Sheikh Bilal Ismail.

Instructor, AlKauthar Institute

An interaction with Sheikh Bilal Ismail leaves us, the students, feeling the need to reconnect with the glorious history of scholarship and humility. He is a student of knowledge who emphasizes the importance of having proper character before seeking knowledge. His Students Guild lectures are the knowledge seekers dream due to the thorough research that accompanies them and his elaboration of stories of fawaidhs from our history, is what keeps even the most recalcitrant student engaged. He has an uncanny ability to crack a joke with the most serious of faces. He is a person who does state with the utmost serenity that every Muslim should visit his beloved South Africa as it is the most important place in the world after Makkah & Madinah.

Sheikh Bilal Ismail was born in Durban, South Africa. He grew up in sugarcane growing town of Tongaat in the greater Durban area. He is one of three siblings and comes from a religious family. He memorized the Quran while studying at school and went on to complete high school in 1998. Sheikh Bilal then went on to do a diploma in Computer Science in 1999 as well as qualifying as a microsoft certified systems engineer. He was accepted into the Islamic University of Madinah in 2001 where he completed his Diploma in Arabic followed by a BA in Islamic Law from the faculty of Shariah.

Sheikh Tawfique Chowdhury says about him: “He was always one of the most studious people I had met and he never wasted time whilst in Madinah.” After graduating, he returned to South Africa where he had been teaching Fiqh and Tafseer weekly classes in Durban since the summer of 2007. Sheikh Bilal is married and says he is “still a student of knowledge – and will always be!”

Sheikh Bilal is an AlKauthar instructor and is also the academic head of the students guild.