Date: 24 November 1931
Location: London
Speaker: Aga Khan III
Source: Speeches of Aga Khan III – K K Aziz
Full Text
Muslim attitudes to Great Britain. . . . The Aga Khan said that the Moslems offered the right hand of friendship, and it was for the people of England to decide whether or not they would grasp it. The Moslems desired to live in conditions of amity – self-respecting amity – and on terms of equality of friendship of other peoples and races.
Source: The Times, London, 25 November 1931.
These words were said by the Aga Khan at a farewell reception given by the National League at the Hyde Park Hotel in London to the Muslim delegates to the Round Table Conference. Lord Lamington presided. After the Aga Khan’s brief speech Sir Ahmed Said, Nawab of Chchattari, said that it was to the mutual advantage of the British Empire and of the Moslems of the world that thoroughly friendly relations should be kept between them. Of 210,000,000 Moslems in the world no fewer than 100,000,000 lived within the confines of the British Empire, which was thus the largest Moslem Power in the world. The Indian Moslems had cemented their relations with the Empire by shedding the blood of their young men during the Great War on the battlefields of Flanders, Palestine, and Iraq.