The Aga Khan
“The International Academic Partnership is in part a product of the vision of the Aga Khan, whose son, Rahim, was a member of Phillips Academy’s Class of 1990.
But who is the Aga Khan, and what places him in a position to see his visions impact people and programs globally?
One of the world’s wealthiest and most revered individuals, Prince Karim Aga Khan IV is a direct descendant of the prophet Mohammed, the founder of Islam, who lived from about 570-632 A.D. Tracing his ancestry to the prophet’s daughter Fatima and her husband, Ali, the Aga Khan is the spiritual leader of all the world’s Ismaili Muslims.
It has been said the lives of Fatima and Ali’s descendants can be better or worse depending on the vision of the Aga Khan, and Prince Karim Aga Khan’s vision is considered by some to be nothing short of brilliant.
The son of Prince Aly Khan and Princess Tajuddawlah Aly Khan, he was a 20-year-old student at Harvard in 1957 when the role of spiritual leader was thrust upon him. His grandfather, Sir Sultan Mahomed Shah Aga Khan, former president of the League of Nations, had died, unexpectedly bypassing his son and naming his grandson as the 49th hereditary imam, or leader, of the worldwide community.
The Ismailis represent only a small segment of the world of Islam—15 million or so out of roughly a billion believers worldwide—who live scattered throughout Africa and Asia and, more recently, in Europe and North America. They are unified in their view of Islam as a faith that emphasizes intellectual freedom, compassion, tolerance and human dignity, reflected in economic, social and cultural contributions. Under the aegis of “His Highness,” as he is known, these activities have evolved into the Aga Khan Foundation, the world’s second largest philanthropic foundation in international development work, and the Aga Khan Development Network. The network is a group of institutions laboring to better the lives of people in the developing world through programs in health, education, housing, economic development and cultural awareness.
Two of those linked institutions, the Aga Khan Education Service and the Institute for Educational Development, operate schools and professional development centers for teachers in Bangladesh, India, Kenya, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Tanzania and Uganda. A key facet of the AKES educational philosophy is that it insists upon equal education of females.
To get an idea of the programs’ impact, consider Pakistan, where 64 percent of boys and 75 percent of girls do not attend school. In Pakistan’s Northern Areas, home to about 300,000 Ismaili Muslims and an equal number of other Shia and Sunni Muslims, the Aga Khan Development Network has helped villagers build 450 classrooms, provided education to 22,900 boys and girls and trained 1,700 teachers, many of them women.
A distinguishing feature of the Aga Khan’s programs is that they are designed as partnerships meant to be sustained by the local people, and the roughly $150 million spent on them each year is considered not a giveaway, but an investment. Noting the efficacy of such an approach, Forbes Global magazine last year described His Highness as the “venture capitalist to the Third World.”
Nina Scott and Theresa Pease contributed to this report. Courtesy Phillips Academy Andover – Publications online.
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