How the world is shaped by the ‘clash of ignorances’

• One of the themes concerns the faltering instruments of government in many countries of Asia and Africa.
• Governments everywhere should reflect the will and the aspirations of all their peoples.

It continually amazes me, for example, how little is understood about the Muslim civilisations and cultures in the non-Islamic world and how little is taught. When President Obama described the richness of that history in his Cairo speech, he was telling a story which is unfamiliar to many in the West.

A pluralistic commitment will call upon educators, everywhere, to address such dangerous 'ignorances,' in this and in other fields.

Knowledge Society

We live today in what has been called the Knowledge Society. But even as our knowledge advances at lightning speed, we also become more vulnerable to gaps in that knowledge, to what we might describe as knowledge deficits.

Each of the four themes I have outlined points to a specific knowledge deficit, and each deficit constitutes a challenging obstacle to progress, justice and stability in many countries and for many decades.

The great universities of the world have a special mission — a high calling I believe — to take a leading role in the struggle to narrow and even to eliminate the knowledge deficits.

This article is extracted from a speech by the Aga Khan during the graduation ceremony of the University of Alberta, Canada, on June 9, 2009.