By Awwabin Zainuddin
GOMBAK 5 November 2016: Today is a another wonderful day for IIUM, the President of IIUM, Tan Sri Dato’ Seri Utama Dr. Rais Yatim, told the IIUM 32nd convocation ceremony.
In his speech at the ceremony, the President highlighted five important achievements throughout the year. Firstly, based on the effort of Tan Sri Dr. Rais for the first time, Budi programme was introduced to instil the culture of Malay and Islam in the IIUM community.
He said the university will replace International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilisation (ISTAC) with the combination of Malay realm and Islamic civilisation. This is to give a reflection on the Malay world in Nusantara and Middle East research and to encourage the Nusantara mobility in Islamic world.
“We must combine the Malay world with the Islamic world in one way of integrity and wisdom of Al-Quran, the Hadiths and learning from the past,” he added.
Next, Tan Sri Dr. Rais proudly announced IIUM as the hub for the Halal Research Institute Malaysia.
“Under the International Institute for Halal Research and Training (INHART), our university will be in a partnership with some other halal institutes in South Korea, Saudi Arabia and Great Britain.”
He implied that this opportunity is prior to IIUM being the expert in Halal sector in the world.
Tan Sri Dr. Rais also said he was happy to note the achievement of 6,000 international students mostly from China and Indonesia. He said that “we should maintain the excellence of this University along with the number of contributions of overseas factions and by 2020 the number is planned to increase up to 6,500 students worldwide”.
According to the President, next year IIUM will be a prestigious Islamic financial and banking centre. This will be proven following training and practices based on Islamic financial and banking system. This programme will be associated with Academy of Ma’din, India.
Before ending his speech, Tan Sri Dr. Rais congratulated IIUM debate team for making IIUM as the first university to hold the title for three Open Championships – the United Asian Debating Championship (UADC), Australasian Inter-varsity Debate Championship and Asian British Parliamentary (ABP).
He expressed the hope for the IIUM debate team to continue to achieve success in Holland this December. He ended his speech reminding the audience on continuity in achieving greatness, which he said, “our university deserves through maintaining of supremacy of Islamic ethics in life”. ***