Prince Karim Aga Khan - Address to USA Jamati Institutions - New York, 11 November 1986

November 11, 1986 Diwan Sir Eboo, President of the National Council, Presidents and Members of My Councils in the United States, office bearers of the numerous institutions here this evening, I would like to begin by saying that in the past few years, we have heard in the United States a great deal about the defreeze between Washington and Moscow, about disarmament, about the space initiative and yet our Jamat is led by a President who was educated in Moscow and worse still, the head of our audio-visual department is from Leningrad! Anyhow this is a democracy, everyone is free, as we all know, to go and get their education where they choose -- or so we are told. And this evening there are here in front of Me, spiritual children from all over the world and I want to underline that to you tonight because there are people here who are from Kenya, Tanzania, Zanzibar, Uganda, India, Pakistan, Malaysia, Burma, Britain, France, etc., and the point I am making is that this is really an international Jamat. And when you refer to yourselves as the United States Jamat, well I think this is true - it's also true to say that increasingly in this great country, are some of the most outstanding families, some of the most talented members of My Jamat from any part of the world - that is a privilege, it is also a challenge. It's a challenge for the Jamat in the U.S. to organize yourselves, to make sure that you communicate the same language, sAme attitudes, but it's also a challenge for the leadership which the Jamat in other parts of the world will be seeking. For I am absolutely certain, not just sure, I am certain that in the years ahead, young spiritual children will leave this country having been educated here to return to their homelands, and they will take with them their education, their principles, their having been educated in this country but within a Jamat which I hope Inshallah, will be a united and a happy Jamat. So I think that on this visit a number of points need to be made at this last evening together. And the first is that you are an international Jamat. The second is that I have a great vision for the future of My Jamat in the United States and in Canada. The third is that you have other issues to deal with. Issues of integrating into a new society, a society which is not Muslim, of educating young children who one day will have been born in this country and will never have seen India or Pakistan or East Africa, who will never even have come into personal contact with their countries of origin nor with their languages of origin and what they will learn about their faith, they will learn in this country - not from other parts of the world. Those are challenging thoughts which the Jamat in the United States, the Jamat in Canada, the Jamat in the industrialized world must deal with. My conviction is that we must deal with it not only on the premise of our Jamat, but on the wider premise of the complete humanistic history of the faith of Islam, so that our younger generations in the years ahead relate not to one specific attitude but relate to eight hundred, nine hundred, probably a thousand million people who by the end of this century will be practising the same faith. I underline this because if you think about the constituent elements of the United States' society, you will recognize that other faiths have had to deal with the same problem, have addressed it successfully, and Inshallah, Islam will do likewise.