mowlana Hazar Imam at the founding of the Aga Khan University In Karachi, Pakistan in 1983:
"..........In Islamic belief, knowledge is two-fold. There is that revealed through the Holy Prophet (s.a.s.) and that which man discovers by virtue of his own intellect. Nor do these two involve any contradiction, provided man remembers that his own mind is itself the creation of God. Without this humility, no balance is possible. With it, there are no barriers. Indeed, one strength of Islam has always lain in its belief that creation is not static but continuous, that through scientific and other endeavours, God has opened and continues to open new windows for us to see the marvels of His creation....."
easynash
On the Oregon Trail, somewhere between Portland, Oregon and Boise, Idaho, U.S.A.
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)
All human beings, by their nature, desire to know(Aristotle, The Metaphysics, a few hundred years BC)
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2007/07/20/the-creation-according-to-quran-prophet-muhammad-pbuh-aga-khan-iv-aga-khan-iii-imam-jafar-as-sadiq-al-kirmani-al-sijistani-nasir-khusraw-et-al/#comment-13948
I spoke about this topic at greater length in another article posted to Ismaili Mail:
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2007/03/07/the-uninterrupted-thread-of-the-search-for-knowledge/
Excerpt of speech made by Mowlana Hazar Imam at the founding of the Aga Khan University In Karachi, Pakistan in 1983:
"..........In Islamic belief, knowledge is two-fold. There is that revealed through the Holy Prophet (s.a.s.) and that which man discovers by virtue of his own intellect. Nor do these two involve any contradiction, provided man remembers that his own mind is itself the creation of God. Without this humility, no balance is possible. With it, there are no barriers. Indeed, one strength of Islam has always lain in its belief that creation is not static but continuous, that through scientific and other endeavours, God has opened and continues to open new windows for us to see the marvels of His creation....."
easynash
On the Oregon Trail, somewhere between Portland, Oregon and Boise, Idaho, U.S.A.
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)
All human beings, by their nature, desire to know(Aristotle, The Metaphysics, a few hundred years BC)
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
234)Heartiest Mubarak to Ismailis in Kenya,Tanzania and Uganda on the Golden Jubilee visit of Mowlana Hazar Imam, Aga Khan IV, August 12th-23rd 2007.
My link to the eastern part of Africa is not entirely flimsy. I lived in Nairobi, Kenya for one year in 1963 when I was 8 years old and attended the Aga Khan Primary School there. I have been on train and road trips to Mombasa and Kisumu. My wife was born in Uganda and the despot Idi Amin sent her to me here in Canada, where our beloved son and daughter were spawned from the venerable loins of this long-term fling. In 1963 my family and I also drove the entire length of Tanzania on a trip from Pretoria, South Africa to Nairobi, Kenya in a swanky beige VW Beetle(the one with the engine at the back). My maternal grandmother was born in Arusha, Tanzania under the shadow of the big but dormant mountain and my paternal grandmother was born in Kismayu, Kenya. Here's a gift to you to commemorate this unique occasion; the most amazing one-liners and short quotes that I use to nourish, sustain, maintain and promote my blogsite:
AKU=Aga Khan University, Karachi, Pakistan
Indeed, one strength of Islam has always lain in its belief that creation is not static but continuous, that through scientific and other endeavours, God has opened and continues to open new windows for us to see the marvels of His creation. (Aga Khan IV, 16 March 1983, AKU)
It (Surah of Light from the Quran) tells us that the oil of the blessed olive tree lights the lamp of understanding, a light that belongs neither to the East nor West (Aga Khan IV, 25 Sept. 1979)
The truth, as the famous Islamic scholars repeatedly told their students, is that the spirit of disciplined, objective enquiry is the property of no single culture, but of all humanity(Aga Khan IV, 16 March 1983, AKU)
To quote the great physician and philosopher, Ibn Sina: "My profession is to forever journeying, to travel about the universe so that I may know all its conditions." (Aga Khan IV, 16 March 1983, AKU)
By the art of translation, learning was assimilated from other civilizations. (Aga Khan IV, 16 March 1983, AKU)
An institution dedicated to proceeding beyond known limits must be committed to independent thinking. In a university scholars engage both orthodox and unorthodox ideas, seeking truth and understanding wherever they may be found(Aga Khan IV, 1993, AKU)
For a Muslim university it is appropriate to see learning and knowledge as a continuing acknowledgement of Allah's magnificence(Aga Khan IV, 1993, AKU)
That quest for a better life, among Muslims and non-Muslims alike, must lead inevitably to the Knowledge Society which is developing in our time.(Aga Khan IV, 2nd December 2006, AKU)
The fundamental reason for the pre-eminence of Islamic civilizations lay neither in accidents of history nor in acts of war, but rather in their ability to discover new knowledge, to make it their own, and to build constructively upon it. They became the Knowledge Societies of their time(Aga Khan IV, 2nd December 2006, AKU)
God has given us the miracle of life with all its attributes: the extraordinary manifestations of sunrise and sunset, of sickness and recovery, of birth and death, but surely if He has given us the means with which to remove ourselves from this world so as to go to other parts of the Universe, we can but accept as further manifestations the creation and destructions of stars, the birth and death of atomic particles, the flighting new sound and light waves(Aga Khan IV, 24th November 1963, Mindanao University, Phillipines,)
Our religious leadership must be acutely aware of secular trends, including those generated by this age of science and technology. Equally, our academic or secular elite must be deeply aware of Muslim history, of the scale and depth of leadership exercised by the Islamic empire of the past in all fields(Aga Khan IV, 6th February 1970, Hyderabad, Pakistan)
Education has been important to my family for a long time. My forefathers founded al-Azhar University in Cairo some 1000 years ago, at the time of the Fatimid Caliphate in Egypt. Discovery of knowledge was seen by those founders as an embodiment of religious faith, and faith as reinforced by knowledge of workings of the Creator's physical world(Aga Khan IV, 27th May 1994, Cambridge, Massachusets, U.S.A.)
The Muslim world, once a remarkable bastion of scientific and humanist knowledge, a rich and self-confident cradle of culture and art, has never forgotten its past(Aga Khan IV, 27th May 1994, Cambridge, Massachusets, U.S.A.)
The great Muslim philosopher al-Kindi wrote eleven hundred years ago, "No one is diminished by the truth, rather does the truth ennobles all"(Aga Khan IV, 27th May 1994, Cambridge, Massachusets, U.S.A.)
In this context, would it not also be relevant to consider how, above all, it has been the Qur'anic notion of the universe as an expression of Allah's will and creation that has inspired, in diverse Muslim communities, generations of artists, scientists and philosophers? Scientific pursuits, philosophic inquiry and artistic endeavour are all seen as the response of the faithful to the recurring call of the Qur'an to ponder the creation as a way to understand Allah's benevolent majesty. As Sura al-Baqara proclaims: 'Wherever you turn, there is the face of Allah'(Aga Khan IV, 19th October 2003, London, U.K.)
The famous verse of 'light' in the Qur'an, the Ayat al-Nur, whose first line is rendered here in the mural behind me, inspires among Muslims a reflection on the sacred, the transcendent. It hints at a cosmos full of signs and symbols that evoke the perfection of Allah's creation and mercy(Aga Khan IV, 19th October 2003, London, U.K.)
A thousand years ago, my forefathers, the Fatimid imam-caliphs of Egypt, founded al-Azhar University and the Academy of Knowledge in Cairo. In the Islamic tradition, they viewed the discovery of knowledge as a way to understand, so as to serve better God's creation, to apply knowledge and reason to build society and shape human aspirations(Aga Khan IV, 25th June 2004, Matola, Mozambique)
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(Aga Khan III, 4th April 1952, Karachi, Pakistan)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being(Aga Khan III, 4th April 1952 Karachi, Pakistan)
The outer universe interpreted as an infinite reality of matter, as a mirror of an eternal spirit, or indeed (as Spinoza later said) an absolute existence of which matter and spirit alike are but two of infinite modes and facets(Aga Khan III, 9th November 1936, London, U.K.)
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 (Memoirs of Aga Khan III, 1954).
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. (Memoirs of Aga Khan III, 1954).
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, are nothing more than the reflection of the Absolute in the mirror of the fountain (Memoirs of Aga Khan III, 1954).
According to a famous hadith of the Prophet Muhammad: 'The first thing created by God was the Intellect ('aql)'(Circa 7th Century CE)
Of the Abrahamic faiths, Islam is probably the one that places the greatest emphasis on knowledge. The purpose is to understand God's creation, and therefore it is a faith which is eminently logical. Islam is a faith of reason(Aga Khan IV, 9th October 2006, Germany)
The Divine Intellect, Aql-i Kull, both transcends and informs the human intellect. It is this Intellect which enables man to strive towards two aims dictated by the faith: that he should reflect upon the environment Allah has given him and that he should know himself. It is the Light of the Intellect which distinguishes the complete human being from the human animal, and developing that intellect requires free inquiry.(Aga Khan IV, 11th November 1985, AKU)
The man of faith, who fails to pursue intellectual search is likely to have only a limited comprehension of Allah's creation. Indeed, it is man's intellect that enables him to expand his vision of that creation(Aga Khan IV, 11th November 1985, AKU)
God – may He be Glorified and Exalted – created Intellect ('aql) first among the spiritual entities; He drew it forth from the right of His Throne, making it proceed from His own Light. Then he commanded it to retreat, and it retreated, to advance, and it advanced; then God proclaimed: 'I created you glorious, and I gave you pre-eminence over all my creatures.'(Imam Jafar as-Sadiq, Circa 765CE)
easynash
Portland, Oregon, U.S.A., near the Mount St. Helens Volcano.
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)
All human beings, by their nature, desire to know(Aristotle, The Metaphysics, a few centuries BC)
AKU=Aga Khan University, Karachi, Pakistan
Indeed, one strength of Islam has always lain in its belief that creation is not static but continuous, that through scientific and other endeavours, God has opened and continues to open new windows for us to see the marvels of His creation. (Aga Khan IV, 16 March 1983, AKU)
It (Surah of Light from the Quran) tells us that the oil of the blessed olive tree lights the lamp of understanding, a light that belongs neither to the East nor West (Aga Khan IV, 25 Sept. 1979)
The truth, as the famous Islamic scholars repeatedly told their students, is that the spirit of disciplined, objective enquiry is the property of no single culture, but of all humanity(Aga Khan IV, 16 March 1983, AKU)
To quote the great physician and philosopher, Ibn Sina: "My profession is to forever journeying, to travel about the universe so that I may know all its conditions." (Aga Khan IV, 16 March 1983, AKU)
By the art of translation, learning was assimilated from other civilizations. (Aga Khan IV, 16 March 1983, AKU)
An institution dedicated to proceeding beyond known limits must be committed to independent thinking. In a university scholars engage both orthodox and unorthodox ideas, seeking truth and understanding wherever they may be found(Aga Khan IV, 1993, AKU)
For a Muslim university it is appropriate to see learning and knowledge as a continuing acknowledgement of Allah's magnificence(Aga Khan IV, 1993, AKU)
That quest for a better life, among Muslims and non-Muslims alike, must lead inevitably to the Knowledge Society which is developing in our time.(Aga Khan IV, 2nd December 2006, AKU)
The fundamental reason for the pre-eminence of Islamic civilizations lay neither in accidents of history nor in acts of war, but rather in their ability to discover new knowledge, to make it their own, and to build constructively upon it. They became the Knowledge Societies of their time(Aga Khan IV, 2nd December 2006, AKU)
God has given us the miracle of life with all its attributes: the extraordinary manifestations of sunrise and sunset, of sickness and recovery, of birth and death, but surely if He has given us the means with which to remove ourselves from this world so as to go to other parts of the Universe, we can but accept as further manifestations the creation and destructions of stars, the birth and death of atomic particles, the flighting new sound and light waves(Aga Khan IV, 24th November 1963, Mindanao University, Phillipines,)
Our religious leadership must be acutely aware of secular trends, including those generated by this age of science and technology. Equally, our academic or secular elite must be deeply aware of Muslim history, of the scale and depth of leadership exercised by the Islamic empire of the past in all fields(Aga Khan IV, 6th February 1970, Hyderabad, Pakistan)
Education has been important to my family for a long time. My forefathers founded al-Azhar University in Cairo some 1000 years ago, at the time of the Fatimid Caliphate in Egypt. Discovery of knowledge was seen by those founders as an embodiment of religious faith, and faith as reinforced by knowledge of workings of the Creator's physical world(Aga Khan IV, 27th May 1994, Cambridge, Massachusets, U.S.A.)
The Muslim world, once a remarkable bastion of scientific and humanist knowledge, a rich and self-confident cradle of culture and art, has never forgotten its past(Aga Khan IV, 27th May 1994, Cambridge, Massachusets, U.S.A.)
The great Muslim philosopher al-Kindi wrote eleven hundred years ago, "No one is diminished by the truth, rather does the truth ennobles all"(Aga Khan IV, 27th May 1994, Cambridge, Massachusets, U.S.A.)
In this context, would it not also be relevant to consider how, above all, it has been the Qur'anic notion of the universe as an expression of Allah's will and creation that has inspired, in diverse Muslim communities, generations of artists, scientists and philosophers? Scientific pursuits, philosophic inquiry and artistic endeavour are all seen as the response of the faithful to the recurring call of the Qur'an to ponder the creation as a way to understand Allah's benevolent majesty. As Sura al-Baqara proclaims: 'Wherever you turn, there is the face of Allah'(Aga Khan IV, 19th October 2003, London, U.K.)
The famous verse of 'light' in the Qur'an, the Ayat al-Nur, whose first line is rendered here in the mural behind me, inspires among Muslims a reflection on the sacred, the transcendent. It hints at a cosmos full of signs and symbols that evoke the perfection of Allah's creation and mercy(Aga Khan IV, 19th October 2003, London, U.K.)
A thousand years ago, my forefathers, the Fatimid imam-caliphs of Egypt, founded al-Azhar University and the Academy of Knowledge in Cairo. In the Islamic tradition, they viewed the discovery of knowledge as a way to understand, so as to serve better God's creation, to apply knowledge and reason to build society and shape human aspirations(Aga Khan IV, 25th June 2004, Matola, Mozambique)
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(Aga Khan III, 4th April 1952, Karachi, Pakistan)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being(Aga Khan III, 4th April 1952 Karachi, Pakistan)
The outer universe interpreted as an infinite reality of matter, as a mirror of an eternal spirit, or indeed (as Spinoza later said) an absolute existence of which matter and spirit alike are but two of infinite modes and facets(Aga Khan III, 9th November 1936, London, U.K.)
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 (Memoirs of Aga Khan III, 1954).
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. (Memoirs of Aga Khan III, 1954).
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, are nothing more than the reflection of the Absolute in the mirror of the fountain (Memoirs of Aga Khan III, 1954).
According to a famous hadith of the Prophet Muhammad: 'The first thing created by God was the Intellect ('aql)'(Circa 7th Century CE)
Of the Abrahamic faiths, Islam is probably the one that places the greatest emphasis on knowledge. The purpose is to understand God's creation, and therefore it is a faith which is eminently logical. Islam is a faith of reason(Aga Khan IV, 9th October 2006, Germany)
The Divine Intellect, Aql-i Kull, both transcends and informs the human intellect. It is this Intellect which enables man to strive towards two aims dictated by the faith: that he should reflect upon the environment Allah has given him and that he should know himself. It is the Light of the Intellect which distinguishes the complete human being from the human animal, and developing that intellect requires free inquiry.(Aga Khan IV, 11th November 1985, AKU)
The man of faith, who fails to pursue intellectual search is likely to have only a limited comprehension of Allah's creation. Indeed, it is man's intellect that enables him to expand his vision of that creation(Aga Khan IV, 11th November 1985, AKU)
God – may He be Glorified and Exalted – created Intellect ('aql) first among the spiritual entities; He drew it forth from the right of His Throne, making it proceed from His own Light. Then he commanded it to retreat, and it retreated, to advance, and it advanced; then God proclaimed: 'I created you glorious, and I gave you pre-eminence over all my creatures.'(Imam Jafar as-Sadiq, Circa 765CE)
easynash
Portland, Oregon, U.S.A., near the Mount St. Helens Volcano.
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)
All human beings, by their nature, desire to know(Aristotle, The Metaphysics, a few centuries BC)
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
233)Old Faithful at Yellowstone National Park against a clear night sky on the NASA Pictures Of The Day Website.
The dude('dude' is gender neutral for me and could be a female or male) who administers the NASA Astronomy Pictures Of The Day Website must be reading my blog and knows I am on my way to the Yellowstone National Park in northwest Wyoming soon. He or she posted this marvellous picture on the NASA website today showing Old Faithful steaming away against the backdrop of a scintillating night sky: the lateral plane of our Milky Way galaxy, containing 400 billion stars including our Sun and all its orbiting planets, is visible on the left(visualise a spiral galaxy but looked at from the side instead of from on top); Jupiter at its most shining self just above the top of the geyser's steam plume is also visible:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070807.html
I should be so lucky to have such a clear night sky when I eventually get to Yellowstone National Park. I'll keep my fingers crossed.
"Scientific pursuits, philosophic inquiry and artistic endeavour are all seen as the response of the faithful to the recurring call of the Qur'an to ponder the creation as a way to understand Allah's benevolent majesty. As Sura al-Baqara proclaims: 'Wherever you turn, there is the face of Allah'."(Aga Khan IV, 19th October 2003, London, U.K.)
easynash
Somewhere on the road in Northern California, U.S.A.
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)
All human beings, by their nature, desire to know(Aristotle, The Metaphysics, a few hundred years BC)
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070807.html
I should be so lucky to have such a clear night sky when I eventually get to Yellowstone National Park. I'll keep my fingers crossed.
"Scientific pursuits, philosophic inquiry and artistic endeavour are all seen as the response of the faithful to the recurring call of the Qur'an to ponder the creation as a way to understand Allah's benevolent majesty. As Sura al-Baqara proclaims: 'Wherever you turn, there is the face of Allah'."(Aga Khan IV, 19th October 2003, London, U.K.)
easynash
Somewhere on the road in Northern California, U.S.A.
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)
All human beings, by their nature, desire to know(Aristotle, The Metaphysics, a few hundred years BC)
Sunday, August 5, 2007
232)Its been one amazing trip so far!
Its been some trip so far! We left Toronto, Ontario, Canada and so far have wound our way through Windsor, Ontario to Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Missouri, Illinois, Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and California. Still to come are Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario to complete the circle.
Historical landmarks and the most awesome natural vistas have made this trip very worthwhile. Coupled to this is the fact that my travelmate, mon cher fils, is doing most of the driving and allowing me to rest my ailing back and neuropathic lower extremities. This is the kind of trip I would wish every father and son to do at least once in a lifetime, one that creates an unforgettable memory and cements even further a strong bond.
We tried to stay as much as we could on the fabled "Route 66"(Google it) while also absorbing the most varied scenery and vistas one can find in a single country and continent. We are still doing Highway 1 on California's Pacific coast and, while trying to forget that a good chunk of this state may some day break off this side of the San Andreas fault and disappear under the Pacific Ocean, the sights, sounds and smells have been awesome. The earlier highlights so far for me have been the southern Rocky mountains and the Grand Canyon. I have already talked about mountains in my last post. We took a plane ride over the Grand Canyon in Arizona and marvelled at this natural wonder of the world. The entire Canyon is 277 miles long, 10 miles wide and 1 mile deep. The elevation of this part of the southwestern United States is about 6000 feet above sea level. Over a period of 2 to 6 million years the Colorado River and its tributaries have sliced a hole 1 mile deep(about 5028 feet) to the bottom of the Canyon, showing the unrelenting erosive power that flowing water can have on the hardest granite rock given enough time. Other erosive processes involving wind, rain and soil erosion, collectively termed 'weathering', are responsible for creating the 10 mile width of the Canyon. The sheer size of the place and overwhelming tranquility that greets you at first sight reminded me of the following saying of Mowlana Hazar Imam, Aga Khan IV, from 1983:
"Indeed, one strength of Islam has always lain in its belief that creation is not static but continuous, that through scientific and other endeavours, God has opened and continues to open new windows for us to see the marvels of His creation."
(Aga Khan IV,Speech, 16 March 1983, Karachi, Pakistan)
To underscore the fact that the creation is dynamic and not static, our tour guide told us that in another thousand years, the Canyon will be one foot deeper than it is currently. Its a slow but unrelenting process.
I'm looking forward to Mt. Saint Helens, Yellowstone National Park, the Oregon Trail and Glacier National Park in the days ahead, Inshallah.
easynash
Carmel-By-the-Sea, California, U.S.A.
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)
All human beings, by nature, desire to know(Aristotle, The Metaphysics, a few hundred years BC)
Historical landmarks and the most awesome natural vistas have made this trip very worthwhile. Coupled to this is the fact that my travelmate, mon cher fils, is doing most of the driving and allowing me to rest my ailing back and neuropathic lower extremities. This is the kind of trip I would wish every father and son to do at least once in a lifetime, one that creates an unforgettable memory and cements even further a strong bond.
We tried to stay as much as we could on the fabled "Route 66"(Google it) while also absorbing the most varied scenery and vistas one can find in a single country and continent. We are still doing Highway 1 on California's Pacific coast and, while trying to forget that a good chunk of this state may some day break off this side of the San Andreas fault and disappear under the Pacific Ocean, the sights, sounds and smells have been awesome. The earlier highlights so far for me have been the southern Rocky mountains and the Grand Canyon. I have already talked about mountains in my last post. We took a plane ride over the Grand Canyon in Arizona and marvelled at this natural wonder of the world. The entire Canyon is 277 miles long, 10 miles wide and 1 mile deep. The elevation of this part of the southwestern United States is about 6000 feet above sea level. Over a period of 2 to 6 million years the Colorado River and its tributaries have sliced a hole 1 mile deep(about 5028 feet) to the bottom of the Canyon, showing the unrelenting erosive power that flowing water can have on the hardest granite rock given enough time. Other erosive processes involving wind, rain and soil erosion, collectively termed 'weathering', are responsible for creating the 10 mile width of the Canyon. The sheer size of the place and overwhelming tranquility that greets you at first sight reminded me of the following saying of Mowlana Hazar Imam, Aga Khan IV, from 1983:
"Indeed, one strength of Islam has always lain in its belief that creation is not static but continuous, that through scientific and other endeavours, God has opened and continues to open new windows for us to see the marvels of His creation."
(Aga Khan IV,Speech, 16 March 1983, Karachi, Pakistan)
To underscore the fact that the creation is dynamic and not static, our tour guide told us that in another thousand years, the Canyon will be one foot deeper than it is currently. Its a slow but unrelenting process.
I'm looking forward to Mt. Saint Helens, Yellowstone National Park, the Oregon Trail and Glacier National Park in the days ahead, Inshallah.
easynash
Carmel-By-the-Sea, California, U.S.A.
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)
All human beings, by nature, desire to know(Aristotle, The Metaphysics, a few hundred years BC)
Thursday, August 2, 2007
231)Mountains according to the Quran and Mountains as we know them today.
I post this excerpt from the Quran Miracles website discussing the subject of mountains because in the past I have seen a good selection of mountains in various parts of the world, eg, the Tien Shan mountain range in western China, the Appalachians in Pennsylvania, U.S.A., the Laurentians in Quebec, Canada, the northern Rocky mountains in Alberta and British Columbia, Canada, the Alps in Central Europe, Kilimanjaro and Mount Kenya in East Africa, the Atlas mountains in Morocco, the Drakensburg mountains in South Africa, Table Mountain in Cape Town, South Africa and currently the southern Rocky mountains just to the west of Denver, Colorado, U.S.A. Driving down from Denver, Colorado to Santa Fe and Albuquerque, New Mexico, the Rocky mountains rise spectacularly and majestically above the ground. The most amazing aspect of the existence of all these mountains is that what you see above ground is only about one eigth of the total mountain; seven eigths of the mountain remains underground where, according to the Quranic verses below, they act as pegs that stabilise the earth's crust, much like a tent peg stabilises a tent when it is hammered into the ground. This has been borne out by geological knowledge uncovered during the past century. Tomorrow, the magnificent,awesome, mind-boggling Grand Canyon of Arizona, where liquid meets a hard place: a demonstration of the unrelenting erosive power of flowing water:
MOUNTAINS AS PEGS
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
6- Have We not made the earth habitable?
7- And the mountains as pegs?
78-The Event, 6-7
Mountains are often mentioned in the Quran. The simile of pegs seems to be preternatural in the light of geological findings of the last century. The mountains we observe on the surface of the earth rest on immense strata that may be ten to fifteen times as deep as the portion remaining on the surface of the earth. For instance, the highest mountain on earth, whose peak attains an altitude of 9 km from the ground, possesses a substratum that goes about 125 km into the depths of the earth. For a peg to be able to fulfill its function, the length of the portion stuck in the earth is important. The same holds true for the mountain.
There also exist mountains rising from the bottom of seas that also possess substratum. These substrata support the visible portion of the mountains in accordance with the Archimedean principle. These substrata were unknown until a few centuries back, let alone during the time of the Prophet. The simile in the Quran is once again a miraculous statement.
FUNCTION OF MOUNTAINS
In geology textbooks that have not been updated, information is not available about the role the mountains play, the role of stabilizing the crust of the earth. However, there are some publications on this issue.
The book entitled “Earth” is one of the many now on the market. Frank Press, author of this book, is the president of the Academy of Sciences, adviser to Jimmy Carter, ex-President of the USA. This author likens the mountains to wedges, the greater part of which remain underneath the surface of the earth. In this book, Dr. Press explains the functions of mountains, drawing special attention to their important role in stabilizing the crust of the earth. This information exactly matches the statement in the Quran:
31- “And We have set on the earth mountains standing firm lest it should shake with them.”
21-The Prophets, 31
Actually, the crust of the earth floats on a liquid. This outermost layer of the earth extends 5 km from the surface. The depths of the mountain strata go as far down as 35 km. Thus, the mountains are sort of pegs driven into the earth. Just like the pegs used to stabilize a tent on the ground, so these pegs stabilize the crust of the earth. Mountains are the outcome of collisions between strata of the earth’s crust; the result of the encroachment of a given stratum on another one. These strata that go deeper and deeper enable the crust layers to
integrate.
Isostasy is defined in the Webster’s Third New Twentieth Century Dictionary as follows: “Isostasy is the general equilibrium in the earth’s crust, maintained by a yielding flow of rock material beneath the surface under gravitate stress, and by the approximate equality in mass of each unit column of the earth from the surface to a depth of about 100 km.” At a time when mountains were viewed as mere prominences, the Quran’s reference to mountains’ strata invisible to the eye and their stabilization role leaves us in awe.
easynash
Albuquerque, New Mexico, U.S.A.
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)
MOUNTAINS AS PEGS
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
6- Have We not made the earth habitable?
7- And the mountains as pegs?
78-The Event, 6-7
Mountains are often mentioned in the Quran. The simile of pegs seems to be preternatural in the light of geological findings of the last century. The mountains we observe on the surface of the earth rest on immense strata that may be ten to fifteen times as deep as the portion remaining on the surface of the earth. For instance, the highest mountain on earth, whose peak attains an altitude of 9 km from the ground, possesses a substratum that goes about 125 km into the depths of the earth. For a peg to be able to fulfill its function, the length of the portion stuck in the earth is important. The same holds true for the mountain.
There also exist mountains rising from the bottom of seas that also possess substratum. These substrata support the visible portion of the mountains in accordance with the Archimedean principle. These substrata were unknown until a few centuries back, let alone during the time of the Prophet. The simile in the Quran is once again a miraculous statement.
FUNCTION OF MOUNTAINS
In geology textbooks that have not been updated, information is not available about the role the mountains play, the role of stabilizing the crust of the earth. However, there are some publications on this issue.
The book entitled “Earth” is one of the many now on the market. Frank Press, author of this book, is the president of the Academy of Sciences, adviser to Jimmy Carter, ex-President of the USA. This author likens the mountains to wedges, the greater part of which remain underneath the surface of the earth. In this book, Dr. Press explains the functions of mountains, drawing special attention to their important role in stabilizing the crust of the earth. This information exactly matches the statement in the Quran:
31- “And We have set on the earth mountains standing firm lest it should shake with them.”
21-The Prophets, 31
Actually, the crust of the earth floats on a liquid. This outermost layer of the earth extends 5 km from the surface. The depths of the mountain strata go as far down as 35 km. Thus, the mountains are sort of pegs driven into the earth. Just like the pegs used to stabilize a tent on the ground, so these pegs stabilize the crust of the earth. Mountains are the outcome of collisions between strata of the earth’s crust; the result of the encroachment of a given stratum on another one. These strata that go deeper and deeper enable the crust layers to
integrate.
Isostasy is defined in the Webster’s Third New Twentieth Century Dictionary as follows: “Isostasy is the general equilibrium in the earth’s crust, maintained by a yielding flow of rock material beneath the surface under gravitate stress, and by the approximate equality in mass of each unit column of the earth from the surface to a depth of about 100 km.” At a time when mountains were viewed as mere prominences, the Quran’s reference to mountains’ strata invisible to the eye and their stabilization role leaves us in awe.
easynash
Albuquerque, New Mexico, U.S.A.
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)
Sunday, July 29, 2007
230)Updated index of my blogsite to the end of July 2007.
Posts relating to religious doctrine: 1, 2, 3 ,4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 18, 20, 22, 27, 33, 34, 35, 46, 48, 49, 50, 59, 60, 63, 64, 65, 70, 71, 72, 74, 82, 86, 95, 98, 100, 103, 106, 112, 114, 129, 133, 135, 136, 145, 163, 180, 184, 189, 190, 191, 194, 197, 200, 204, 205, 208, 213, 223, 229.
Posts relating to objects and events in nature(science): 13, 15, 16, 17, 23, 24, 25, 28, 32, 36, 40, 42, 47, 53, 54, 56, 57, 58, 66, 67, 68, 75, 79, 80, 83, 84, 87, 88, 90, 92, 94, 97, 99, 102, 107, 109, 110, 111, 115, 116, 117, 119, 120, 121, 123, 128, 130, 132, 137, 139, 140, 141, 142, 146, 147, 149, 159, 160, 164, 166, 169, 173, 175, 183, 185, 186, 187, 193, 196, 198, 199, 202, 212, 214, 218, 227.
Posts relating to both: 12, 14, 19, 21, 26, 29, 30, 31, 37, 38, 39, 41, 43, 44, 45, 51, 52, 55, 61, 62, 69, 73, 76, 77, 81, 85, 89, 91, 93, 96, 104, 105, 108, 113, 118, 122, 124, 126, 127, 131, 134, 144, 148, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 161, 162, 167, 168, 170, 176, 177, 178, 179, 181, 182, 188, 192, 195, 201, 203, 206, 207, 209, 210, 217, 219, 220, 221, 222, 224, 225, 226, 228, 230.
Posts relating to neither: 78, 101, 125, 138, 171, 172, 174, 211, 215, 216, 229.
Special collections of posts:
A)Ayats(Signs) in the Universe Series: 19, 29, 31, 38, 39, 41, 127, 229.
B)Posts relating specifically to the subject of Astronomy: 23, 24, 25, 28, 32, 36, 42, 47, 56, 57, 58, 66, 67, 75, 83, 84, 85, 90, 92, 94, 99, 102, 107, 109, 110, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 123, 128, 130, 132, 134, 137, 139, 140, 141, 142, 151, 159, 161, 164, 165, 166, 169, 185, 186, 187, 202, 225.
C)Posts relating to individual scientists, philosophers, cosmologists and poets, both inside and outside the Islamic tradition: 1, 11, 16, 20, 26, 27, 43, 44, 48, 55, 56, 57, 104, 108, 128, 130, 135, 150, 157, 158, 162, 178, 192, 210, 218, 219, 221, 224, 227.
D)Posts relating to my China Series: 171, 172, 174, 229.
easynash
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005
Posts relating to objects and events in nature(science): 13, 15, 16, 17, 23, 24, 25, 28, 32, 36, 40, 42, 47, 53, 54, 56, 57, 58, 66, 67, 68, 75, 79, 80, 83, 84, 87, 88, 90, 92, 94, 97, 99, 102, 107, 109, 110, 111, 115, 116, 117, 119, 120, 121, 123, 128, 130, 132, 137, 139, 140, 141, 142, 146, 147, 149, 159, 160, 164, 166, 169, 173, 175, 183, 185, 186, 187, 193, 196, 198, 199, 202, 212, 214, 218, 227.
Posts relating to both: 12, 14, 19, 21, 26, 29, 30, 31, 37, 38, 39, 41, 43, 44, 45, 51, 52, 55, 61, 62, 69, 73, 76, 77, 81, 85, 89, 91, 93, 96, 104, 105, 108, 113, 118, 122, 124, 126, 127, 131, 134, 144, 148, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 161, 162, 167, 168, 170, 176, 177, 178, 179, 181, 182, 188, 192, 195, 201, 203, 206, 207, 209, 210, 217, 219, 220, 221, 222, 224, 225, 226, 228, 230.
Posts relating to neither: 78, 101, 125, 138, 171, 172, 174, 211, 215, 216, 229.
Special collections of posts:
A)Ayats(Signs) in the Universe Series: 19, 29, 31, 38, 39, 41, 127, 229.
B)Posts relating specifically to the subject of Astronomy: 23, 24, 25, 28, 32, 36, 42, 47, 56, 57, 58, 66, 67, 75, 83, 84, 85, 90, 92, 94, 99, 102, 107, 109, 110, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 123, 128, 130, 132, 134, 137, 139, 140, 141, 142, 151, 159, 161, 164, 165, 166, 169, 185, 186, 187, 202, 225.
C)Posts relating to individual scientists, philosophers, cosmologists and poets, both inside and outside the Islamic tradition: 1, 11, 16, 20, 26, 27, 43, 44, 48, 55, 56, 57, 104, 108, 128, 130, 135, 150, 157, 158, 162, 178, 192, 210, 218, 219, 221, 224, 227.
D)Posts relating to my China Series: 171, 172, 174, 229.
easynash
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005
229)Summer holiday housekeeping on the easynash blogsite.
1)To start of with let me first recommend my readership to the Ismailiworld blogsite(click the link on the upper right hand corner on my blogsite), where they have uploaded some really beautiful and joyous pictures of Golden Jubilee celebrations in cities in Asia, Africa and London, U.K:
http://www.ismailiworld.blogspot.com/
2)On the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy website is a good short article on Nasir Khusraw written by Alice Hunsberger, the author of an authoritative book on Nasir Khusraw "The Ruby of Badakhshan". Its worth a read, IMHO:
http://www.iep.utm.edu/k/khusraw.htm
3)The Ismaili Mail website, as usual, has an excellent array of articles, many still Golden Jubilee-related but also those relating to other programs and personalities. I commented on two in particular that caught my attention:
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2007/07/25/proclamation-from-the-province-of-british-columbia-year-of-celebration-of-the-golden-jubilee-of-the-imamat-of-his-highness-the-aga-khan-iv/
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2007/07/22/an-uplifting-happy-faith/#comment-13123
4)Over on Jalaledin's blog is a new post entitled "Broad Psychological Themes of Al-Fatiha" in which Jalaledin asks his readership to participate in some research towards his doctoral dissertation in Psychology:
http://www.jalaledin.blogspot.com/
5)I have introduced to my Suggested Links section a new link called Quran Miracles, which I came accross accidently while surfing the Discover Magazine website. Its a great resource and I particularly enjoy the fact that it lists Quranic verses that generally describe many events in nature which could never have been elaborated by the rational intellect of man in the 7th century. In fact most of these ayats or signs in nature were only uncovered by the rational intellect of man during the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries:
http://www.quranmiracles.com/
6)I, once again, recently had breakfast with my good friend Bryan at the new and refurbished Le Baguette restaurant in the new and refurbished Fairview Mall at the intersection of Don Mills and Sheppard Avenues, North York, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. This regular rendezvous has been immortalised in my earlier post:
http://easynash.blogspot.com/2007/01/101the-joys-of-friendship-and-focussing.html
After breakfast we visited the newly opened Food Court on the lower level and nodded our approval at this new locus of nourishment and revelry.
7)My travel buddy and I are going on a ROAD TRIP!!!!We hope to combine a search for both historical as well as the most famous and beloved natural landmarks in Canada and the U.S.A. These would include landmarks on the world famous Route 66, like the "Land of Lincoln" in Springfield, Missouri, "Tinkertown" in New Mexico, "London Bridge" in Arizona, "The Hollywood Forever Cemetery" in California and perhaps Mount Rushmore in South Dakota. Natural wonders would include the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, Montana and Alberta; the Grand Canyon in Arizona which demonstrates how a river of water and its tributaries(the Colorado River), given one or two or even a thousand human lifetimes, will flow lazily and uneventfully back to its ocean but, given one or two or a few million years, will slice through the thickest granite rock and hard ground like a hot knife through butter; the breathtaking drive up Highway 1 on California's Pacific Coast all the way up to the Mt. St. Helens volcano(remember 1980!) in Washington State, not forgetting the places in Napa Valley and Oregon where elixir is squeezed out of grapes; Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming which, should its steaming geysers ever explode above its hot spot source deep under it(heaven forbid), will force all surviving life in the Northern Hemisphere to move down into the Southern Hemisphere of dynamic yet fragile planet Earth(hello again, Pretoria!); Glacier National Park straddling Montana and Alberta; The sprawling, flat wheatfields of the Prairie Provinces, Canada's breadbasket; And the quarter million lakes of Ontario, my home Province.
8)I'm also mulling two new posts over the next little while. One is post no. 8 in my Ayats(Signs) in the Universe series, the other is post no. 4 in my China series. The former post reflects my fascination with the numerous cycles that abound in nature, such as the Water Cycle, the Atmospheric Cycle and the Rock Cycle and their possible relation to other, more profound cycles such as the one described in the last section of this article:
http://www.iep.utm.edu/i/ismaili.htm
The latter post plans to be a summary of a recent trip my wife and I took along the ancient and fabled Silk Route of mid to western China along with a few key bustling cities in the eastern part of the country. This information might be of some use to anyone who is planning a trip to China for next year's Beijing Olympic Games(2008).
Regarding my first seven posts in the Ayats(Signs) in the Universe series and my first three posts in the China series, they can be accessed here:
http://easynash.blogspot.com/2007/02/127no-7-ayatssigns-in-universe-series.html
http://easynash.blogspot.com/2006/12/ayatssigns-in-universe-series-no-6.html
http://easynash.blogspot.com/2006/12/ayatssigns-in-universe-series-no-5.html
http://easynash.blogspot.com/2006/12/ayatssigns-in-universe-series-no-4.html
http://easynash.blogspot.com/2006/12/ayatssigns-in-universe-series-no-3.html
http://easynash.blogspot.com/2006/12/ayatssigns-in-universe-series-no-2.html
http://easynash.blogspot.com/2006/12/ayatssigns-in-universe-series-no-1.html
http://easynash.blogspot.com/2007/05/174china-series-no-3coming-face-to-face.html
http://easynash.blogspot.com/2007/05/172china-series-no-2-my-comments-to.html
http://easynash.blogspot.com/2007/05/171seek-knowledge-even-in-china-my.html
easynash
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)
http://www.ismailiworld.blogspot.com/
2)On the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy website is a good short article on Nasir Khusraw written by Alice Hunsberger, the author of an authoritative book on Nasir Khusraw "The Ruby of Badakhshan". Its worth a read, IMHO:
http://www.iep.utm.edu/k/khusraw.htm
3)The Ismaili Mail website, as usual, has an excellent array of articles, many still Golden Jubilee-related but also those relating to other programs and personalities. I commented on two in particular that caught my attention:
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2007/07/25/proclamation-from-the-province-of-british-columbia-year-of-celebration-of-the-golden-jubilee-of-the-imamat-of-his-highness-the-aga-khan-iv/
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2007/07/22/an-uplifting-happy-faith/#comment-13123
4)Over on Jalaledin's blog is a new post entitled "Broad Psychological Themes of Al-Fatiha" in which Jalaledin asks his readership to participate in some research towards his doctoral dissertation in Psychology:
http://www.jalaledin.blogspot.com/
5)I have introduced to my Suggested Links section a new link called Quran Miracles, which I came accross accidently while surfing the Discover Magazine website. Its a great resource and I particularly enjoy the fact that it lists Quranic verses that generally describe many events in nature which could never have been elaborated by the rational intellect of man in the 7th century. In fact most of these ayats or signs in nature were only uncovered by the rational intellect of man during the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries:
http://www.quranmiracles.com/
6)I, once again, recently had breakfast with my good friend Bryan at the new and refurbished Le Baguette restaurant in the new and refurbished Fairview Mall at the intersection of Don Mills and Sheppard Avenues, North York, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. This regular rendezvous has been immortalised in my earlier post:
http://easynash.blogspot.com/2007/01/101the-joys-of-friendship-and-focussing.html
After breakfast we visited the newly opened Food Court on the lower level and nodded our approval at this new locus of nourishment and revelry.
7)My travel buddy and I are going on a ROAD TRIP!!!!We hope to combine a search for both historical as well as the most famous and beloved natural landmarks in Canada and the U.S.A. These would include landmarks on the world famous Route 66, like the "Land of Lincoln" in Springfield, Missouri, "Tinkertown" in New Mexico, "London Bridge" in Arizona, "The Hollywood Forever Cemetery" in California and perhaps Mount Rushmore in South Dakota. Natural wonders would include the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, Montana and Alberta; the Grand Canyon in Arizona which demonstrates how a river of water and its tributaries(the Colorado River), given one or two or even a thousand human lifetimes, will flow lazily and uneventfully back to its ocean but, given one or two or a few million years, will slice through the thickest granite rock and hard ground like a hot knife through butter; the breathtaking drive up Highway 1 on California's Pacific Coast all the way up to the Mt. St. Helens volcano(remember 1980!) in Washington State, not forgetting the places in Napa Valley and Oregon where elixir is squeezed out of grapes; Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming which, should its steaming geysers ever explode above its hot spot source deep under it(heaven forbid), will force all surviving life in the Northern Hemisphere to move down into the Southern Hemisphere of dynamic yet fragile planet Earth(hello again, Pretoria!); Glacier National Park straddling Montana and Alberta; The sprawling, flat wheatfields of the Prairie Provinces, Canada's breadbasket; And the quarter million lakes of Ontario, my home Province.
8)I'm also mulling two new posts over the next little while. One is post no. 8 in my Ayats(Signs) in the Universe series, the other is post no. 4 in my China series. The former post reflects my fascination with the numerous cycles that abound in nature, such as the Water Cycle, the Atmospheric Cycle and the Rock Cycle and their possible relation to other, more profound cycles such as the one described in the last section of this article:
http://www.iep.utm.edu/i/ismaili.htm
The latter post plans to be a summary of a recent trip my wife and I took along the ancient and fabled Silk Route of mid to western China along with a few key bustling cities in the eastern part of the country. This information might be of some use to anyone who is planning a trip to China for next year's Beijing Olympic Games(2008).
Regarding my first seven posts in the Ayats(Signs) in the Universe series and my first three posts in the China series, they can be accessed here:
http://easynash.blogspot.com/2007/02/127no-7-ayatssigns-in-universe-series.html
http://easynash.blogspot.com/2006/12/ayatssigns-in-universe-series-no-6.html
http://easynash.blogspot.com/2006/12/ayatssigns-in-universe-series-no-5.html
http://easynash.blogspot.com/2006/12/ayatssigns-in-universe-series-no-4.html
http://easynash.blogspot.com/2006/12/ayatssigns-in-universe-series-no-3.html
http://easynash.blogspot.com/2006/12/ayatssigns-in-universe-series-no-2.html
http://easynash.blogspot.com/2006/12/ayatssigns-in-universe-series-no-1.html
http://easynash.blogspot.com/2007/05/174china-series-no-3coming-face-to-face.html
http://easynash.blogspot.com/2007/05/172china-series-no-2-my-comments-to.html
http://easynash.blogspot.com/2007/05/171seek-knowledge-even-in-china-my.html
easynash
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)
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