An Ivory Horn at the Aga Khan museum in Toronto, Canada. PHOTO | AGA KHAN MUSEUM
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On display in the museum will be more than 1,000 artifacts from the 8th through 19th centuries sourced from various countries.
The newly established museum of Muslim art in Toronto, Canada, will help foster global friendship across cultures in a world full of hostilities, the Aga Khan said on Friday.
He spoke when he jointly with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper opened the Aga Khan Museum and the Ismaili Community Centre.
Inspired by the Aga Khan, who is the 49th hereditary Imam (spiritual leader) of the Shia Ismaili Muslims, the US$300 million museum is deliberately situated in Canada to foster knowledge and understanding both within Muslim societies and between these societies and other cultures.
The Ismailia spiritual leader said it was a joy to celebrate the spirit of friendship at a time when so much of the world’s attention is focused on a climate of belligerence.
“These spaces will be filled with sounds of enrichment, dialogue and warm human rapport, as Ismailis and non-Ismailis share their lives in a healthy, gregarious spirit,” he said.
Mr Harper said that as the first museum in North America devoted to Islamic art, the Aga Khan Museum will help promote an understanding of a religion that is based on tolerance and pluralism.
The PM praised the spiritual leader’s role in “demystifying Islam... by stressing its social traditions of peace, of tolerance and of pluralism.”
On display in the museum will be more than 1,000 artifacts from the 8th through 19th centuries sourced from various countries.
The museum’s head of education, Ms Patricia Bentley told the Business Daily that items from Eqypt and information on Islamic history in North Africa and Mali showed Africa’s contribution to Islamic civilisation.
Renowned architects from Japan and India designed the main buildings of the museum and the Ismaili centre respectively, while a Lebanese architect designed the landscaped park that links them on the 6.8-hectare site. All three were present at Friday’s opening ceremony.
Speaking at the occasion, Prince Amyn Aga Khan, the vice-chair of the Museum, said: “I believe strongly that art and culture can have a profound impact in healing misunderstanding and in fostering trust even across great divides."
“This is the extraordinary purpose, the special mandate, to which this museum is dedicated. In its role to reveal and to stimulate dialogue between different cultures, the Aga Khan Museum will continue a long history of cultural sharing between Islam and the West.”
The museum was established and developed by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC), which is an agency of the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN). In the same network is the Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development (AKFED), which owns shares in the Nation Media Group.
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