The Force of Wisdom
An Interview with His Highness the Aga Khan
Conducted by Jean-Jacques Lafaye · Politique Internationale, no. 127, Spring 2010
This interview was conducted by Jean-Jacques Lafaye and originally published in Politique Internationale, no. 127, Spring 2010, under the title “La Force de la Sagesse.” The translation that follows renders the conversation into clear, idiomatic English, while preserving the substance, cadence and reflective register of the French original. Throughout, J.-J. L. designates Jean-Jacques Lafaye and K. A. K. His Highness Karim Aga Khan.
J.-J. L. — Your Highness, as the spiritual leader of the Ismaili communities the world over, you wield an undeniable influence on the international stage. And yet you do not wish to be regarded as a political actor…
A. K.— …or as a politician. From my point of view, even though faith and states ought to maintain relations of cooperation and mutual esteem, religion and politics are two altogether distinct matters.
J.-J. L. — You embody the institution of the Imamate. To your co-religionists, you are the “Lord” and the “Master.” How does this authority express itself in practice?
A. K.— In Islam — Sunni as well as Shia — the Imam is responsible both for the quality of life of those who turn to him and for their religious practice. We therefore do not encounter the kind of division that exists, for example, in the Christian interpretation between the material and the spiritual. An Imam’s responsibility extends across both domains. Consequently, his concerns include the security of the faithful, the freedom to practise their belief, and the quality of life I have just mentioned. To repeat: the Imamate is an institution endowed with a twofold mission — to ensure quality of life and to interpret the faith. The religious authority of the Ismaili Imam reaches back to the very origins of Shiʿism in Islam, when the Prophet Muḥammad mandated his son-in-law ʿAlī to perpetuate his teaching within the Muslim community. That authority is transmitted hereditarily through the descendants of ʿAlī, and the Ismailis are the only Shia who have a living Imam — in this case, myself. The other Shia — the Twelvers — venerate an Imam who is “hidden,” and who, on the Day of Judgement, will return to take part in the ultimate decisions. What renders our Imamate unique is the presence of this living Imam. Among the Sunnis the situation is altogether different, in that the notion of a continuous religious authority bound to the family of the Prophet is not recognised.
J.-J. L. — Your community, present throughout the world, is therefore unique within Islam…
A. K.— It is indeed unique, since it acknowledges only one Imam, who exercises his authority over all Ismailis everywhere on the planet — there are Ismaili communities in the Middle East, in Africa, in South-West Asia, in Central Asia, in Canada, in the United States, in Europe. This diversity is reflected in cultural and linguistic traditions, and even in a heterogeneous religious practice; yet the recognition of a single Imam unites all Ismailis.
J.-J. L. — You are the proponent of a humanist Islam. How do you react to the violent verbal excesses of certain politico-religious leaders in the Middle East and to the terrorist acts perpetrated in the name of your religion?
A. K.— I read history — in particular at Harvard — and I am very ill at ease when I see religion blamed for every human problem we are unable to solve. When people speak of the “clash of civilisations,” I reply that what we are in fact dealing with is a “clash of ignorances.” In my view, most conflicts are anchored in essentially political problems. I insist on this point: these are not questions of religion, but questions of politics. Religion is often nothing more than a pretext or, more accurately still, an instrument manipulated by political forces. The problems of the Middle East or of Kashmir are first and foremost political problems in the strict sense, to which religious dimensions have subsequently been added. This drift is not peculiar to the Muslim world; Christian countries have known the same torments. Consider only the case of Northern Ireland.
J.-J. L. — In 2007 you celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of your accession to the office of Imam of the Ismailis. What have been your greatest achievements over that period?
A. K.— The era of the Cold War represented an early and major challenge for me. A large portion of the Ismaili community resided in the Soviet republics and was therefore almost entirely cut off from its Imam. At that time, beyond the burning questions of international affairs, we were asking ourselves what stance we ought to adopt vis-à-vis the communist states. The situation was extraordinarily complex. What role for our institution in a world where, on every side, communist dogma confronted capitalist dogma — to say nothing of the internal tensions within each country? After a decade or two we managed to rationalise all our activities and to ensure that the Imamate possessed credible, specialised and competent international institutions, capable of operating across many countries and of effectively assisting Ismailis throughout the world.
J.-J. L. — You were one of the pioneers of microcredit — a financial instrument that has become the last resort for development in poor regions. How did the idea come to you?
A. K.— In the early 1960s we became aware of the appalling chasm — I use strong language because the situation was particularly dramatic — that, in the Third World, separated rural populations from urban ones. Rural people were utterly marginalised. We discovered, moreover, that in the West as in the Third World, decisions concerning development assistance were taken by “urban” organisations. By that I mean that the decision-makers had no real knowledge of the lives of millions of men, women and children in the countryside, who remained as if invisible, lost in vast hinterlands. National political systems did not concern these populations, for want of effective censuses or electoral mechanisms. Before our eyes the great majority of the Ismaili population residing in Africa and in Asia was wholly excluded from the development process. That, I must say frankly, was a dreadful discovery. At the start of the 1960s I therefore turned our development support processes entirely on their head: I decided that we must, as a matter of priority, bring meaningful help to those rural populations of the Third World — isolated, ignored, without local leadership, without contact with the decision-makers of the great cities.
J.-J. L. — What were your principal initiatives?
A. K.— In the first place, agriculture itself had to be improved — hence the Aga Khan Foundation’s Rural Support Programmes. Above all, access to food had to be assured. It must be remembered that many of our communities narrowly avoided famine — in eastern Tajikistan during the civil war of the early 1990s, but also in Syria and elsewhere. We helped to consolidate agriculture in the countries concerned. I shall not hide the fact that this was easier in the former Western colonies than in the Soviet republics, where the system of state collective farms hampered our action, whether in distribution or in the sale of harvests. Then we noticed an interesting phenomenon. Farmers generally managed to produce a tiny surplus per day, per week, per month. These surpluses were sold, and the money obtained from their sale was spent in winter, when agriculture no longer produces. How could these minute savings be stabilised and multiplied? It was in order to consolidate them that we came to develop the notion of microcredit, establishing rural organisations whose accounts were public. Microcredit rests upon the honesty of the borrower, since no collateral is required. But because the accounts are verified and discussed publicly each week, a public morality emerges — which is remarkable. Men were repaying their debts at a rate of ninety-eight per cent, women at ninety-nine per cent. We thus created organisations within the villages; then villages were linked to one another. These groupings approached the banks, which in turn lent them money. In this way a genuine financial support system was born: microcredit, today so widely recognised. Since then our programme has developed continuously, to the point where we are now moving into micro-insurance. How can a large family be guaranteed access to education and to healthcare? From the economic domain we have moved to that of social protection. This is a programme we are developing jointly with the Gates Foundation, and we are already running pilots in Tanzania and in Pakistan.
J.-J. L. — You spoke of the exemplary character of women. Yet the condition of women in Muslim countries frequently provokes criticism in the West. On this point, what is your position as Imam?
A. K.— A brief historical reminder is in order. In pre-Islamic Arabia women were no more than commodities, sold in the markets like cattle. Nascent Islam decided that this status was unjust. In Islam the man owes respect to the woman, and the woman to the man. There remains, however, the concern to avoid an abuse of liberty that would turn woman into an object, in the manner of certain Western excesses. Islam profoundly rejects the notion of woman-as-object. In the future, and well beyond the Muslim world, it is the abuse of liberty, I believe, that will become the great subject of debate. In many spheres the principle of liberty is defended up to the point at which liberty tends to slide into licence, into permissiveness, into disrespect: there, Islam says no. This holds well beyond the question of men and women. Take the economic crisis that has struck us: at bottom, the problem is that too much liberty was given to certain financial institutions — which abused it and tipped over into licence.
J.-J. L. — Which personalities, of today or of the past, represent moral landmarks in your eyes?
A. K.— I should not use the word “moral,” which is to be employed delicately; I would rather speak of “humanism.” Which men and women have demonstrated an admirable humanism? In the course of my life I have met figures of every kind: political leaders, artists, philosophers. Among those who have left their mark on me I would willingly name Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Kofi Annan, Félix Houphouët-Boigny, Jomo Kenyatta — the first president of Kenya — Derek Bok, who served as president of Harvard for over twenty years, and the cellist Yo-Yo Ma, who has been appointed a United Nations Messenger of Peace. All these men have had, and have, an extraordinary quality: they have managed to step outside their own framework of values in order to place themselves within that of those they address. They have known how to put themselves in the other’s place, the better to understand and the better to help. It is a capacity I deeply admire — an irreplaceable and, alas, all too rare talent.
J.-J. L. — There is a fashion for comparing or contrasting Presidents Sarkozy and Obama. How do you judge them?
A. K.— My impression is that, before these two men came to power, there was a kind of paralysis on the great international dossiers. Happily, that has changed. Both presidents belong to a younger generation. They certainly possess the courage of youth, and they have enough confidence in their energy, their education and their intellectual capacities to say: “I am going to re-examine this dossier.” Both have shown great openness, and I think they can be trusted. To say today that they are going to solve every problem would be unrealistic. But their refusal of taboos and rigidities is, in my view, very important. Even in Russia younger leaders are at the controls. There exists across the world a will to change after years of blockage marked, in particular, by the disaster of the Iraq war, which was a horror. These young leaders must begin by repairing the damage done before them.
J.-J. L. — Can independent economic actors such as Bill Gates or George Soros offset the unwieldiness of international institutions?
A. K.— The involvement of these immensely wealthy businessmen in the field of development is a marvellous phenomenon. To begin with, it brings to development assistance a new economic dimension based not only upon giving but, above all, upon the production of goods. It also brings knowledge drawn from the private sector, which states are in no position to provide. In addition, these initiatives oblige states to reflect on the public-private relationship. In developing countries there is an enormous void in this area: whether in education, in health, or in finance, there are too few partnerships between the public and the private. Not so long ago, financial institutions in a great many countries were entirely public. They were either inefficient or, at the very least, manipulated by successive governments. In the educational domain, recall the 1970s: at that time certain governments — in Africa, in Asia and in the Middle East alike — sought a contrived national unity by promoting the teaching of languages that no one spoke and that were perfectly useless. This linguistic nationalism had unfortunate consequences, for international comparative criteria thereby disappeared. A medical degree obtained in Pakistan in Urdu, for example, was worth nothing outside Pakistan — which is an absurdity.
J.-J. L. — Let us, precisely, speak of Pakistan. How do you view this country, whose political life is marked by the alternation of military regimes and more or less democratic interludes, and which today is regarded as the crucible of the most radical Islamism?
A. K.— Pakistan is a state whose great difficulties date back to its very creation, in 1947. As you know, Kashmir, part of which lies within Pakistan, remains a disputed zone to this day. Furthermore, the government in Islamabad does not succeed in exercising its authority over the west and the north-west of the country. In such circumstances instability is, in a sense, structural. Pakistan’s second great problem goes back to the independence movement, which gave birth to a country grounded in the Muslim religious affiliation of a given population. But that very religion was itself plural in those regions, which is to say that, from the outset, the national cement was at once a leaven of division. Paradoxically, those divisions were strengthened — perhaps in spite of himself — by the policy of Islamisation pursued by Zia ul-Haq.[1]
A. K.— I had great respect for that man. He was deeply religious and upright, but he was no theologian. In wishing to render Pakistan more Muslim than it was, he failed to answer one essential question: which Islam was at issue? That question was never put. So the Sunnis took one direction, the Shia another, and then the Afghan question erupted in 1979. I had, I would say, “privileged” relations with Zia ul-Haq. I do not forget that he authorised the creation of our university — the Aga Khan University in Karachi, the first private and autonomous university in the country’s history. At our last meeting before his death in 1988 he said to me: “I think I made a mistake in trying to make Pakistan a still more Muslim country, because that has generated more centrifugal forces than we expected.” He was a man of great honesty.
J.-J. L. — You have just mentioned Afghanistan. What was the impact of developments there on Pakistan?
A. K.— After the invasion of that country by the USSR in 1979 the Western powers said to themselves: “We shall not drive out the Russians by intervening directly; let us instead mobilise the Pakistanis.” But the Pakistanis appealed to the most extreme. The result: ultra-radical groups entered Afghanistan — which is not a nation-state but only a place in which various ethnic groups, tribes and divergent religious visions are gathered together. Those Islamists later spread throughout the entire region, including Pakistan. Pakistan thus paid the price for having served as the West’s auxiliary in this interminable war. In such a context the military in power appeared as an element of stability. In Pakistan, as in other countries of Asia and of Africa, the army in power has generally guaranteed independence and stability, but has run into enormous difficulties when transferring power to a successful democracy.
J.-J. L. — On that subject, what is your judgement of the concept of “exportable democracy” advocated by the former American president George W. Bush?
A. K.— I think that George W. Bush’s positioning on democracy was due solely to his desire to justify the invasion of Iraq post factum. But what is important, beyond the Iraqi case, is to understand why, in numerous countries — especially developing ones — democracy is today so fragile. In my view, one of the principal explanations lies in the weakness of what I call constitutionality. The vast majority of countries I know live with dysfunctional constitutions, drafted at moments of historical transition — post-independence, after the toppling of regimes — and resting upon unfortunate compromises, often adopted in order to satisfy a tribe, a minority, a religious group. Today a great many states are debating the desirability of transforming their constitutions. Look at what is happening in countries of the South, and even in Eastern Europe: it is striking.
J.-J. L. — In Afghanistan, do you believe in the establishment of representative civil and military institutions, despite all the difficulties the country faces?
A. K.— In Afghanistan as in Iraq, despite years of effort, it has not been possible to create a national army and police sufficiently effective to guarantee security. To stabilise these countries durably the Western powers would have to remain there for a very long time. Under present conditions it is extremely difficult to train a viable Afghan national police force. Imagine that I am a Hazara Shia and that I find among my fellow recruits a Pashtun whose father, I happen to know, killed my brother. Time must be allowed to do its work; that is the only solution. That said, I certainly do not advocate fatalism. I think one must go out to meet the political fires and try to extinguish them with political tools. The more results are obtained by purely political means, the better one will succeed in detaching religious notions and their apolitical purity from the theological-political amalgam claimed by these extremist groups and movements. Today the world is divided: theocracies on one side, secular states on the other. People sometimes speak, with reason, of the three “theocracies” — each in its own fashion — of Iran, Israel and Saudi Arabia. Imagine their transformation, and you will have a different world. If I may put it so, one must give politics back to politics, and God back to God.
J.-J. L. — Does the Israeli constitution, which prevents the formation of clear and stable majorities, not represent another organic obstacle to a lasting peace between the Hebrew state and its neighbours?
A. K.— I am not sufficiently informed about the particularities of the Israeli constitution; but, as I have said, the problem of dysfunctional constitutions is undoubtedly one of the most widespread sources of political instability in a great many countries.
J.-J. L. — What should Israel do now to obtain a lasting peace?
A. K.— I have never wished to involve myself in this debate, but I believe there is one sine qua non: a viable Palestinian state. I shall, moreover, surprise you by saying that, in my view, one of the conditions of peace lies in the acceptance of the State of Israel by the Shia minority of the Muslim world. Iraq has a Shia majority, as does Bahrain; and the Shia have always been very numerous in Lebanon. The Syrian government is presided over by Bashar al-Assad, who is himself a Shia. This is an essential key, and President Sarkozy has well understood it. An agreement with the Sunni countries is excellent; but it is not sufficient.
J.-J. L. — How do you analyse the present evolution of Iran?
A. K.— The direction Iran is taking is a phenomenon of grave concern for the entire world, including for the other Shia countries. In my view, the primary cause of the Iranian revolution lies in the unhappy economic management of the Shah’s regime. I regret to have to say that, of all the heads of state I have known, he was probably the one who understood economic questions least well — or perhaps he was deeply ill-advised. This shortcoming brought about the multiplication of centres of opposition. It was enough for Khomeini to appear for history to tip over. As a Shia myself, when I listened to his speeches I said to myself that not a single Shia in the world would remain unmoved by his preaching.
J.-J. L. — That brings us to the nuclear question, ever more troubling: ought access to civilian nuclear energy be recognised for all states?
A. K.— It seems to me that today there is a tendency to make a rule of “non-proliferation” applicable to the totality of nuclear technology, civilian and military alike. The conditions imposed upon the sale of civilian nuclear technology resemble a form of colonisation by technology, in so far as the most advanced countries insist upon retaining all the “keys.” We are therefore very far from any “democratisation” of this energy. Perhaps I am being naïve, but I defend a different approach — what I call positive proliferation. I am in favour of disseminating civilian nuclear technology. Naturally, careful thought must be given to the conditions of such positive proliferation: how is one to guard against environmental problems? How is one to prevent the diversion of civilian nuclear technology to military ends? I have studied history, as you know; well, there has never been a scientific advance of global significance whose development could be halted. The positive proliferation I call for rests upon a simple principle: yes to energy, no to weapons.
J.-J. L. — How is one to judge Iran’s ambiguous attitude on this matter?
A. K.— Iran’s current policy in this area worries the world, and many Muslim countries as well. Should Tehran obtain nuclear weapons, certain states in the region might very well acquire the bomb in their turn, and the West would probably help them to do so. The atmosphere is tense, even paranoid. Nevertheless, through the International Atomic Energy Agency, it is important to develop and to maintain constructive cooperation with the Iranian authorities on this question. Iran could even contribute to a global military denuclearisation. That is what I have said to the Iranians for some years now: “Yours is the history of an intellectual country thousands of years old, which has brought to Islam all the wealth of its culture and of its philosophical reflection. Continue along that path which is your own, and the world will be grateful to you for it.”