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A growing number of professionals in Chicago are pursuing advanced Islamic scholarship at Darul Qasim, an institution located in the suburban community of Hoffman Estates. The religious college has become an unexpected destination for doctors, lawyers, and other accomplished career professionals seeking to deepen their understanding of Islamic thought and classical scholarship.
For many of these individuals, the decision to enroll stems from a sense that their professional education has left fundamental questions unanswered. Dr. Tariq Lateef, a hospice and palliative care physician, exemplifies this trajectory. After years of medical practice, he found himself questioning the philosophical foundations underlying modern medical ethics and seeking answers rooted in Islamic teaching. A lecture on Islamic bioethics by Dr. Aasim Padela proved transformative, presenting an integrated approach that bridged clinical medicine with Islamic thought.
Lateef made the deliberate choice to relocate his family to Chicago specifically to pursue dual paths of study. While maintaining his career as a physician, he enrolled in Darul Qasim’s weekend program alongside a master’s degree in bioethics at Northwestern University. He describes a pivotal realization that his two educations could ultimately complement rather than contradict one another, provided he first established an Islamically grounded framework for understanding knowledge.
Darul Qasim traces its intellectual lineage to Darul Uloom Deoband, a 19th-century seminary founded in India during the colonial era. The institution continues its historical mission of preserving Islamic scholarship for contemporary believers seeking to reconcile their professional expertise with their religious tradition.
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Originally reported by Aljazeera →
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