OFFICE OF THE RECTOR

In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful...

The International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM) was established as a result of the recommendations of the First World Conference on Muslim Education held in Makkah in 1977, where scholars from various fields and from different parts of the world highlighted education as being the key to overcoming the plight of the Muslims, and where they deliberated on key issues such as the nature of man, the aims and objectives of Muslim education, and the concept of an Islamic university, which subsequently led to the blueprint on Muslim education. Among the recommendations at the conference was that Muslim educational systems should be based on the Islamic worldview, and that knowledge should be viewed from the Islamic perspective—otherwise known as the Islamization of knowledge. Hence, Islamization of knowledge has always been a major item on the agenda of this university and, because of this, IIUM’s various academic disciplines are taught from both the Islamic and Western perspectives.

From its humble beginnings in the Petaling Jaya campus in 1983, the university, which started with only two inaugural programmes, the Bachelor of Economics, and the Bachelor of Laws, has now grown into a highly respected, internationally recognized university, with twelve faculties or kulliyyahs and four institutes that offer numerous academic programmes. Our past must be recorded and our achievements evaluated, but we must at the same time consider the challenges our university will have to face in the years to come so that we can ensure that the IIUM will become an even greater source of pride to all concerned. We must be strong enough to shoulder our heavy responsibilities and amanah, thus making the IIUM a shining example of an international centre for research and excellence in the Muslim world.

IIUM still has many areas to improve on. There will be numerous colossal challenges in its road ahead, especially those that concern research. These include, among others, the challenges to engage in more groundbreaking research, to establish research clusters that will be points of reference to the outside world, to empower its academic staff to produce greater volumes of articles in cited journals, to encourage greater adoption of innovative ICT tools in teaching, learning and research, to attract more renowned scholars and researchers to come to the university, and to be listed as a world class institution of higher learning. We hope that the university will continue to grow and to develop, and we hope to achieve our goal of becoming a leading university which seeks to restore the dynamic and progressive role of the Muslim ummah in all branches of knowledge and to achieve our mission of integration, Islamization, internationalization, and comprehensive excellence.