The Head of the Board of Trustees of the University of Human Development (UHD) and Secretary-General of the International Union of Muslim Scholars Professor Dr Ali Qaradaghi, accompanied by the UHD President Professor Dr Mariwan Ahmed Rasheed, met with students of Year One on Wednesday, 18th May 2023. 

The meeting was for students to openly express their views on their university experience and discuss their problems.

Prof. Qaradaghi presented a short speech about the mission of UHD students which is that they need to work hard and be pioneers and innovators in their field and at the same time they need to pay great attention to good ethics and morality and service of the Kurdish society and mankind in general.

He mentioned that Islam is the highest philosophy of life; it strikes a beautiful balance between worldly and heavenly issues and asks its believers to live and work for both worlds concurrently, to make material progress while caring for the environment, and also pay attention to the inner development and spirituality and doing good deeds.

He stated that the very first word of the Quran ‘اقْرَأْ’ had not been well interpreted by the majority of Muslim scholars – many scholars have said that the word meant reading Quran. He criticised this view and said that this was not possible since there was no Quran at that time; no Quran, except a few words, was communicated to the Prophet Muhammad so how could the Prophet or believers read something which did not exist?

His interpretation of the word was that God orders the believers to read all kinds of books and obtain all sorts of knowledge, understand human thoughts in general, understand different cultures and civilisations…etc in the name of God and for the service of mankind.

Prof. Qaradaghi concluded but opened the time for students’ questions by saying that everyone needs advice and everyone can give advice regardless of age.

Many questions were raised and many comments were made following his speech.