The Al-Maktoum Institute family: staff and members of the Institute Council, gathered today (students yesterday) to say farewell to Professor Abd al-Fattah El-Awaisi, Founding Principal and Vice-Chancellor of Al-Maktoum Institute, who will leave the Institute on 20 July 2007 (his formal leaving date is 31 August 2007).
The Institute family gave Professor Abd al-Fattah El-Awaisi a big thank-you for his vision, passion, leadership, energy and determination for establishing a unique Scottish higher education institution from scratch with a timely New Agenda and the New Field of Inquiry in the last seven years.
In these seven years (2000 – 2007), he has successfully established a leading distinctive national and international centre of academic excellence for developing teaching and research in the Study of Islam and Muslims of the highest standard.
The Institute is now playing a unique and key role in setting the new agenda in cultural engagement and shaping and developing teaching and research in the Study of Islam and Muslims at university level in the UK and internationally. Indeed, it is now a unique seat of learning with a timely new agenda and research-led institution of higher education, which offers postgraduate programmes of study (validated by the Institute’s strategic Scottish partner, the University of Aberdeen).
He has also successfully established an excellent working relationship with the University of Aberdeen. Professor Abd al-Fattah El-Awaisi is leaving his current post at the Institute when the Institute is well-established with an innovative and creative new agenda and mission and at a time when it is highly respected at both national and international levels.
This has been clearly recognised in a number of ways, by the Institute’s strategic Scottish partner, the University of Aberdeen, other universities and governmental bodies.
One such mark of respect and recognition is the steady significant increase of students walking the halls of the Al-Maktoum Institute. For example, with all the major works at the Institute in the past five years and in particular the change of the awarding university in May 2004; and with the decline of student numbers in the field of Arabic, Middle Eastern, and Islamic Studies in the UK, Professor El-Awaisi felt very proud with the steady increase of student intake since the Institute’s inception in 2001.
Starting with one student in October 2001 and 12 students during the whole academic year 2001/2002, it was truly inspiring to see the steady significant increase of students walking the halls of the Al-Maktoum Institute.
He also takes great pride in the continual growing success of our Masters and PhD students. With the 14 graduates in 2006 (7 with PhDs), and 2 more PhDs in February 2007, this brings the total of PhD and Masters Graduates to 56. Indeed, as the Founding Principal and Vice-Chancellor, he feels very proud that we have now a community of 56 graduates working across the globe at several levels.
Professor Abd al-Fattah thanked everyone who has contributed to our successes and achievements in the last five years. He also added that “it was an honour to have been involved with and lead the establishment and development of this unique higher education institution”.
He paid special thanks to HH Shaikh Hamdan Bin Rashid Al-Maktoum who gave our contemporary world a practical model for the missing relationship between “Knowledge” and “Power” through his continuous support to establish and develop both: the new field of inquiry of Islamicjerusalem Studies and Al-Maktoum Institute in Scotland; and who based his vision on Umar’s Assurance of Safety and the understanding of Islamicjerusalem as a key model for multiculturalism.
He also thanked all members of Al-Maktoum Institute family for their support to the Institute from day one and throughout his six years in Dundee.
