Lecture given during celebration of school’s 250th anniversary.
By Deepak Chitnis
WASHINGTON, DC: Aga Khan, the leading religious figure for the roughly 15 million Shia Ismaili Muslims around the world, gave a lecture at Brown University on Monday, urging caution with regards to new and social media, and warning that an increased reliance on technology could lead to an inability to communicate face-to-face.
Aga Khan did not criticize all technology, saying that when used properly, it can serve incredibly beneficial purposes. Specifically Aga Khan talked about how technology had recently been used assist in creating new governance frameworks in Kenya, Tunisia and Bangladesh.
“More information at our fingertips can mean more knowledge and understanding,” said Aga Khan. “But it can also mean more fleeting attention-spans, more impulsive judgments, and more dependence on superficial snapshots of events.”
During his speech, Aga Khan also talked about what he believes to be the critical underpinnings of society. “A quality civil society has three critical underpinnings: a commitment to pluralism, an open door to meritocracy, and a full embrace of […] a cosmopolitan ethic,” said Aga Khan, defining the latter term as “one that addresses the age-old need to balance the particular and the universal, to honor both human rights and social duties, to advance personal freedom and to accept human responsibility.”
In bringing up these points, Aga Khan returned to technology, saying how it was important to use it to spread knowledge, disseminate information, and facilitate communication, arguing that it was a lack of these elements that has fueled violent conflict in several regions around the world.
The harsh truth is that religious hostility and intolerance, between as well as within religions, is contributing to violent crises and political impasse all across the world, in the Central African Republic, in South Sudan and Nigeria; in Myanmar, in the Philippines and in the Ukraine, and in many other places,” said Aga Khan.
His remarks were given during the 88th Stephen A. Ogden Jr. ’60 Memorial Lecture on International Affairs, which was part of Brown University celebrating its 250th anniversary. Aga Khan received an honorary doctorate from the University in 1996, and his son, Prince Rahim Aga Khan, graduated from the University the year before. In introducing Aga Khan, Brown University president Christina Paxson lauded him as a “returning friend” whose tireless work around the world was a model that all students and alumni of the University should follow.
Aga Khan is the 49th hereditary Imam of the Shia Ismaili Muslims, and is the founder and chairman of Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN). In giving a speech at the Ogden Lectureship, which was established in 1965, he joins the likes of former speakers such as Mikhail Gorbachev, The Dalai Lama, and King Hussein of Jordan.
Aga Khan’s full speech can be viewed here.
To contact the author, email to deepakchitnis@americanbazaaronline.com