“Coming from Algeria, which is my country, I can tell you that you represent in Muslim world, in Islamic Ummah a very exceptional community, exceptional community for three reasons.” — Professor Arkoun, please click to read article
“Heresiographic literature describes all the sects in Islam from one point of view, the Sunnite point of view, the Shiite point of view, telling that ‘we, we have the truth, and the others don’t have anything’. This is the heresiographic interpretation of Islam which is totally irrelevant for us today.” — Professor Arkoun, please click to read article
PLEASE CLICK: Three Reasons Why Ismailis Are An Exceptional Community in the Islamic Ummah
Please click on image for article.
Simerg - Insights from Around the World 
Hello every one!
My name is Sher Aslam and I belong to Yasin in the Northern Area. This article is very informative for me over all. It gave me a lot of information about why Ismailis are such a special people in the Muslim world. I couldn’t understand the whole article because my educational level is not that high but I am happy to have read it.
Islam in its fundamental sense means submission to the will of God and is the name of making peace with all the inhabitants of the world. According to pristine teaching of Islam the whole world is the household of God and the best among us the one who serves His household. Today if we look around us we can only find the epitome of the above quoted teaching in the personality of Aga Khan IV. His contributions for all the spheres of human activities regardless of cast and creed is the proof of his legitimacy of his claim of the leader of Muslim world, although he has never made such a claim publicly and is called the silent prince of the Muslim ummah. No one can claim for him self the sublime genealogy which he possess and the list of his services to the betterment of humankind shall be speaking for itself with the passage of time.
Being an Ismaili, I felt elated reading views of a non-Ismaili man of letters. I would like to share some words of wisdom by none other than our beloved Guide, Mawlana Hazar Imam:
“A vast decentralisation of decision-making is already occurring in many countries; it has the advantage of placing new responsibilities in the hands of local communities…. For the key to future progress will lie less in traditional top-down systems of command and control — and more in a broad, bottom-up spirit of coordination and cooperation.”
“Social progress, in the long run, will not be found by delegating an all-dominant role to any one player — but rather through multi-sector partnerships. And within each sector of society, diversity should be a watchword. Healthy communities must respect a range of educational choices … [The Ummah] must become full and even leading participants in the Knowledge Society of the 21st Century. That will mean embracing the values of collaboration and coordination, openness and partnership, choice and diversity — which will under-gird the Knowledge Society, learning constantly to review and revise and renew what we think we know — learning how to go on learning. In the age of the Internet, knowledge is universally shaped, universally accessible, and universally applied. And successful institutions of learning must be global institutions…. [I]n the Knowledge Society, productive research is most often partnership research … sharing agendas and exchanging insights. New knowledge is a constantly unfolding gift of God — but it is rarely something that is achieved in isolation.”
Best of luck to the peoples of Hunza.
This article is very inspirational. We the Ismailis are very thankfull for having a Spiritual Father who takes care of us in every situation and has made us a small community but a very impressive and recognised impact in today’s world. Al Hamdulillah.