New Delhi, June 18, 2012: Dr Ahmad Mohamed Ali, President, Jeddah-based Islamic Development Bank (IDB) Group, along with a 6-person delegation, visited the headquarters of the Institute of Objective Studies (IOS) in New Delhi on June 18, 2012. Expressing his views at a reception given in his honour by the IOS, he stressed the need to give priority to education in order to get the Muslim community in India developed and empowered.

Appreciating the IOS efforts towards the well being of the Indian Muslim community, he said that he was very much impressed by the enormous research work carried out by the institute despite various challenges. He sought the Institute’s suggestions to make IDB’s educational development programmes more effective and fruitful.

IOS Chairman Dr Mohammad Manzoor Alam, while welcoming the IDB President as well as accompanying members of the delegation, recalled his long association with the IDB President which started in early 80s when he was working as Economic Advisor to the Ministry of Finance, Government of Saudi Arabia. He recalled how he, on the invitation of the IDB President, accompanied a 3-person delegation under his leadership which visited India in 1984 for a week to assess the conditions of the Indian Muslims. Subsequently, the IDB President took some important decisions to improve the educational condition of Indian Muslims by providing scholarships and helping educational institutions in India, which ultimately contributed to great extent in the advancement of the Indian society in general and Muslims in particular. Its multiplier effect could be seen in the present-day India where hundreds of thousands of students have benefitted from those schemes, he asserted.

Introducing the IOS, he said that it had completed in 2011 a quarter century of research and advocacy and celebrated its Silver Jubilee marked by 14 international seminars and conferences at different locations across India, often in collaboration with universities and other institutions of higher learning. “Through the silver jubilee programmes, we have successfully transmitted the message to the government machinery and policy planners that Muslims in India are willing to participate in the developmental process in the educational and economic fields and that they possess the required skills and must be given a fair chance to contribute in the nation-building processes’’, he said. Muslim community, as a whole, was given the message that success lies in education only, without which the community can’t think of a better future. Non-Muslims in India were also given the message that Islam was basically a religion of peace and harmony, where all humans were treated equally and they all deserved to contribute together for making a humane society based on peace, justice and equality.