35. The Amman Message

500 Most Influential Muslims

Prince Karim Al-Husseini, known as the Aga Khan IV, was a signatory of the Amman Message, issued in 2004 by King Abdullah II of Jordan, the grandson of Abdullah I, who was installed as King or Jordan by the Cairo Conference, after the traitorous actions of his father Sharif Hussein, whose British-led Arab Revolt helped to topple the Ottoman Empire, to leave Muslims with the confused predicament they are beset with today. In the rife ignorance, Muslims are incapable of recognizing the factors that define the true tenets of Sunni Islam, and what differentiates them from heterodox factions. As such, the upstart sects can exploit absence of an authority to protect orthodox Islam to attempt to gain popular legitimacy. And while the Amman Message attempts to address the problematic trend of Takfirism, it’s not a problem of doctrine, but one of etiquette. It is among the obligations upon Muslims to protect correct doctrine, but those obligations also require Muslims to conduct themselves as examples of that same doctrine. However, the hidden intent behind the Amman Message is to promote unity among the disparate sects, which is politics, not religion:

 

Whosoever is an adherent to one of the four Sunni schools (Mathahib) of Islamic jurisprudence (Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi`i and Hanbali), the two Shi’i schools of Islamic jurisprudence (Ja`fari and Zaydi), the Ibadi school of Islamic jurisprudence and the Thahiri school of Islamic jurisprudence, is a Muslim. Declaring that person an apostate is impossible and impermissible. Verily his (or her) blood, honour, and property are inviolable. Moreover, in accordance with the Shaykh Al-Azhar’s fatwa, it is neither possible nor permissible to declare whosoever subscribes to the Ash`ari creed or whoever practices real Tasawwuf (Sufism) an apostate. Likewise, it is neither possible nor permissible to declare whosoever subscribes to true Salafi thought an apostate.[1]

 

In 2006, King Abdullah II supported and funded “A Common Word Between Us and You,” which led to a 2007 open letter from Muslim religious leaders to Christian leaders, calling for peace and harmony based principles shared by both faiths. The World Interfaith Harmony Week was a UN resolution for a worldwide week of interfaith harmony proposed in 2010 by King Abdullah II and his first cousin Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad of Jordan, who is on the Royal Steering Committee for the Amman Message Islamic Initiative. The Amman Message received substantial support from the royal family of Jordan and the Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Centre (RISSC), which was set up for the purpose of its promotion. The RISSC is a research center affiliated with the Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought, founded in 1980, by Abdullah II’s father, King Hussein (1952 – 1999).

Individuals and organizations who have issued Fatwas and endorsements in relation to the Amman Message include the Aga Khan IV, Muhammad Sayyid Tantawy, his close friend Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Shaykh Nazim Al-Haqqani, Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri, Ahmed Kuftaro and Abdullah bin Bayyah.[2] Bin Bayyah is a Mauritanian Islamic scholar and professor of Islamic studies at the King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, who serves as the chairman of the UAE Council for Fatwa. Bin Bayyah is involved in a number of scholarly councils including the Islamic Fiqh Council, a Saudi-based Institute. He was also the vice-president of the International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS), which according to Reuters was “formed in 2004 mostly by clerics belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood.”[3] IUMS consists of around 95,000 Muslim scholars globally and 67 Islamic organizations, and  claims to bring together Sunni scholars of all four madhabs, along with Shia and Ibadi Muslims.[4] Bin Bayyah worked closely with Yusuf al-Qaradawi.

The RISSC also produces annual list of The 500 Most Influential Muslims. The report is issued annually in cooperation with Prince Al-Waleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (ACMCU), an inter-faith institution at Georgetown University in Washington. The founding director of the ACMCU was John Esposito, who serves as Professor of Religion, International Affairs, and Islamic Studies at Georgetown. The Jesuit-founded Georgetown has had long-standing links with the CIA and was also affiliated with CSIS, which had included Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski and neocon master of disinformation, Michael Ledeen.[5] During his tenure at Temple University, Ismail al-Faruqi—founder of the American branch of IIIT, which originated at the Lugano meetings of Muslim Brotherhood members headed by Youssef Nada—mentored many students, including his first doctoral student, Esposito.[6] As Esposito admits:

 

Georgetown University, one of America’s oldest and most prestigious universities, was chosen as the site for ACMCU because of Georgetown’s Catholic and Jesuit heritage, and because it is located in Washington, D.C., at the crossroads of international politics.[7]

 

The ACMCU was named after Saudi billionaire, Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, who in 2005 gave $20 million to the Center to promote interfaith understanding and the study of Islam and the Muslim world.[8] Talal, who is ranked by Forbes as the world’s nineteenth wealthiest person, is a very close friend of Rupert Murdoch and his family, and was News Corporation’s second largest shareholder until 2014.[9] Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called “twentieth hijacker” involved in 9/11, named bin Talal, along with Turki bin Faisal and Prince Bandar Bin Sultan, as one of the financiers of al-Qaeda.[10] In 2002, it was revealed that Alwaleed had contributed $500,000 to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim Brotherhood front that has boasted of influence over Fox entertainment programs.[11] In 2010, bin Talal announced plans to launch a new Arabic television news channel in partnership with Murdoch’s Fox network, to compete with Al Jazeera.[12]

The highest-ranking American, and highest-ranking convert, in the list of  500 Most Influential Muslims, at 38th place, was Sheikh Hamza Yusuf Hanson, who delivered an address in honor of King Abdullah II receiving the Templeton Prize in 2018.[13] Martin Lings—a close associate of René Guénon and member of the Fritjof Schuon’s Maryamiyya, currently led by Seyyed Hossein Nasr—was an important influence on Hanson, another convert to Islam who changed his name to Hamza Yusuf, and who achieved a great deal of popularity in the Muslim community as a speaker.[14] Yusuf’s first mentor Ian Dallas, a.k.a. Sheikh Abdalqadir al-Murabit, founder of the notorious crypto-Masonic Murabitun Movement, which included Dugin’s friend, Gladio agent Claudio Mutti.[15] In 2018, Bin Bayyah and his student Hamza Yusuf co-founded the Forum for Promoting Peace in Muslim Societies (FPPMS), under the auspices of the Foreign Minister of the United Arab Emirates, Abdullah Bin Zayed al-Nahyan, also known as MBZ, is the third son of Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the founding father and the principal driving force behind the formation of the UAE, and the original financier of BCCI.[16]

In September 2010, Abdullah II first proposed the World Interfaith Harmony Week (WIHK) at the UN General Assembly, which was unanimously adopted by the UN a month later. The Parliament of the World’s Religions has promoted WIHK through the support of the John Templeton Foundation.[17] For his efforts, Abdullah II received the 2018 Templeton Prize in Washington, DC, at the Cathedral Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul in Washington, widely known as Washington National Cathedral. The program also included remarks from two well-known scholars, Shaykh Hamza Yusuf, founder of Zaytuna College, and Professor Miroslav Volf, the lead author of the Christian response to “A Common Word Between Us and You,” and António Guterres, General Secretary of the United Nations. In his address at the award Ceremony, Hamza Yusuf said:

 

I want to first thank Heather Templeton and the John Templeton Foundation for the honor of paying homage to someone I truly respect, King Abdullah II of Jordan. I believe Heather’s grandfather, Sir John Templeton, would consider this year’s recipient an altogether fitting one for his esteemed prize: Sir John, a true visionary, understood the great moral burden that comes with privilege. It is unfortunate that the current zeitgeist scorns privilege and fails to recognize that not only is privilege a natural part of our world, but that it entails a concomitant social responsibility and tribulation. The Qur’an reminds us that privilege has a purpose: “God has privileged some of you over others as a test to reveal who is the best among you.” Sir John, it can be said, seems to have passed that test by using his wealth and privilege to encourage others to do their utmost for the good of the common weal.[18]

 

The first edition of The 500 Most Influential Muslims, published in 2009, and edited by Esposito and Ibrahim Kalin, gave first place to King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz of Saudi Arabia, and second to Ayatollah Syed Ali Khamenei, the spiritual leader of Iran, and a signatory of the Amman Message. Third place went to King Mohammed VI of Morocco, and Abdullah II of Jordan occupied fourth place. Fifth place went to Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The first solely religious leader was Iraq’s Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in seventh place. Fethullah Gülen came thirteenth. Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah, head of Hezbollah, listed seventeenth and Muslim Brotherhood member Khaled Mashal, who became leader of Hamas, was 34th.

 

ACMCU 

In addition to John Esposito, the ACMCU has three full time faculty: John O. Voll, Professor Emeritus of Islamic History at Georgetown University in Washington; Amira El Azhary Sonbol, Associate Professor of Islamic History & Society; and Yvonne Y. Haddad, Professor of Islamic History; and two visiting professors: Anwar Ibrahim, who founded the Muslim Brotherhood’s International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) with Ismail al-Faruqi, and who served as Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia; and Shireen Hunter, who directs a project on Reformist Islam funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York. Hunter is a Distinguished Scholar at CSIS where she directed the Islam Program from 1998 to 2005.[19] From 1993 to 1997, Hunter was visiting senior fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS) in Brussels and directed CEPS’ Mediterranean Program. She was guest scholar at the Brookings Institution and research fellow at the Harvard University Center for International Affairs (CFIA). CEPS’s first director was Peter Ludlow. Its director between 2000 and 2020 was Daniel Gros, who previously worked for the International Monetary Fund (IMF) from 1983 to 1986, served as an Economic Advisor to the Directorate General II of the European Commission from 1988 to 1990. The CFIA was founded in 1958 by Robert R. Bowie and Henry Kissinger.

In 2005, CSIS published Islam and Human Rights by Hunter, Khaled El Fadl, Riffat Hassan, Saad Ibrahim, Ann Elizabeth Mayer, Robert Pastor, Recep Senturk and Huma Malik. Robert Alan Pastor (1947 – 2014) was a member of the National Security Council staff and a writer on foreign affairs. Riffat Hassan, who is currently a professor of Religious Studies at the University of Louisville, Kentucky, is a Pakistani-American theologian and a leading Islamic feminist scholar of the Quran.[20] She has written two books with Sir Muhammed Iqbal, who was influenced by Afghani and is widely regarded as having animated the impulse for the Pakistan Movement.[21] Khaled Abou el Fadl is the Omar and Azmeralda Alfi Distinguished Professor of Law at the UCLA School of Law. He has appeared on national and international television and radio, and written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, and The Boston Review.

ACMCU’s many visiting faculty and scholars had included: Mohd Kamal Hassan, Fathi Osman, Mahmoud Ayoub, Ali Mazrui, Roy Mottahedeh, Samir Khalil Samir, Osman Bakar, and Seyyed Hossein Nasr, a friend of Henry Kissinger and member of the Maryamiyya Sufi order.[22] Mohamed Fathi Osman (1928 – 2010), joined the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1940s, and later taught history at Imam Muhammad ibn Saud Islamic University in Saudi Arabia. He moved to Los Angeles in 1987, where he served as a senior scholar at the University of Southern California’s Center for Muslim-Jewish Engagement.[23] Ali Mazrui (1933 – 2014), was a Kenyan-born American academic and writer on African and Islamic studies, who produced the 1980s television documentary series The Africans: A Triple Heritage, which aired in 1986 on BBC and PBS. Samir Khalil Samir, SJ, is an Egyptian Jesuit priest, Islamic scholar, Orientalist, and Catholic theologian, a professor at the Pontifical Oriental Institute (Rome), at the Centre Sèvres (Paris), at St Joseph University (Beirut), and a visiting professor at many academic institutions.

Also included were Roy Mottahedeh (1940 – 2024), the son of Mildred Mottahedeh, who like his mother is a follower of the Bahai faith. Roy Mottahedeh was an American historian, expert on Iranian culture, and Gurney Professor of History, Emeritus at Harvard University, where he taught courses on the pre-modern social and intellectual history of the Islamic Middle East.[24] Mildred Mottahedeh, an American collector of ceramics, businessperson, and philanthropist, who was born Jewish converted to Bahai Faith when she met her husband, was present at the signing of the Charter of the United Nations and she served as the first representative for the Bahai community to the United Nations from 1948 to 1967. As a representative, she advocated and worked for the establishment of a World Parliament. In 1961, she was elected to the International Bahai Council. In 1993, the United Nations named her the United Nations Woman of Honor for that year.[25]

ACMCU has produced many of the major reference works on Islam, including The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World, The Oxford History of Islam, The Oxford Dictionary of Islam, and The Islamic World. CMCU faculty was involved in The Oxford Online Resource Center for the Islamic World and The Oxford Encyclopedia of Islam. CMCU faculty are regularly interviewed or quoted in major newspapers and magazines such as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor, USA Today, Times Literary Supplement, Le Monde, Al-Ahram, Al-Hayat, Al Mejelle, Al-Sharq al-Awsat, Respublika, New Straits Times, Java Post, Ummat, Asia Week, as well as TV networks including CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN, and the BBC.[26]

 

Aga Khan Development Network 

Forbes describes the Amman Message signatory Aga Khan IV as one of the world’s fifteen richest royals, with an estimated net worth of over $13.3 billion.[27] Aga Khan IV’s annual income derives from the donations of 15 million Ismaili who regularly donate to him 10-12% of all their earnings. The extent of these contributions is unknown, though estimates suggest they could add up to hundreds of millions each year.[28] He owns hundreds of racehorses, valuable stud farms, an exclusive yacht club on Sardinia, Bell Island in the Bahamas, two Bombardier jets, a £100 million high speed yacht Alamshar, and several estates around the world, with his primary residence at Aiglemont estate in the town of Gouvieux, France, north of Paris.[29] Aga Khan was a close friend of former Canadian Prime Minister and Club of Rome member Pierre Trudeau (1919 – 2000). In 2017, Pierre’s son Justin Trudeau was found guilty of violating the Federal Conflict of Interest Act by accepting private-island vacations, gifts, and flights from the Aga Khan.[30]

At the Hadrian Award Luncheon at The Plaza Hotel in New York City, on October 25, 1996, David Rockefeller remarked:

 

Today we all regret that last year’s award recipient, Lord Rothschild, is unable to be with us as was originally planned, but I’m delighted to have the privilege of introducing this year’s honoree in his stead. His Highness The Aga Khan is a man of vision, intellect, and passion. I’ve had the pleasure of knowing him for almost forty years, ever since he was an undergraduate at Harvard and a roommate of my nephew Jay Rockefeller.

The spiritual leader of the Shia Ismaili Muslims, the Aga Khan is the forty-ninth in a hereditary line extending back to the Prophet Muhammad. (I don’t believe there are many of us in this room who could trace, in any direction, anything like that kind of heritage.) From the time he succeeded his grandfather Sir Sultan Mahomed Shah at the tender age of twenty, he has worked through the institutions of the Aga Khan Development Network, improving the lives of people in Islamic societies around the world. The network supports education, medical services, economic development, and cultural programs. These important and much needed services are available to people of all faiths in the communities that they serve.[31]

 

Aga Khan IV is the founder and chairman of the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN), one of the largest development agencies in the world, which as of 2008 employed approximately 96,000 paid staff, had an annual budget for not-for-profit activities of approximately $950 million, and operated in 30 countries around the world, mainly in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.[32] A significant portion of the funding for development activities if the AKDN comes from partnerships with national governments, multilateral institutions and private sector partners, and donations from corporations and individuals around the world.[33] Founded in 1983 by Aga Khan IV as a health-sciences university, Aga Khan University (AKU) is one of the agencies within the AKDN. Starting in 2000, AKU expanded to Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, the United Kingdom and Afghanistan. The AKDN has active working relationships with international organizations such as the United Nations (UN) and the European Union (EU), and private organizations such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Governmental bodies the AKDN works with include the United States Agency for International Development, the Canadian International Development Agency, the United Kingdom's Department for International Development, and Germany’s Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development.[34]

 

 


[1] The Three Points of The Amman Message, V.1 Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20130202045430/http://ammanmessage.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=91&Itemid=74

[2] “Religion: Amman Message.” Hand Wiki. Retrieved from https://handwiki.org/wiki/Religion:Amman_Message

[3] “Islamist group rejects terrorism charge by states boycotting Qatar.” Reuters (December 1, 2017). Retrieved from https://www.reuters.com/article/gulf-qatar/islamist-group-rejects-terrorism-charge-by-states-boycotting-qatar-idUSL8N1O12V8

[4] “Introduction | International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS).” Retrieved from http://iumsonline.org/portal/en-US/introduction/37/

[5] “CIA and Georgetown: The Hilltop Connection.” The Georgetown Voice (March 11, 1980). Retrieved from https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP90-00806R000100270005-6.pdfun

[6] M. Tariq Quraishi. Ismail al-Faruqi: An Enduring Legacy (MSA Publications, 1986), p. 9.

[7] John L. Esposito. “The Prince Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding.” Islamic Studies, 45: 1 (2006), pp. 122.

[8] Caryle Murphy. “Saudi Gives $20 Million to Georgetown.” Washington Post (December 13, 2005). Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/12/AR2005121200591.html

[9] Chris Wright. “Why Is A Saudi Prince Selling Out Of News Corp?” Forbes (February 4, 2015).

[10] James Rosen. “Did members of Saudi royal family fund terrorism against US?” Fox News Special Report (February 6, 2015).

[11] Cliff Kincaid. “Scandal Rocks Fox News Over Saudi Terror Link.” Accuracy in Media (February 6, 2015).

[12] “Rupert Murdoch takes stake in rival to al-Jazeera.” The Guardian (July 6, 2010).

[13] Abby Ponticello. “The Urgency of Harmony and Hope | Celebrating King Abdullah II.” The Templeton Foundation (January 28, 2022). Retrieved from https://www.templeton.org/news/the-urgency-of-harmony-and-hope-celebrating-king-abdullah-ii

[14] Zareena Grewal. Islam Is a Foreign Country (New York University Press, 2014), p. 160.

[15] Ibid.

[16] Walaa Quisay & Thomas Parker. “On the Theology of Obedience: An Analysis of Shaykh Bin Bayyah and Shaykh Hamza Yusuf’s Political Thought.” Maydan (January 8, 2019).

[17] “Promoting World Interfaith Harmony Week through the Parliament of the World’s Religions.” John Templeton Foundation (November 2018). Retrieved from https://www.templeton.org/grant/promoting-world-interfaith-harmony-week-through-the-parliament-of-the-worlds-religions

[18] “‘A Battle of the Heart’ Remarks by Shaykh Hamza Yusuf.” John Templeton Foundation (November 20, 2018). Retrieved from https://www.templeton.org/news/a-battle-of-the-heart-remarks-by-shaykh-hamza-yusuf

[19] John L. Esposito. “The Prince Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding.” Islamic Studies, 45: 1 (2006), pp. 123–124.

[20] Susan N. Cahill. Wise Women: Over Two Thousand Years of Spiritual Writing by Women (W.W. Norton and Company, 1996), p. 329.

[21] David Lelyveld. “Muhammad Iqbal,” in Richard C. Martin (ed.). Encyclopedia of Islam and the Muslim World: A-L (Macmillan, 2004), p. 356

[22] John L. Esposito. “The Prince Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding.” Islamic Studies, 45: 1 (2006), pp. 124.

[23] William Grimes. “Fathi Osman, Scholar of Islam, Dies at 82.” The New York Times (September 19, 2010).

[24] John L. Esposito. “The Prince Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding.” Islamic Studies, 45: 1 (2006), pp. 125.

[25] “Baha’i.” The Record (May 18, 2000), p. 35. Retrieved from https://www.newspapers.com/clip/65544380/bahai/

[26] Ibid.

[27] “How the Fourth Aga Khan Balances Spiritual Muslim Leadership with a Multi-billionaire Lifestyle.” Vanity Fair (January 14, 2013). Retrieved from https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2013/02/aga-khan-spiritual-leader-multi-billionaire; Tatiana Serafin. “World’s Richest Royals.” Forbes. (July 7, 2010). Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/2010/07/07/richest-royals-wealth-monarch-wedding-divorce-billionaire_2.html

[28] Henry Tobias Jones. “The story of the Aga Khan IV, the world’s most well-connected man.” Gentelman’s Journal. Retrieved from https://www.thegentlemansjournal.com/article/story-aga-khan-worlds-connected-man/

[29] Elizabeth McMillan. “Aga Khan joins Prime Minister’s neighbourhood.” Canada.com (December 8, 2008). Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20120827183837/http://www.canada.com/life/Khan+joins+prime+minister+neighbourhood/1043042/story.html

[30] “The Aga Khan trip and a glimpse into Trudeau’s bad judgment.” Macleans (December 27, 2017). Retrieved from https://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/the-aga-khan-trip-and-a-glimpse-into-trudeaus-bad-judgement

[31] “His Highness the Aga Khan Honored by WMF’s famous Hadrian Award.” Ismaili Web. Retrieved from http://www.amaana.org/ISWEB/hadrock.htm

[32]  “Aga Khan joins Prime Minister’s neighbourhood.” Canada.com (December 8, 2008). Retrieved from http://www.canada.com/life/Khan+joins+prime+minister+neighbourhood/1043042/story.html;  “AKDN Frequently Asked Questions.” Aga Khan Development Network. Retrieved from https://the.akdn/en/how-we-work/our-approach/frequently-asked-questions

[33] “Frequently Asked Questions.” AKDN. Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20220928195335/https://the.akdn/en/who-we-are/frequently-asked-questions

[34] Ibid.

Divide & Conquer