First rector of the International Islamic Academy of Uzbekistan dismissed in four months

The rector of the International Islamic Academy of Uzbekistan is changed.

According to sources in Kun.uz, Rustam Kasimov, the president's adviser on cooperation with public and religious organizations, held a meeting on August 28, 2018. At this meeting, Nematulla Ibragimov, erstwhile rector of the Academy, was dismissed from his post, and Shukhrat Akmalovich Yovkochev was introduced as a new rector.

Nematulla Ibragimov, who led the Tashkent State Institute of Oriental Studies for many years, was appointed as the first rector of the academy in April of the current year, when it was first established. The reason why he was sacked in four months is unknown.

New head of the International Islamic Academy Shukhrat Yovkochev was born in 1964 in Tashkent. He graduated from the Tashkent State University (now NUU) in 1988, with the major in Oriental Studies. In 1993 he got a diploma from the Diplomatic Academy under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Egypt. By specialty he is an orientalist and philologist. Doctor of political sciences, professor.

From 1986 to 1990, he worked as an Interpreter from the Arabic language in Libya. After a while, when he made his way home, he started his career at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Uzbekistan. Starting from 1999 to 2004 Shukhrat Yovkochev beavered away as a teacher at the Tashkent State Institute of Oriental Studies. Between the years of 2004-2005 he served as the director of the Institute of Strategic and Interregional Studies at the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan. In the course of his successful career, he labored as the President's State Adviser on Interethnic Relations and Religious Affairs in 2005-2006, and as the rector of the Tashkent Islamic University under the Cabinet of Ministers in 2006-2007.

From 2007, he has been supervising the Department of World Politics at the Tashkent State Institute of Oriental Studies.