WHO IS THE AGA KHAN?

Waiapu Church Gazette, Volume 26, Issue 8, 1 August 1936, Page 4

WHO IS THE AGA KHAN?

The hereditary Chief and Unrevealed Imam of the Ismailis . . . claiming descent m direct line from Ali, the Vicar of God, through the Seventh (and according to the Ismaili creed) the last of the Revealed Imams, Ismail, the son of Jaffir Seeduck.

The Khojah minority laid stress on the fact that the Khojahs of Scinde married and buried according to Suni rites. "Yes," said Sir Joseph m effect, "but that is because the Ismailis have a custom called Takiah, or concealment of religious opinion." Under this custom for centuries they seemed to their neighbours to be

Sunis, while all the while they were Shias. ' Sir Joseph also turned his* attention to a book called the Dussuatar, which "from the beginning" had been "the accepted scripture, so to speak, of the .Khojah sect." Here another surprise awaits us, for the Dussautur is "a treatise m ten chapters, containing the account of ten avatars or incarnations," and "the first nine of these chapters treat of the nine incarnations of the Hindoo god Vishnu; the tenth chapter treats of the incarnation of "the Most Holy All.' " But what have !Mahomedans to do with Vishnu? "Well," says Sir Joseph m effect, "this only illustrates another practice of the Ismailis," and he turns to De Sacy's book, "Religion des Druzes," and finds that Ismaili missionaries were to assume "to a great extent the religious standpoint of the person whom they desire to convert." Pir Surordin was surely a past master m this art.