IIUI Website: A Great Hodgepodge

Recently I have been observing IIUI website (http://www.iiu.edu.pk/ and I can assure you that this has not been a keen observation) and to my dismay, despite attempts to bring about change recently by the web team, it has not shown much improvement. From design and format to equitable representation of faculties, and from content editing to updating the website, everything seems to be below the mark. This is really a sorry state of affairs for an institution having ambitions to excel not only in the Muslim world but in the world at large. And especially when you see that it is called “International” Islamic University.

One of the most important issues regarding the website is its belated correction of changes. For example, a couple of months back, I noticed that the part of the website about Faculty of Shari’ah and Law presented Dr Yusuf Faruqi as the Dean of the faculty. The reality was that, a long time ago his services were transferred to Islamic Research Institute (IRI) and Dr Tahir Mansoori from IRI was moved to the faculty as its dean. Now a number of months elapsed before Dr Mansoori replaced Dr Faruqi on the website. This means that the webmaster does not keep abreast of the changes that are taking place around him or if he does, he does not promptly react to the change and waits for the visitors to the website to spot the mistake and report it to the relevant authorities. But there is another angle to the issue. Let us suppose that the webmaster is too busy and does not find time to be aware of the changes. It should be the responsibility of the agents of change to get the website amended when a change has taken place. As the website’s update is no one’s responsibility in most of the faculties and departments and it has been solely left upon web team so the reason behind such omissions is not beyond comprehension.

Another current example of the above issue is the webpage of Faculty of Islamic Studies (Usuluddin). The picture of Dr Abdul Khaliq Kazi still adorns the page as the Dean of the faculty, while he has moved back to Australia after completing his tenure as HEC foreign faculty. I don’t know when this will be changed. I am sure it does not fall into the category of deliberate attempt at misrepresentation of facts.

Yet another example of the same is the webpage of Faculty of Languages, Literature and Humanities. One of the pages mentions Dr Siddiq Shibli as the dean of the faculty while another page says that the dean is Professor Farhat Mujtaba.
There might be other instances where people have either left the university or joined it as new faculty and there is nothing about them on the website. I invite the readers to look into the respective pages of their faculties and point out the areas requiring change on this blog.
Another important issue is the diversified format of the website. There is no uniformity in the designing of the web pages and one faculty’s web page does not match with the other. One of the glaring examples of this bad designing of the website is the Faculty and Staff pages and if you bear with me for a while, I would invite you to visit the following links one by one and tell me if I am wrong:

Faculty of Arabic and Islamic Civilization
http://my.iiu.edu.pk/Faculties/ArabicLanguageandIslamicCivilization/FacultyStaff/tabid/93/Default.aspx
Faculty of Basic and Applied Sciences
http://my.iiu.edu.pk/Faculties/BasicAppliedSciences/FacultyStaff/tabid/153/Default.aspx
Faculty of Engineering and Technology
http://my.iiu.edu.pk/Faculties/EngineeringTechnology/FacultyStaff/tabid/79/Default.aspx
Faculty of Management Sciences
http://my.iiu.edu.pk/Faculties/ManagementSciences/FacultyStaff/tabid/126/Default.aspx
Faculty of Islamic Studies (Usuluddin)
http://my.iiu.edu.pk/Faculties/IslamicStudiesUsuluddin/FacultyStaff/tabid/164/Default.aspx
Faculty of Languages, Literature and Humanities
http://my.iiu.edu.pk/Faculties/LanguageLiteratureHumanities/FacultyStaff/tabid/231/Default.aspx
Faculty of Shari’ah and Law
http://my.iiu.edu.pk/Faculties/Shariaandlaw/FacultyStaff/tabid/190/Default.aspx
Faculty of Social Sciences
http://my.iiu.edu.pk/Faculties/SocialSciences/FacultyStaff/tabid/85/Default.aspx

I am sorry to bother you with the links but I can bet that if you have checked all the links, you must have found each of these pages different from the others in various respects. Check the ways, the names of the faculty members are ordered, and the ways they have been assigned the university e-mail addresses, or the ways their qualifications have been mentioned and not mentioned and sometimes their departments in the faculty mentioned or not mentioned, you will find a whole lot of variety in it. The superfluous information and availability of the pictures of some faculty members while not of others is also curious. Perhaps those not pictured consider it haram in Shari’a’s eyes!! Or this is just the mismanagement of the web team and those who oversee them!!! Another issue concerning the Faculty and Staff pages is the inclusion of the female faculty in the lists but one sees that all the time the female faculty is resorted to the bottom of the page. Why is it so? If the names are ordered in terms of seniority which seems to be the methodology in some departments (though with some violations of the rule for some exceptions), then a senior female faculty member should be assigned a senior virtual space. But in my view, arranging faculty member’s names in terms of seniority is utterly wrong as it always provides the room to seniors to always show off their seniority and expect from their juniors to behave in a subdued manner. The best practice in this regard is to order names alphabetically with the last name as the standard. Those in need of example are requested to have a look at the Editorial Committee of Islamic Studies; a journal published by our own Dr Zafar Ishaq Ansari, Director, Islamic Research Institute, IIUI:

http://my.iiu.edu.pk/Institutes/IslamicResearchInstitute/IslamicStudies/EditorialCommittee/tabid/279/Default.aspx

Check Ayaz Afsar’s name before Dr Anis Ahmad and Dr Safir Akhtar and Muhammad Modassir Ali’s name way before Dr Muhammad Al-Ghazali and Dr Mahmood Ahmad Ghazi. It’s not that Dr Ansari likes Ayaz Afsar more than Dr Anis or Dr Safir or for that matter considers Modassir Ali to be more scholarly than Dr Ghazali or Dr Ghazi. This is just upholding a best practice where the names are ordered alphabetically considering the last name as standard.

Now we come to the issue of equitable representation of the faculties. The other day, I was pleased to see an icon of Time Table on the main page of the website. I clicked on the time table with the hope that the university is really making great strides towards becoming a paper free university by displaying time table on the web. I was disappointed to see that the website only hosted the time table of two faculties, FBAS and FMS. I was just wondering if the other faculties have not offered summer classes or they are running without a time table. If there are summer classes this year (and there are in fact in some faculties!) in other faculties and they have prepared some time tables, they should also be the part of the icon “Summer Time Table” which does not state “Summer Time Table for FBAS & FMS.” If our readers go back and compare the web pages, they will find many other instances of tilted policy.

And finally, if you bother to read the text of the news on IIUI website, you must have noted “the great exports” from all over the world that enlightened the audience at IIUI’s Islam and Modernity conference in early June. Isn’t that politically incorrect on the part of the scribe and the editor (if there is any!!!)?

Now I am reminded of a line from one Sh’ir which reads:

Kahan tak suno gay kahan tak sunaian

I hope this is enough for today and let’s hope for the best.