), who believe in a mystical, peaceful form of Islam that is the antithesis of hate, violence, and Sharia imperialism that infuses mainstream Sunni or Shia Islam.<\/span><\/p>\nThere are no mosques in the Pamirs, because Ismailis have no mosques. They pray privately \u2013 men and women together. Ismaili men are extremely respectful of women. The thought of treating women as an inferior form of humanity as does mainstream Islam is as disgusting to Ismaili men as it is to us. No Ismaili man would even think of demanding his wife wear a veil or cover her face in public.<\/span><\/p>\nThe Ismaili Pamirians are among the most friendly and hospitable people I have ever met around the world.\u00a0They always have a smile for you, a stranger, and the smile is genuine. At any opportunity, they will invite you into their home for a cup of tea and bowl of yogurt.\u00a0You are not an infidel to them, but a fellow human being and their guest.<\/span><\/p>\nUp in these lost mountains on the roof of the world, there is a form of Islam that should be a model for Moslems all over the world, a moral contrast to the medieval evil of Wahhabi Islam of the Saudis, the Deobandi Islam of the Taliban, or the Khomeini Islam of the Mullahs of Iran.<\/span><\/p>\nThere are Ismaili Moslems in dozens of countries all over the earth \u2013 but the greatest concentration of them is here in the Pamirs.\u00a0It is geopolitically ironic.\u00a0Let\u2019s take another look at the Tajikistan map above:<\/span><\/p>\nNote the present border of Tajikistan\u2019s Gorno Badakhshan, and Pakistan is separated by a finger of Afghanistan reaching all the way to China. That\u2019s the famed <\/span>Wakhan Corridor,<\/span><\/i> drawn in 1895 to keep the expanding Russian Empire from physically touching British India. These borders are an artifact (as are many others around the world) of 19<\/span>th<\/span>-century colonial geopolitics.<\/span><\/p>\nI just drove through the Wakhan, which is, in places, only a few miles wide.\u00a0Here is a picture of three countries:\u00a0Tajikistan in the foreground, Afghanistan on the other side of the Amu Darya, the snow-clad Hindu Kush mountains of Pakistan in the distance.<\/span><\/p>\nMarco Polo\u2019s route to China was through the Wakhan in 1273. It was a strategic valley to the Bactrian Greeks, who built this castle-fortress overlooking it over two thousand years ago:<\/span><\/p>\nIf you look down the Wakhan, you can see way in the distance on the Afghan side a small dot that looks like a building (center of the picture on the edge of the Amu Darya\/Oxus river).\u00a0There is nothing around it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nTurns out, it\u2019s a secret CIA interrogation prison for captured Taliban.\u00a0Here it is up close from the Tajik side of the river:<\/span><\/p>\nWe\u2019ll discuss Afghanistan next week (hint: this colonial construct is not \u201cthe Graveyard of Empires\u201d \u2013 that\u2019s a myth. The reality is that for millennia it\u2019s been the Doormat of Empires.)<\/span><\/p>\nSuffice it to say, there are as many Tajiks in Afghanistan as there are in Tajikistan, well over 8 million \u2013 more than a quarter of the population of Afghanistan. The majority live in the north of the country, where Afghanistan and Tajikistan share 750 miles of border.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\nIn the capital of Tajikistan, Dushanbe, the most prominent monument is to the country\u2019s national hero and founder of the Tajik nation, Ismail Somani (ruled 892-907).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThe <\/span>Somonid Empire<\/span><\/i> he founded at its peak in the 10<\/span>th<\/span> century contained all of present-day Afghanistan and Tajikistan, plus most of Uzbekistan and the eastern half of Iran:\u00a0over one million square miles. Tajiks view themselves as the heirs to the <\/span>Somonid Empire<\/span><\/i>.\u00a0Their currency, the <\/span>somoni<\/span><\/i>, is named after the empire\u2019s founder.<\/span><\/p>\nAfghan and Tajikistan Tajiks speak the same Dari dialect of Persian, and most all ascribe to the Sunni version of Islam. While the rest of the country is Sunni, the Shia Ismailism of the Pamirs has had a distinctly moderating influence. The Aga Khan periodically visits the Pamirs.\u00a0At the main Pamir town of Khorog on the Amu Darya, he delivers a sermon with huge loudspeakers as Afghan Ismailis assemble by the many thousands on a gravel floodplain across the river to hear him.<\/span><\/p>\nBut why doesn\u2019t he just cross the footbridge nearby into Afghanistan and talk to his Afghan followers directly?\u00a0Because the Afghan government in Kabul won\u2019t allow it.\u00a0It\u2019s afraid that the Aga Khan might provoke the Afghan Ismaili Tajiks into rebelling and demanding to merge their lands with Tajikistan.<\/span><\/p>\nYet, that is the precise opposite of what HH Aga Khan IV \u2013 personal name, Mawlana Hazar Imam \u2013 preaches. He constantly stresses the principal virtues of Ismailism: <\/span>Modesty, Patience, Humility, Knowledge, Forbearance, and Consultation<\/span><\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\nThus, the great irony to be found here. The Pamir Knot, one of the remotest places on earth, is where we might find a solution to peacefully unravel so much of the world\u2019s religious dissension. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nIn any regard, it is in so many ways an unforgettable experience to be here, one that I\u2019ll always treasure. If I return, I\u2019ll invite you to come with me.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
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All photos by Jack Wheeler The Pamir Knot of Eastern Tajikistan, the Wakhan of Afghanistan, and Northern Pakistan. Kashgar, Chinese Turkestan. About 55 million years ago, the giant subcontinent of India, which had been drifting north for tens of millions of years after breaking off from the supercontinent of Gondwanaland, began crashing into the Eurasian […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":366,"featured_media":22244,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[8947,10651,10647,18535,10650,18533,10670,27208,18534,6671,18537,10645,18536,18532,10648,27209,3686,25257,3046,18538],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/image002.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22243"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/366"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22243"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22243\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35902,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22243\/revisions\/35902"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22243"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=22243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}