An experience of a lifetime 

By Maheen Qaiser Makhdoomi 

I remember sitting near the corner window of Mamma Mia with a bunch of friends when in a flow of conversations one of them casually inquired why I had chosen IIUM. Following a brief pause, my unassertive and naively constructed reply was something along the lines of ‘experience’ topped by similar words and expressions.

At that point, I managed to convince the person of my motivation for my choice or so I thought, but very soon upon a reality check, I found myself unsure of what constituted that ‘experience’. Was my reply something I had picked from the mainstream vocabulary, was I blindly following someone else’s choice, or did I merely throw around words to escape the question? The conversation was long over but the question kept lingering in my inquisitive existence.

I was born and brought up in Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir, a conflict zone. Growing up surrounded by a feeling of captivity, one seeks freedom and a safe space for personal growth and self-exploration. IIUM was just that.

Malaysia was, in psychological terms, a zone of proximal development that I’m convinced would have been hard to create back home. A place that allowed for the freedom to practise my religion and I feel proud of my Muslim identity. IIUM was a representation of the world. I had heard students refer to it as a mini globe with its amalgamation of diverse cultures, traditions, languages and values.

As they say, it is an ummah in the truest sense. It was an adventure of its own to have been able to meet Muslims from a multitude of countries under one roof and to create such a wide-ranging cross-cultural Ummatic (in the IIUM lingo) network. It’s like having a family all around the world, across countries and continents.

A thorough change in my lifestyle was also accompanied by possibilities for better self-articulation and a growing self-identity. More specifically, IIUM was a hub of opportunities. Over four years, I could partake in umpteen events encompassing religion, politics, refugee upliftment and various youth-based programmes. It was a cathartic experience to be part of awareness programmes highlighting the voices of the displaced and forgotten and to have been able to empathise with them.

Just as important, I could not have thought of learning the fundamentals of psychology from anywhere other than IIUM. Given how heavily the ideas and values of the West weigh on psychology in general, studying it through the prism of Islam enabled me to critique its concepts systematically rather than casually dismissing anything that did not suit my worldview.

Walking through the corridors of my department I would reminisce the spirit of the Golden Age of Islam just by looking at the names like Al- Farabi, Ibn Haytham, or Ibn Al Qayyim. Reading the works of the likes of Al Ghazali, Al Razi, or Ibn Sina as part of the course, was just as essential as studying Freud or Pavlov, something unimaginably necessary in assimilating the concept of the soul into the wider picture of human psychology.

Sometimes I even wonder how deficient my experience of studying psychology would have been without being introduced to such rich literature by the Muslim scholars. On that note, I cannot stress enough the importance of exploring the Dar al-Hikmah library, a treasure we have access to throughout the four years. Sometimes a lifetime would feel insufficient for exploring the wealth of knowledge lying on those shelves.  

Besides, there are idiosyncrasies that shape experience for every person’s search for meaning looks different; ergo, it might be imperative to not have preconceived notions known by hearsay, but to keep an open mind before embarking on this four-year journey, as eventually what would constitute our “experience” or what would make our university life meaningful would need to be answered by us personally.

While it took me my entire time at the university to answer myself, what I understood was like Jung in his ‘Development of Personality’ wrote, “At present, we educate people only up to the point where they can earn a living and marry; then education ceases altogether, as though a complete mental outfit had been acquired…..Vast numbers of men and women thus spend their entire lives in complete ignorance of the most important things.”

On a lighter note, amongst the most captivating memories of IIUM would be enjoying an exchange of greetings with makciks in my rusty Malay and relishing a teh tarik panas along with a plate of roti canai at the HS cafe, the rainy evenings at the students mall with a hot cup of Adani, or the maghrib vibes as I walked over the bridge through the Azman Hashim complex back to my Mahallah. 

It has been two months or so since I graduated and left the country and I feel glad to have been able to be part of such a university. ***

(Sr. Maheen Qaiser Makhdoomi is a graduate from Department of Psychology, Kulliyyah of Islamic Revealed Knowledge and Human  Sciences, IIUM)



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