Your world starts with you and emanates outwards in concentric circles widening to incorporate all of humankind and Allah's creation - Shah Rahim Aga Khan
Your responsibility begins with your own soul, character, conduct, and inner state, then expands outward to the people closest to you, then your community, then all human beings, then all of Allah’s creation.
It is saying your “world” is not only inside you, but it begins there. The way you heal, speak, behave, listen, forgive, show mercy, and carry yourself creates ripples outward.
It is saying everything remains connected to the same center. You do not outgrow the inner circle. You carry it into every wider circle.
Self → family → friends → Jamat/community → society → humankind → animals/nature/Allah’s creation
It is not saying “only focus on yourself.” It is saying you cannot truly serve the wider world while neglecting the inner circle of your own character. But you also cannot stop at yourself. The point is expansion: become more whole inside, then let that wholeness become adab, mercy, service, justice, and care for others.
Where it is from: I could not verify that exact sentence as a Qur’an verse, hadith, or exact famous quote. It seems like a paraphrase of two traditions:
First, the “concentric circles” idea is very old and is strongly associated with the Stoic philosopher Hierocles, who described moral concern as circles beginning with the self and widening to family, community, country, and eventually the entire human race. The ethical task was to “draw the circles inward,” meaning to treat people farther away with more closeness and concern.
Second, the Islamic framing comes from Qur’anic ideas: human beings have dignity as “children of Adam,” the Prophet is described as a mercy to the worlds, and creation itself glorifies Allah. There is also an Islamic education text called “Concentric Circles: A Foundational Approach” in Nurturing Awe and Wonder in Early Learning by Elma Ruth Harder, in consultation with Muzaffar Iqbal, that uses this “concentric” language to describe how learning, self-reflection, creation, and Qur’anic worldview are connected. It says topics have layers of meaning that affect everything else “in concentric ways,” and it encourages seeing the sky, oceans, mountains, and ecosystems as parts of Allah’s creation
It does not mean you are the center of existence. From an Islamic lens, Allah is the true center. But you are the starting point of your accountability. You are responsible for the state of your own heart, your niyyah, your speech, your adab, and how you move through the world.
“Emanates outwards” means what is inside you flows outward. If there is resentment inside, it may come out as harshness. If there is mercy inside, it comes out as patience. If there is insecurity inside, it may come out as control or judgment. If there is self-awareness inside, it may come out as compassion.
So the sentence is saying: your inner world becomes your outer impact.
“In concentric circles” means every layer of life shares the same center. It is not random or disconnected. Your relationship with yourself affects your family. Your family life affects your community. Your community affects humanity. Humanity affects the rest of creation
┌───────────────────────────────┐
│ Allah’s creation/world │
│ ┌─────────────────────────┐ │
│ │ humanity/society │ │
│ │ ┌───────────────────┐ │ │
│ │ │ community / Jamat │ │ │
│ │ │ ┌───────────────┐ │ │ │
│ │ │ │ family/friends │ │ │ │
│ │ │ │ ┌───────────┐ │ │ │ │
│ │ │ │ │ self/Allah Creation │ │ │ │ │
│ │ │ │ └───────────┘ │ │ │ │
│ │ │ └───────────────┘ │ │ │
│ │ └───────────────────┘ │ │
│ └─────────────────────────┘ │
└───────────────────────────────┘
Why concentric circles mattered historically
One major model in Islamic scientific and philosophical manuscripts was the Ptolemaic celestial-sphere model. In that model, the earth was placed at the center, surrounded by the spheres of the moon, Mercury, Venus, the sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, the fixed stars, and sometimes an outer enclosing sphere. In Islamic manuscripts, this was often represented as concentric circles drawn around a central earth.
The Ismaili connection is mainly philosophical rather than visual. In Ismaili intellectual history, the Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ were a 10th-century esoteric brotherhood whose Rasāʾil covered mathematics, logic, natural philosophy, psychology, metaphysics, theology, and moral teaching. Their work tried to bring together Islamic revelation, Greek philosophy, and spiritual reflection into one ordered vision of reality. The Institute of Ismaili Studies describes their metaphysical system as one in which existence flows from the One through ordered levels of being. This gives an important philosophical background to the idea of reality unfolding from a source into wider layers of existence.
The broader Islamic art connection is visual and much stronger. Islamic geometric art often uses circles, repetition, symmetry, and proportion to express unity, logic, and order. The circle became one of the foundations of Islamic pattern-making because it organizes space from a center and allows complex forms to emerge from simple geometry. This is why a clean circle-based design can feel deeply connected to Islamic visual tradition without needing obvious religious symbols like a mosque, crescent, or calligraphy. The visual language itself already carries ideas of unity, balance, order, and interconnectedness.
The Sufi connection is less about diagrams and more about spiritual movement. Sufi traditions often emphasize turning inward, purifying the heart, and discovering a deeper unity with the Divine through love, humility, and self-knowledge. In Sufi-inspired art and literature, the inner journey often becomes an outward journey toward unity, service, and love. A major example is Mantiq al-Tayr, also known as The Conference of the Birds, where the birds symbolize individual souls searching for ultimate spiritual unity. In a visual design, birds or a single hoopoe-like guide could represent the soul’s movement from separation toward unity.
Together, these three traditions offer a layered visual and spiritual framework. The Ismaili connection gives the philosophical idea of ordered existence unfolding from a source. Islamic geometric art gives the visual grammar of circles, symmetry, unity, and order. Sufi tradition gives the emotional and spiritual journey inward toward the heart and outward toward love, unity, and service.