20 Feb, 2016, Jakarta – Right from the beginning, INCEIF has been attracting students from Indonesia whose 240 million population is 80 per cent Muslims. They come from various background including academia and practitioners; Shariah background and conventional finance. They also consistently clinched at least one of the three Best Student awards during the annual convocations.
INCEIF Deputy President Academic Prof Datuk Syed Othman Alhabshi took time from his official visit to Jakarta today to meet up with 11 Indonesian alumni at a café in town to catch up on their latest news. “We always look forward to hear from our alumni, and they, from their university. We make it a practice to catch up with them in this informal setting to hear what they have been up to. We have always encouraged our worldwide family of alumni to stay in contact with us. We value their on-the-ground knowledge in their respective domiciles.”
To date, Indonesian students are among the top five in terms of number with nearly 100 registered alumni in the Indonesian Chapter. Among those who joined the session with Prof Syed Othman was Master In Islamic Finance graduate Putri Swastika who now sits on the Dewan Pengawas Syariah of BMT Adzkiya. She was on the road for more than seven hours from Lampong to get to Jakarta solely for the session.
“We appreciate this once a year meeting with INCEIF, specifically with Datuk because even though we have left INCEIF, we are still bound by that INCEIF experience. We are proud to represent INCEIF here in Indonesia by way of our respective small contribution towards the promotion of Islamic Finance. I have been writing on Islamic finance topics and contributing the articles to various media channels including Indonesia’s leading English business daily Jakarta Post . And every time my articles are published either in print or on the virtual media, I would ensure that it says I am a student of INCEIF. I believe that is one of the ways to introduce INCEIF to the huge Indonesian audience.” Putri is currently writing her PhD in Islamic Finance thesis.
View one of Putri’s articles here.
Others who joined the session included alumni who are currently lecturing Islamic finance at a number of local universities, and working for the many Islamic banks in Indonesia.
INCEIF was in Jakarta to participate in the two-day World Education Expo. Datuk Prof Syed Othman, meanwhile, held discussions with representatives from the Malaysia Education Promotion Centre in Jakarta and Universitas Muhammadiyah Prof. Dr. Hamka.
