الأخبار

KUALA LUMPUR, 3 February - - International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM) in collaboration with Qatar Debate organized the Grand Finale and Prize Giving Ceremony for Asian Arabic Debate Championship 2020. This is the first time for Qatar Debate to collaborate with IIUM with the involvement of Ministry of Education Malaysia and Ministry of Youth and Sports as strategic partners. The event held at J.W. Marriot Hotel, Kuala Lumpur, yesterday.

His Royal Highness the Regent of Pahang, Crown Prince of Pahang, Tengku Hassanal Ibrahim Alam Shah ibni Al-Sultan Abdullah Ri’ayatuddin Al-Mustafa Billah Shah attends the ceremony and present the awards to recipients.

The 5-day competition runs from 30 January 2020 to 3 February 2020 with participation from 30 universities across the Asian continent, comprising 18 countries including Australia, Azerbaijan, China, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Jordan, Korea, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Malaysia, Oman, Pakistan, Palestine, Qatar, Vietnam and Yemen.

The 28 teams competed each other for eight spots in quarter final through six preliminary rounds. Four teams then being selected to proceed to semi-final and the final two teams battled in final round to be crowned as the champion of Asian Arabic Debate Championship 2020.

Hankuk University of Foreign Studies won the best team award in the Arabic as a Foreign Language category while Princess Sumaya University for Technology crowned as the best team for open category.

IIUM team ranked second in the open category after gruelling preliminary rounds and reached the semi-final round of the tournament, making them the only non-native speaker team to achieve that.

Abdul Rahman Ellias from Kulliyyah of Islamic Revealed Knowledge and Human Sciences won the 5^th overall best speaker while Ahmad Naim bin Norazam from the same Kulliyyah received the 8^th overall best speaker.

In line with the organizers’ slogan of “Enriching Dialogue, Empowering Minds”, the competition is held to foster a culture of critical and analytical discussion and debate on current issues to shape the global citizens of today as well as creating the intellectual leaders of tomorrow.