IIU students continue to hold protests

IIU students continue to hold protests

University president denies all accusations

Monday, August 11, 2008 Myra Imran Islamabad

Courtesy: The News, http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=129419

Female students of Usooluddin (Islamic Studies) Department at the International Islamic University (IIU) continue to hold regular protests on the campus over frequent changes being made in the faculty and course schemes.

Alleging that such moves were part of a strategy to introduce a specific religious mindset within the department, the students told ‘The News’ that contract of about seven senior teachers had either been terminated or they were transferred to other departments in the past 12 months.

"Most of these teachers were funded by foreign institutions and were masters in their respective fields,” said one of the students.

Naming some of the teachers, the protesting students said that the most recent case involved Professor Suhail Hassan who was transferred despite having served the department for 20 years. He was said to be quite popular among students.

Similarly, contracts of Professor Nizamuddin Nafeh and Professor Tahir Mahmood, were not renewed. Also on that list were professors Manshavi, Abdul Tawwab, Dr. Fazal Elahi and Dr. Aziz ur Rehman.

The students claimed that Professor Hassan was notified of his transfer while out of town and that too in the middle of a semester. “The faculty of our department was not informed of the change for several weeks,” they said.

They thought that the move was aimed at reducing the number of principled teachers from the Academic Council, a 60-member body that rules on academic matters. The protesting girls pointed out that since the university was facing financial problems, therefore the management would never be able to hire teachers of the same calibre from its own resources. Young teachers with no experience or foreign ones were appointed in place of known religious scholars, they said.

They alleged that classes comprising boys and girls were also taking place in the Urdu Department despite the IIU being a declared non co-education institution.

The students were also angered by the increase in annual fee that has almost been doubled compared to last year’s. They believed that the administration also planned to abolish specialisation at the bachelor’s level.

The series of changes began in 2006 when the name of Usooluddin Department (USD) was changed to the Department of Islamic Studies. “The USD came into being in 1981 then why it took the management 25 years to go for name change,” asked the students.

They said that their course schemes were also changed quite frequently as compared to other departments and they were all deeply concerned over this state of affairs.

IIU President Anwar Hussain Siddiqui denied that all this was happening on the campus. “We changed the name of the department because it was in Arabic and therefore difficult for the common people to understand,” he said adding that both names were being used in documentations.

Sidiqui said that the teachers left when their contracts expired or their original departments called them back. He made it clear that course schemes were changed on the directives of the Higher Education Commission (HEC) and applied to all departments.

“According to these directives, 60 percent of the course matter would be directly related to the subject whereas 40 percent of it would be about general knowledge, things other than the actual subject,” he said, stressing that the aim was to enhance the knowledge base of students.

He said that the administration wanted the USD students to also know about people like Ghalib, Mir and Iqbal but a small fraction of the department wanted to run the faculty on the pattern of a madrassa. “More and more girls are joining the department from a variety of backgrounds but this narrow-minded group wants to impose its version of Islam on the department.”

Siddiqui said that almost 18,000 students were studying in the university at this point of time in different faculties and they came from a variety of backgrounds. “The course schemes are decided by the Academic Council and it is not the decision of one person,” he said.

Terming specialisation at bachelor’s level a non-issue, he said that it starts at the master’s or PhD levels in all universities.