In Aga Khan IV passing, the loss of a guiding light

As I sat successful the soundlessness of the nighttime and tried to callback my much than a decade-long relation with his vision, I was overwhelmed by a surge of memories. Let maine formed a retrospective glance. What had appealed to maine arsenic an pedagogue successful 2013 was the imaginativeness enshrined successful the Aga Khan Strands. Enchanted by this holistic communicative of cosmopolitan ethics, I fell for the strands similar a moth to the flame, to get a Sufi metaphor. The occurrence is the cognition and contented we are wedded to arsenic educators. I present look backmost successful 2025 with a heavy consciousness of wonderment and gratitude. The travel I had embarked connected successful 2013 has been the astir rewarding facet of my beingness and it continues to nourish me.

The AK Strands, an all-inclusive template for disciplinary discourses, informed my pedagogical consciousness. The strands, which connection a unifying absorption to a school’s curricula, remainder connected 5 important pillars: Ethics, pluralism, cultures, economics for development, and governance, and civilian society. The stands empowered maine with a “way of seeing”. I felt convinced however these aspire for civilisational excellence to realise the ngo of planetary citizenship.

The AK Strands could beryllium counterpoised against the theoretical linearity of immoderate schoolhouse of thought. Each strand has a acceptable of methodological questions and insights that provoke a divers enactment of reasoning astir the quality of modern issues and the quality condition. These questions assistance to plan the illustration of a disciplinary endeavor by probing into the conceptual, structural, and epistemological domains of a discipline. I contend that a deeper exploration of the AK Strands would mean an exhilarating transition from disciplinary reasoning to a metacognitive one, offering an animated spectrum for high-order reasoning and the joyousness of unravelling complexity. The strands resonated with maine for its national with the universe, some interior and outer.

Let maine archetypal travel to the “inner” imaginable of the AK Strands. A thoughtful attack to the strands volition pb the teacher and the taught to the threshold of their unalloyed minds, the unspeakable joyousness of being. Sounds philosophical, but it is this fervent longing to question the depths of idiosyncratic cognition that defines the spiritual magnitude of the AK Stands. His imaginativeness of “the prime of life”, which takes centre stage, is simply a thrust toward transformation, which, I believe, inspires an interior regard to register, “What makes maine human?” This interior regard further stimulates an outer regard astatine the horizon, its intriguing play of hues, shades, and tints.

To get a spirit of the “outer” imaginable of the AK Strands, see a fewer references from my teaching. As a teacher of connection and literature, I consciousness that an eclectic internalisation of the AK Strands is an effort to inscribe taste diverseness successful the survey of literate and non-literary works. For example, the unpacking of the aforesaid and the satellite successful Tagore’s poesy could beryllium interpreted done the logic of Sufism (Rumi oregon Kahlil Gibran) and its cognitive mechanism. This vibrant scenery of intercultural brushwood makes the AK Strands singularly pluralistic.

To mention different example, successful a clash betwixt 2 ideological frameworks, the primacy of his conception of taste ethos could beryllium examined against the proselytising thrust of taste fascism. Moreover, African nationalism done Chinua Achebe could beryllium pressed into captious service: One done Edward Said’s binary of the Other and the different done the Aga Khan IV conception of taste identity. If civilization is endangered by the coercive instincts of governmental highhandedness, however could the content successful the perennial hunt for a communal humanity beryllium preserved? This existential angst of taste truths finds its solace successful his wisdom. Take different instance, his caveat astir the paradox of technological advancement is germane to Neil Postman’s technopoly oregon Aldous Huxley’s technological determinism. I reason that the AK Strands assistance successful not lone negotiating the nuances of pressing section and planetary issues of motivation imperative but besides initiating a statement implicit the legitimacy of civilian society, ideology and freedom, quality development, and Muslim morals vs Western ethics.

As an ardent practitioner of the AK Strands, I bow my caput successful heavy gratitude and judge that this hermeneutic exemplary of cognition is sustained by the soulful quest for renewal, reconciliation, and reconstruction successful underpinning the “quality of life”. I consciousness a tug astatine my psyche strings arsenic I adjacent my eyes successful heavy reverence. The Prophet’s cosmic assemblage touched nirvana. Bismillah al-Rahman al-Rahim!

The writer teaches astatine The Aga Khan Academy, Hyderabad