RIYADH: President Ayub Khan has called for closer relations and Muslim ties with Saudi Arabia, it was announced here.

Mr. Altaf Husain, Pakistani Minister for Industry, said here that he had delivered a message to this effect to King Feisal of Saudi Arabia when he saw him this week.

Mr. Husain heads a Pakistani delegation visiting Saudi Arabia in the course of a tour of some Arab countries. He said that the delegation was seeking to develop economic co-operation with Saudi Arabia, particularly in the field of petroleum industry.

The Pakistani Minister said talks on the subject had opened during the week-end and he believed Pakistan could benefit from their outcome.

The Pakistani Minister has visited the Saudi University and modern educational and industrial institutions in Riyadh.

[Meanwhile, as reported by agencies from Lahore,] Abdul Kadir Karahan, member of the Faculty of Letters, Istanbul University, said that concepts of the two great Muslim Thinkers and poets, Jalaluddin Rumi and Allama Iqbal, about Islamic brotherhood were the same.

Giving a lecture on Maulana Jalaluddin Rumi and Iqbal before a select gathering comprising educationists and students at the Divisional Auditorium, the Turkish scholar said that Islamic brotherhood and unity of Muslims was manifest in the thinking of both the poets.

They thought that Muslims were bound to each other by the unbreakable and eternal ties of Islam. Muslims wherever they lived had a common ideology, common faith and one destiny.

He said the light which Maulana Rumi kindled 750 years ago was kept burning by Allama Iqbal. His was the same mission, the same object of the unity of Muslims.

Allama Iqbal, he said, inspired Muslims to know their destiny, their worth and the good of their belonging to one millat.

Dr. Karahan said Iqbal’s entire philosophy was based on Islam and from it all the Muslims of the world drew inspiration.

Published in Dawn October 26th, 2016