ABU DHABI // Dh500,000 in awards will be given to female pupils who excel in their recitation of the Quran.
The Sheikha Hessa bint Mohammed Al Nahyan Award for Holy Quran is open only to girls to give them a chance to shine.
“From my experience girls are more advanced in memorising the Quran than boys, and they memorise more,” said Mona Al Ghassani, of the Authority of Islamic Affairs and Endowments, or Awqaf.
The award’s director, Hoda Habch, said: “It is in our interest that girls are perfect in reciting the Quran, even in family and women’s occasions. Why bring a male reciter to an all-women’s event?”
The award began as a small contest for Al Shuhub School’s pupils, after the school’s Islamic studies coordinator Ayesha Alwa suggested it to Sheikha Shaikha bint Saif Al Nahyan.
“When I suggested the idea, she was very excited and it kept growing to include all UAE schools,” Ms Alwa said.
The next step is to make the award international.
“After the current edition, we will coordinate with the Awqaf to take it to an international level,” said Hani Zubaidi, a member of the award’s board.
The board have refrained from announcing the value of the prizes until now to avoid mixed intentions from contestants.
The students are ideally taking part to seek rewards from Allah and not money, said Mrs Habch.
“We saw that in other cities in the world when the value of the prizes were revealed, the contestants started participating for the money.”
None of the contestants or their parents asked about the value of prizes so far, she said.
Future awards will also include Quran interpretation and analysis. “There is no point of memorising the entire Quran if one does not understand its meaning,” said Mrs Habch, who has run contests for 31 years.
She ran a Quran interpretation contest in Syria a few years ago and said a similar one is expected to be added to the award in the coming years.
A month’s notice was given to all schools and Quran centres for students to send in their applications between February 22 and March 26. More than 400 applications have been accepted, said Mr Zubaidi.
This week the first phase began, in which all contestants are examined by committees in their own emirates. The finalists are expected to compete at Al Shuhub school by the end of next week. The winners are notified a week later and are invited with their families to the awards ceremony next month.
At Al Shuhub school’s examination centre, Khadija Abdulmajeed awaited her test. Khadija, 14, from Egypt, finished memorising the entire Quran five years ago.
She has taken part in 10 contests and won nine of them. This is her first in the UAE, as her family has only recently moved here.
Najat Mohammed, 17, from Tanzania, has not won any of the contests she has been entered over the past three years, but was happy to take part. “I wanted to experience having someone test my abilities,” Najat said.
hdajani@thenational.ae
Kanguva
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
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