You need a new agent Razib. The current guy isn't getting the word out to the media that you are the go-to guy for info and context...

;-)

Followers of the Aga Khan are so untypical of mainstream Muslims that it can't be journalistic mediocrity; it's either ignorance, or it's heavy bias in favor of looking for a silver lining in Islam, no matter how slim.

The article mentions Tajikistan: Apparently the eastern, remote part of the country is majority Ismaili (though I'm not sure they were historically followers of the Aga Khan). As the article mentions, now the Aga Khan invests heavily in the region; one imagines that his resources far outnumber those of the Tajikistani gov't.

Thanks for the book recommendation - looks interesting; a related topic I'm interested in is the Indian Diaspora in East Africa - any books you can recommend?

very droll to castigate the MSM for misusing "moderate" and then yourself misuse "mediocre". :)

In the American MSM "moderate Muslim" = non-terrorist. In other words, the term is wholly meaningless.

You need a new agent Razib. The current guy isn't getting the word out to the media that you are the go-to guy for info and context...

well, i can recommend something called wikipedia. or a quick google for discussion forums where you can see just exactly what sunnis think about ismailis (hate is not pretty).

i can recommend something called wikipedia

Someone (I'm not saying you...) should make a sound bite friendly, analogy-laden explanation of Islam for us mediocre minds and the msm.

For me, "imagine that the leader of the Seventh Day Adventists was being treated as a seminal and fundamental authority within Christianity" was much more useful than all that stuff in wikipedia...

I tell myself that it is because I am "getting older" that I perceive an accelerating msm slide to journalistic (not to mention grammatical) decrepitude. I think it is the explosion of rank tidbits of misinformation and shoddy thinking that search engines pepper results on page 1 (and 2 and 3...). But even that couldn't explain a featured article that is virtually entirely wrong.

But even that couldn't explain a featured article that is virtually entirely wrong.

well, does the times have any muslims on staff? they could have told them after a few sentences that it was off.

Hey really cool post razib! We are lucky that there are informed peeps out there who can give us the truth. I don't know wtf the NY Times is up to, but I rarely if ever buy that paper to read the news. I do like their crossword puzzles though.

They are just a bunch of snobs over there at the NY Times. Me too, but at least I am an honest snob.

imagine that the leader of the Seventh Day Adventists was being treated as a seminal and fundamental authority within Christianity

Now imagine that the leader of the Seventh Day Adventists holds a position that various special interest groups desperately want to represent as a mainstream aspect of Christianity. Of course there are going to be articles in which he's featured prominently.

Even if they bothered checking on how significant this Muslim leader actually was, I doubt they would care - he has the right spin, so they'll ignore inconvenient facts. Frankly, I doubt they cared enough about the facts in the first place to check.

Yes, he is the Light of Islam. Relatively speaking.

Jaim, yes. And if the Aga Khan is not the Light Of Islam, one would like to know who amongst today's Muslim "leaders" is. Relatively, absolutely, or otherwise.

Islam is not a monolithic religion, it has many many interpretations, was not revealed for the East or West, but for all humanity, and so long as its essence and spirit is followed, being more westernized or easternized does not make anyone any less or more Muslim.

It is true that the Nizari Ismailis are, numerically speaking, at the bottom of the tail. It is true that the media is largely ignorant about the various divisions within both sunni and shia Islam (in the sunnis we have the wahabis and the deobandis and the sufis and other subdivisions). The media needs to shape up. But it is also true that the the influence of the Ismailis in bridging the gap beween the Islam and the West is out of all proportion to their numbers, compared to their shia or sunni counterparts, and perhaps this better explains the perception and preoccupation of the western media with the Aga Khan.

Somebody has to act as the bridge between East and West (in this context, Christianity and Islam). The Aga Khan has always maintained that the three great Abrahamic religions (Christianity, Judaism and Islam) have far more in common than most people would suppose. The world needs a voice of temperance and hope without the inexorable slide into religious dogma. The Nizari Ismialis may well be a tremendous minority, but what does that have to do with anything? The Aga Khan is well recognised throughout the Muslim Umma as an exemplary voice of moderation and modernity. Can the same be said about the Daudi Bohra leader?Ask the Bohras themselves.