Dubai: Participants from 88 countries belonging to different parts of the globe have started flocking to Dubai for the 17th Dubai International Holy Quran Awards (DIHQA) that begins on July 16.
Spread over two weeks, the competition is the most popular leg of a wider programme that includes a series of lectures and Quran recitals culminating with the awards ceremony, when the winners are announced and the prestigious Islamic Personality of the Year Award is conferred.
The series of lectures, which began from July 10, has been divided into three parts, including a set of lectures in Arabic for general public to be held at Dubai Chamber of Commerce, a series exclusively for women being held at Al Nahda Centre for Women and another set of lectures for expatriates in Bengali, Tamil and Malayalam to be held at Jamiatul Islah in Al Qusais.
The lectures, to be presented by prominent scholars from around the world like Nasir Bin Musfir Al Zahrani, Ibrahim Al Darwish, Omar Abdul Kafi, Mohammad Shafiul Alam Bhuiyan (Bengali), Mubarak Mashoothu Lebbe (Tamil), Abdul Lateef Abu Baker (Malayalam) and many others.
The lectures for expats will begin on July 18 and end on July 27. All lectures to begin at 10.30pm.
DIHQA was established by His Highness Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai in the year 1997, with only two branches of Quran Contest and Islamic Personality of the Year and it has now developed into a major institution.
“When it was launched by His Highness Shaikh Mohammad 17 years ago, we had only two branches and now it has developed into a year round programme with seven more branches like inmates Quran memorisation programme, UAE national memorisation programme, Quran Science programme etc,” said Ibrahim Bu Melha, Chairman of DIHQA’s organising committee.
Last year, the top award in the Quran contest was bagged by Saleh Al Obaid from Kuwait. The winner takes away the mega prize of Dh250,000, while the second runners-up gets 200,000 and the third prize winner walks away with Dh150,000.
Apart from the winners, every participant is rewarded with prizes ranging from Dh65,000 to Dh20,000.
The prestigious Islamic Personality of the Year is awarded every year to a person or an institution having a history of service to Quran and Islam. Last year prominent Islamic preacher from the US Yusuf Estes won the award.
Over the years, the award has been conferred to luminaries of the Islamic world like Shaikh Yusuf Al Qardhawi, Murad Hoffman, Shaikh Abdul Rahman Al Sudais and many others institutions like Egypt’s Al Azhar University and King Fahad Quran Printing Complex.
The Islamic personality for this year has not been announced yet.
