Spotlight
Friday, 25 April
Aga Khan
The Pope and the Dalai Lama weren’t the only international religious leaders visiting the United States last week, writes Eboo Patel in the Washington Post’s On Faith blog. Link:Contact:464, the spiritual leader of the world’s 15 million Ismaili Muslims, made his first public visit to America in over two decades last week, making stops in Austin, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Atlanta, where he spoke to the local leaders of the International Baccalaureate program and laid out his vision for education in the developing world. Already a giant in education and philanthropy, with a thriving Aga Khan University in Kirachi and hundreds of primary and secondary schools scattered around the globe, the Aga Khan is now launching ten new “academies” in countries including Bangladesh, Afghanistan, and Mozambique, with the aim of improving education in underdeveloped nations. According to Patel, the 71 year-old Aga Khan, who is one of the most important symbols of modern Islam, touted pluralism as the “central challenge of our times” and said that educational institutions are responsible for addressing the challenge of pluralism directly. According to CNN, this was the Aga Khan’s first U.S. tour in 20 years. Last year, Forbes listed the Aga Khan as the 10th richest royal in the world, estimating his net worth at around $1 billion. Formerly known as Prince Karim al-Husseini, Aga Khan inherited his current title as a 20-year-old Harvard student in 1957.
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