By Shukran Abd Rahman
As a knowledge centre, a university has a set of core-businesses in human development agenda accomplished through knowledge generation and dissemination activities, specified as teaching and learning activities; consultancy and services; research; innovation; and publication (TCRIP). These activities should be undertaken with the aims to empower academics, students and community members to bring about well-being to all, befitting the agenda of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
With regard to teaching and learning activities, a university plays important roles in equipping individuals with required competencies, i.e knowledge, skills, abilities and other desirable characteristics. The aspects of knowledge which serve as the fundamental for an individual’s competencies should be relevant to the context where a university is located, being aware that the institution has significant functions to play in developing the local community.
The knowledge taught to students should be contextualised to the culture, issues, needs of the local community instead of only on the so called universal principles which might be out of context when applied to the local community. Knowledge should be generated or developed to open up, invigorate, and improve a specific knowledge, so as to build principles and theories from the bottom-up, local phenomena, findings, and experiences. Knowledge generation activities, hence, should work on establishing the content (meaning, values, beliefs) vis a vis the context (family, social, cultural, and ecological). These have to be explicitly incorporated into academic activities, including research and teaching. In other word, knowledge to be applied in a community should include the local aspects of human functioning, encompassing the social, political, religion and cultural aspects of people in the community.
Knowledge generated at IIUM, for instance, should be able to solve local psychosocial social issues, requiring judicious initiatives to produce local knowledge within the local cultural context. In this regard, as the hosting locality to the IIUM Campus, the District of Gombak has been involved in activities held by academics and students in Kulliyyah of Islamic Revealed Knowledge and Human Sciences (KIRKHS). Most academic activities held by the campus community have been designed to be of benefits to the community members in Gombak, and in turn supportive of their societal developmental. The activities are accomplished with the partnership of various community in Gombak, namely the learned community, learning community; professional community; and community at large.
The Kulliyyah, which has been mandated to leverage human sciences and Islamic revealed knowledge for societal development, has come up with academic activities that support and substantiate the development of the society, nation, and the ummah. As an education centre based upon religious knowledge and humanities, academics and students in the Kulliyyah are encouraged to conduct academic activities (the TCRIP activities) that translate the Kulliyyah’s missions.
The Gombak Project is the KIRKHS-University Community Engagement (UCE) programme which aims to involve the people of Gombak in various activities held by the IIUM community, in both of her academic and non-academic activities. It has witnessed a good link between the Kulliyyah and local community leaders, particularly the Honourable Orang Besar Daerah Gombak.
The roles of Orang Besar Daerah Gombak is significant in linking the Kulliyyah activities to the Gombak context. In fact the direction and activities of the Gombak Project were conceptualised after several discussions between the Kulliyyah and the Honourable Orang Kaya Maha Bijaya Tan Sri Dato’ Paduka Raja Dato’ Hj. Wan Mahmood bin Pawan Teh, the current Orang Besar Gombak. He has provided vital direction and local knowledge for the Kulliyyah Management team, leading to a number of locally relevant synergised academic projects in KIRKHS. Tan Sri Orang Besar Gombak had also proposed the formation of Steering Committee to oversee the progress of the Kulliyyah’s Flagship project on the mosque curriculum development.
The Honourable Tan Sri has also raised his concerns about psychosocial issues in the community of Gombak, characterised by the growth of crime rate of violence, religious disintegration, hatred, religious disunity and tension. The phenomena could be attributed to the lack of religious understanding, a critical factor in constructing the moral behaviour of human beings. This has driven the Kulliyyah to conduct further analyses with other various parties in the Gombak community such as the Royal Malaysia Police Department, National Anti-Drug Agency, Health Department, Youth Development Department, Welfare Department, Religious Department as well as village headmen from the areas. The engagement with the Gombak local community has led to the design and implementation of synergised academic projects, among them are, the Mosque Study Curriculum (MSC), Stress Prevention Programmes (STOP), Mawaddah for Young Married Couples (MYMC), and Social Wellness Campaign (SWC).
It is expected that the Gombak Project could empower the academics, students and community to acquire the knowledge and skills needed in promoting sustainable development, and in turn attain hasanah (well-being) in their current live and that of in the hereafter.***
(Prof. Shukran Abd Rahman is an academic in Department of Psychology, KIRKHS)