History
The idea of an international Islamic education institution was conceived in 1982 by the fourth Prime Minister of Malaysia, Mahathir Mohamad during a meeting between OIC leaders to establish an international institution for tertiary education based on Islamic principles, known as the Islamization of knowledge. It was then shared with the then Minister of Education, Dato' Amar Dr. Sulaiman Daud; the Director-General of Education, Tan Sri Dato' Hj Murad bin Mohd. Nor and two other persons. Assoc. Prof. Dr. Kamal bin Hassan, then of the National University of Malaysia, a senior academic official who attended the meeting, produced the first working paper on the concept of the university.
IIUM was officially established on 23 May 1983 when the University received its 'Establishment Order' from His Majesty the Yang di-Pertuan Agong Sultan Haji Ahmad Shah Al-Musta'in Billah, after an exchange of Diplomatic Notes of co-sponsorship between the Government of Malaysia and a number of Muslim Governments as well as the OIC. On 1 July 1983, Ahmad Shah was appointed as the first Constitutional Head of the IIUM.
The university's language of instruction was to be English and Arabic, and many of its students would come from overseas. As Malaysian law did not allow for this, IIUM was incorporated under the Companies Act of 1965. Thus it became the first international university and the first university in Malaysia to use English as the medium of instruction and administration.
It was officially opened at Petaling Jaya, with the Allahyarham Tun Hussein Onn elected as the first president. The university operates under the direction of a Board of Governors with representatives of the OIC as well as eight sponsoring governments, namely; Malaysia, Bangladesh, Egypt, Libya, Maldives, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. The Constitutional Head, President and Rector of this international university are all Malaysians.
A batch of 153 students from Malaysia and abroad were enrolled for the first academic session, which started on 8 July 1983. Courses were conducted under the Faculty of Economics, the Faculty of Laws, the Center for Fundamental Knowledge and the Center for Languages. These first batch received their degrees and diplomas during the First Convocation held on 10 October 1987. 68 graduates were conferred Bachelor of Economics (B.Econ) degrees, 56 Bachelor of Laws (LLB) degrees, and 29 Qadis were conferred Diploma in Law and Administration of Islamic Judiciary.
Read more about this topic: International Islamic University Malaysia
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Free from public debt, at peace with all the world, and with no complicated interests to consult in our intercourse with foreign powers, the present may be hailed as the epoch in our history the most favorable for the settlement of those principles in our domestic policy which shall be best calculated to give stability to our Republic and secure the blessings of freedom to our citizens.”
—Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)
“The history of all previous societies has been the history of class struggles.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)