Mercy mission to set up its own university by 2018

Its founder and chairman Dr Tawfique Chowdhury said the organisation was carrying out discussion with the Higher Education Ministry to set up a RM100 million university that could accommodate up to 20,000 students on an eight-hectare (20-acre) area.

"We have started discussing with the Higher Education Minstry and have made some significant progress. We are working on the license," he told Bernama recently, but did not disclose the location.

He said in the efforts to produce well-rounded Muslim graduates, the university would offer a double degree, for example Islamic study with medicine, or with law or architecture.

"I will not allow any student in the university to graduate with one degree, it must be a double-degree programme," he added.

"I think it is the best way to give them strong Islamic and academic knowledge simultaneously, and at the same time producing good Muslims," he said and added that the university hoped to produce professional ulama'.

He said among the university's students would be those from the organisation's schools and educational institutes such as AlKauthar and the Seven Skies International School (SSI), based here.

Dr Tawfique said AlKauthar, which was established in 2007 in Australia, provided intensive Islamic seminars on 70 different topics on Islam to anyone from the age of 18 to 55.

"The seminar has become so popular and now we have over 124,000 students from 36 countries.

"Therefore this institute is going to be the feeder for the university, and also all the schools that have been set up," he said.

Dr Tawfique said the university would be built from crowd funding which would start this year, and anyone who would like to donate could do so by visiting its website at mercymission.my.

The syllabus of the university would follow the Malaysian Qualification standard and at the same time combine between Islamic and secular studies, he added.

"We will follow the Fiqh opinion and not change anything. In Africa and Turkey, we will teach Hanafi while for Malaysia, it will be Shafie. Our aim is to create religious consciousness," he said.