By Nur Aina Fathihah
GOMBAK, 16 October 2021: A seminar on “Cleanliness: The epitome of our Faith” conducted by AbdulHamid AbuSulayman Kulliyyah of Islamic Revealed Knowledge and Human Sciences (AHAS KIRKHS) on Friday (15 October) had called on the responsibility of every member of the IIUM community to cleanse the university to create a prestigious yet down to earth image of IIUM as an Islamic and international university that incorporates the Malaysian cultures.
Speaking on the topic, Tan Sri Dato’ Dzulkifli highlighted the internal cleanliness that later on will be exhibited by actions of the people themselves, giving other people an evaluation to measure how serious we deal with cleanliness, especially when IIUM brought the idea of Islamisation and internationalisation which it is our responsibility to secure and maintain the beautiful image of Islam.
In addition, Tan Sri Dzulkifli emphasised his worries to deal with the bad perception of the university from other people especially from parents “since today is the day students start to move back to campus that can bring bad image to the university due to extensive comments if we do not care enough to our garden”.
“Once the bad perception is painted outside, believe me, it is difficult to bring it back,” said Tan Sri Dzulkifli.
“Thus, it is important to prevent anything or any action as soon as possible that could bring bad perception to us so that it can be dealt with in a more realistic way,” he added.
“Hence, it is recommended for all of us to practice cleanliness as taught by Islam.”
Tan Sri Dzulkifli also spoke about the definition of a garden as a place of “we want to be in” in which a place that we want to have a celebration, either with our family, teachers, or friends, a place that we want to reflect upon the natural beauty, reflecting upon God’s creations and a place for people to learn, for example, getting inspiration from the nature to create something new to the benefit of the ummah.
“Also, a garden can help us purify our mind and heart from unnecessary things, giving us time to reflect and relax which surely can improve our mental wellbeing.
“Therefore, the garden needs to be clean and well kept so that it can be a place that can benefit every one of us, and the garden that is meant is the IIUM,” he added.
Tan Sri Dzulkifli highlighted the role of the IIUM community to keep and maintain our university clean and safe referring to what we can do and what we have done to our garden.
He said that the university already went higher up to record our unhappiness on what is happening to our university highlighting the lake and river issues that caused the flood and other serious problems to take on and the higher up is promising to provide solutions to our university so that it can be kept clean as it should be.
“The river can be regarded as an important symbol to our garden, for example, back then, the river was used to conduct many activities such as kayaking, sightseeing, picnicking, etc.,” the Rector said.
“It is good news that the IIUM community will be experiencing back the glory of our river as part of the beauty and uniqueness of IIUM as the garden of knowledge and virtue, at least we know that the river is under improvising.”
Plus, with the effort of Kulliyyah of Engineering, our university won second place in the river care competition, the Rector said congratulating the Kulliyyah.
The management teams, lecturers, and staff also started working on building their own garden, for example, turning the office into a garden-so-called office and Tan Sri Dzulkifli was proud with the action taken to bring back the beauty of our university, including the Kuantan campus.
Apart from that, Tan Sri Dzulkifli also emphasised the toilet issue in that he received much feedbacks saying about our unclean toilets.
“Although we do not have enough money to upgrade the toilets, we did experiment on renovating the toilets with the minimum amount of money spent, as much as RM1,500, and we had done it to the lady’s toilet at level 5 as it is the most visited level by our guests, and it is proven that we are able to save money as well as able to have the toilet presentable to us, and our guests as the solution to the problem,” he said.
Tan Sri also mentioned the bad habit of using the toilet that led to the issue, perhaps people do not know what is the proper habit to use the toilet, thus, “it is our role to introduce it to everyone”.
The competition held by Mahallah was a noble action to turn our toilet upside down, however, the action to maintain its cleanliness and beauty should be considered in which it should not be only for the sake of competition, he said.
Tan Sri Dato’ Dzulkifli also highlighted on the mosque when he said that “we should distinguish between what is okay and what is not okay although we receive comments from people because spending money on unnecessary improvement is not good either if we can still work on it”.
Tan Sri Dzulkifli said that he asked the mosque management team to investigate and learn from the representative of the Singapore mosque on how they built and maintained it even though they use every single cent with their efforts without help from the government and the Muslims there are the minority.
“This is a lesson that I want us to learn,” he added.
Tan Sri Dzulkifli said that currently the University is among those which work on creating the Masyarakat Sejahtera and received good support from the government on the idea of practicing whatever the students learned in school when engaging with the community as further action to ensure the success of the plan.
The seminar, conducted from 9.00 a.m until 1.00 p.m through Zoom, was divided into six main agenda: welcoming remarks from Dean of AHAS KIRKH, Prof. Dr. Shukran Abd Rahman; keynote address by IIUM Rector, Prof. Emeritus Tan Sri Dato’ Dzulkifli Abdul Razak; presentation of Mahallah Cleanliness Project by Assistant Prof. Dr. Che’ Razi Bin Jusoh, the Chief of Mahallah Principal; interactive session with the Rector; the breakout rooms session, parallel seminar presentation session; and the concluding remarks by the moderators. ***