Sohaib Abbasi

Sohaib Abbasi, a former executive of computer giant, Oracle Corporation, was born in Lahore, Pakistan and moved to various cities with his father, an air force official, before reaching the United States in 1974. Abbasi earned a Bachelors and later a Masters degree in computer science from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He joined Oracle in 1982 when it had only 30 employees and the revenue was about four million dollars a year. When he retired from the company in March 2003, Oracle had more than 42,000 employees and annual revenues of US $9.5 billion.

He is currently Chairman and CEO of Informatica.

Charity

Since the September 11 attacks an Islamic studies program and a professorship have been initiated at the prestigious Stanford University, California, with an endowment of US $9 million. A significant aspect of the program is the generous donation of 2.5 million dollars by a Pakistani couple, Sara and Sohaib Abbasi.

The support provided by the couple for the program -- Sohaib and Sara Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies -- includes graduate fellowships, research, new library, strengthened language courses at advanced levels and regular public programs such as lecture series by eminent scholars. At the same time Stanford alumni Lysbeth Warren made a gift of two million dollars for a new professorship on Islam. Both the gifts were matched by the Stanford University with a grant from William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, taking the total amount of endowment for the program and professorship to nine million dollars.

*Abbasi(Arabic:عباسی) is a Muslim family name denoting descent from Abbas ibn Abd-al-Muttalib paternal uncle of Prophet Muhammad. The Abbasid caliphate was established by the Abbasi clan and ruled Middle East during 750–1258 CE. The members of Abbasi family can be found in: Iran, Turkey, Jordan, Palestine, Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh and India.

Attempts to help Pakistanis

The Abbasis have also tried to support educational institutions in Pakistan. “I went to Pakistan last summer (2003),” said Abbasi, “and met with representatives of all the major academic institutions that have a computer science department. I wanted to find out general statistics like how many students graduate from these institutions, how many graduates get job or are accepted in higher education, how many scholarship they offer, about curriculum, about the cost etc and about the cost associated with the faculty and faculty information. It took me about five months to get this information and it’s still not complete and reliable.”Azmat Abbas, "Introducing Islam to the West", Pakistan Link]

Moreover, the Pakistani institutions or government are not ready to contribute to the cause. At Illinois and Stanford, the money is endowed and will be there forever, and they can hold the universities’ accountable for managing it and that endowment would generate the money to run the fellowship and the program. “Most of the Pakistani institutions do not have the transparency that is required to give them the funds and have them manage it and provide proper reporting,” the couple said.

Mrs. Sara Abbasi is on the executive board of Developments in Literacy,www.dil.org, an international non-profit organization that has built 200 schools in Pakistan since 1997.

“I also met with Federal Minister Dr Attaur Rehman and the governor of Sindh and in both meetings I asked if we were to make a contribution, will that be matched with the same amount? The response was that I should make a formal written request and would receive formal response. In Stanford, we did get a verbal commitment. I understand that there is no history of people making endowments. But we would like very much to help, especially in the field of developing technology fields,” said Abbasi.

Notes