Anjuman-i-Himayat-i-Islam

Anjuman-i-Himayat-i-Islam ("The Association for the Service of Islam") was founded in Lahore on 24th Sep,1884 in a mosque known as Masjid Bakan inside Mochi Gate,Lahore by Khalifa Hameed-ud-Din. It was a result of the Aligarh Movement, founded by Sir Syed Ahmad Khan. Its purpose is the educational uplift of Muslims of the Indian subcontinent. One of its major efforts was the foundation of a number of schools for Muslim girls and orphanages in the Punjab, where girls were taught Urdu, the Qur'an, mathematics, needlework, and crafts. It started a publishing house for appropriate textbooks for Muslim girls' and boys' schools, and these textbooks were used all over the Punjab and beyond. In 1939, it founded the Islamia College for Women in Lahore, the only one of its kind in the region, whose curriculum was the standard Bachelor of Arts program, supplemented by Islamic education. It also founded Islamia College Lahore in 1892.^[1]

The Anjuman-i-Himayat-i-Islam was a body that represented a spontaneous desire on the part of middle-class Muslims of Lahore to cooperate with each other for common good. The Anjuman also played a vital role to provide a political platform for Indian Muslims.^[2]

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