Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad conceived of the idea for an international institution of Islamic education in 1982 during a meeting between OIC leaders about the Islamization of knowledge. The idea was shared with the then Minister of Education, Dr. Sulaiman Daud; the then Director-General of Education, Murad Mohamed Nor; and two others. Dr. Mohamed Kamal Hassan, then of the National University of Malaysia along with a senior academic official who attended the meeting, produced the first working paper on the concept of the university.