Introduced by MALIK MERCHANT

Further to our recent video presentation of Vancouver Ismaili lawyer M. Ali Lakhani’s appearance before the Senate of Canada’s Standing Committee on Human Rights on the topic of Islamophobia, we are pleased to provide a link to the full transcript of the video on the Senate website.

Mr. Lakhani was in the first panel with two other witnesses, Nuzhat Jafri, the Executive Director of the Canadian Council of Muslim Women and Maryam Khan, Assistant Professor of the Faculty of Social Work at the Wilfrid Laurier University. He was participating in his capacity as the Editor of Sacred Web: A Journal of Tradition and Modernity, a journal he founded 25 years ago, and now the leading journal in its field.

In his testimony, Mr. Lakhani discusses the causes of Islamophobia, quoting His Highness the Aga Khan at several points in his remarks, and highlights the ideas of the Ismaili Imam and the initiatives of the Global Centre for Pluralism and Imamat Institutions contributing as educational correctives to Islamophobia.

His presentation generated interest and comments from the Senators. Please read the full transcript of all the six participating witnesses by clicking on Islamophobia: Senate of Canada Standing Committee.

Date posted: December 20, 2022.

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M. Ali Lakhani, QC, graduated from Cambridge University and has been practising as a barrister in Vancouver for the last forty years. Interested in applying metaphysics to modern world issues, in 1998 he founded Sacred Web: A Journal of Tradition and Modernity, a leading journal in the field that has published articles by the Prince of Wales, the Dalai Lama, Karen Armstrong, Huston Smith, Seyyed Hossein Nasr and William C. Chittick, among others. Mr. Lakhani’s book Faith and Ethics: The Vision of the Ismaili Imamat has been featured in Simerg’s special series on books by Ismaili authors.