An Interview with Tawfiq Hamid (President 2014-15)

1. Could you tell us a little bit about yourself?

I joined Oxford in 2012 and studied Computer Science at University College until 2015. When I first joined the university, there were quite a few Muslims that I would run into around campus, but the ISoc was still quite small at the time and didn’t encapsulate the entire Muslim community. I felt that running for Religious Education Chair would be an enjoyable way to help bring the community together. After being the Religious Education Chair from 2013-2014, I was nominated to run for President in Hilary of 2014.

Having graduated from Computer Science, I found I was interested in software engineering and went into Tech. I was based in Oxford for a few years and then moved to London to get involved in a few start-ups. ISoc continued being a part of my life after graduation while I was still based in Oxford and attending some of the talks. After moving to London, I kept in touch with many of the brothers that had also moved to London for work.

I have had the pleasure to come back to Oxford a few times for the Young Muslims leadership program, Alumni days, and to visit a few friends. It’s always nice coming back to such a lovely city with such good people.

2. What was your defining memory of ISoc?

That’s quite hard, there are a few. I remember we did one quiz night - I don’t know why it always stands out, it was quite an unassuming event. There were tables of 5, people came, we started late, I think even the food was late. It seemed like a pretty normal event, just a quiz, nothing extraordinary but it ended up being really nice. Everyone had a really good time, a lot of fun and friendly competition. There was a big turnout, it was a fun inclusive social where everyone had a good time. The quiz was multiple choice so none of the teams did too badly and everyone felt involved. That’s what we were aiming to provide and Alhumdulillah, all the pieces came together and that feeling really came through on the night. The committee did an excellent job and worked really hard to pull it together. 

Another more general memory is the lasting companionship of the brothers I met. Many of the brothers were at St. Johns, near to the prayer room. So, they started a routine of cooking breakfast together after fajr. They would go to Tesco after praying and buy food. One of the brothers had a large kitchen, by student standards, and we would cram in and cook this huge breakfast. It was a regular thing that we would have fajr breakfast together on Saturdays. The food was delicious, and we just had a lot of fun and interesting, relaxed conversation. Even after a few hours of conversation we’d finish in time to get to the library for 9 or 10AM and do a day’s work.

It’s nice that the companionship didn’t end there, we still stay in touch and reminisce about those good times. The brothers have all ended up in a wide range of positions and still provide companionship in different ways. This includes providing general life advice, religious advice, careers help etc. It was the regular events that come to mind as the most memorable, including jummuah, fajr-breakfasts and Friday Football at the University Club.

3. What inspired you to run for presidency in 2014?

One thing that I wanted to do was bring together the different cohorts. You would see some people for Dhuhr in the prayer room and a different group of people for Asr, but you would only find these groups of people come for big ISoc events and socials. I enjoyed some of the larger talks and events that the ISoc organised because they brought different groups of people together.

The other real reason is that ISoc was struggling to fill seats on the committee so I just kind of got dragged into the religious-education chair. Organising khutbahs was enjoyable; it was a nice opportunity to talk to local scholars and students, to have different people to talk to and bounce ideas with. 

Then near the end of my second year, I didn’t really want to run for presidency but when the committee was running through who they thought should be president next year, it had to be someone from the existing committee. There was a committee of about 12 and most the others were busy or couldn’t put in the time, then about 8 of them were graduating. Another brother and I were left, and he didn’t want to do the role, so the role kind of fell on my hands. 

I wanted to see the ISoc continuing to work on bridging the gaps in the community. Bringing people together in a social and religious environment. For example, all the brothers that play football, the people that came to prayer room and all the international students being brought together, instead of existing in separate cliques.

4. What was your favourite event?

It does a disservice to pick out a single event, given there were so many great events that people organised, but the quiz night really stands out as a fun moment in my memory.

5. What effect did Q-Club have on the ISoc?

It had started a couple of years before I joined but it had stopped running before my time. I remember one day out of the blue I got an email that Sheikh Thaqib who was in Oxford for his PhD saying that he was able to offer some tafsir sessions fortnightly. 

At the time I didn’t know who him and was wondering what the email was asking about. Luckily an older brother said that he had attended previously and was really keen to see it return. We emailed back, booked a room and before we knew it, Q-Club was back.

A big part of ISoc was always the religious education aspect which includes weekly speaker talks often followed by a Q&A session. These talks were good but there was a lack of a “continuous thread” within these talks. The difference with Q-Club was that it was an ongoing series (still ongoing I believe). Each session builds on the last which means the Sheikh can teach more of an in-depth curriculum. Usually, speaker talks can be quite similar to each other (not to deride speaker talks at all) whereas Q-club builds and develops due to its regular nature.

6. What notable speakers did ISoc manage to invite during your presidency?

I can’t seem to remember if I was president at the time, but Yusha Evans gave an inspiring talk about his journey to Islam, as did Yvonne Ridley. She gave an interesting lecture about her journey to Islam and balancing that with being someone who grew up in the West. There were many more including Kamal el Mekki, Yasir Qadhi etc.

7. What challenges were faced by ISoc at the time and how did you work to overcome these?

There were some arguments and controversies among the students as usual. Once there was an argument where a brother got offended at a social - unfortunately we couldn’t reconcile it. He was a visiting student and I met him in Fresher’s Week but sadly didn’t see him again. That was rare but unfortunately did happen from time to time with people rubbed the wrong way or offended by some other larger than life characters.

One of the other issues we had was that someone kept on stealing from the donation bucket. Someone must have tried putting a stick with a sticky tape to pull the money out as it was left outside the prayer room. That’s why we got the safe to securely put away donations.

In terms of University-wide issues, there were a few. Occasionally ISoc would be asked to comment on global issues such as the Charlie Hebdo fiasco. As we were considered an apolitical society, we wouldn’t really comment on global issues but occasionally I’d give my own 2 cents to the student newspaper.

8. What changes were introduced during your presidency?

All the big things were already in place: iftar for Ramadan, discover islam week etc. But we had events every day - not sure if we intended to do that initially, but it just ended up happening. There were 8 or so very active people on the committee, all organising events that led to making up a full calendar. It was amazing, ISoc was providing a space for learning, fun and companionship.

I think the changes that my committee introduced were more internal. It’s hard to say whether we started creating the term cards, but we thought it was useful for everyone to be able to plan their terms. We also introduced handover documents which helped the next committee to plan their terms. Usually, people would just see what they could remember from last year and try to do it again. I thought there should be a framework that we can use so that if a committee would like to plan something in the future, they would have some guidance to aid them.

The VP and I also made a few changes to the constitution including removing the clause that outlined a weighted election system where the current committee’s votes represented 50% of the votes. Now, everyone’s votes count equally.

9. Is there anything you would have done differently? If you had more time, what else would you have done?

Graduate students were not so involved and usually ended up making their own de-facto society. I wish that our committee put in a bit more work to integrate graduate students so that they felt included at events and we could have all learned and benefitted together.

Maybe more collaborations with other Universities. We tried to organise a visit with Cambridge but it ended up being super small. It was a nice trip for the 4 of us that came from Oxford. I remember it fondly, we visited the city and some of the Cambridge ISoc guys met us to show us around. They took us from college to college and showed us the sights of the city. At each college we stopped off at, we’d meet another one of the brothers and they’d come with us for the rest of the tour, it went from just 4 of us getting off the coach to about 50 of us getting dinner that evening! It was a really lovely day and i still keep in touch with most of those guys until now.

10. Can you summarise why ISoc is important to you?

The community, the companionship. The people you meet and the things you learn; it’s such a formative time, and one that can really help shape a positive, informed, and expansive worldview.