“Ibn Masood said If he knew he would die in a few days… he would get married”

Sheikh Bilal Ismail was born in Durban, South Africa. He is one of three siblings and comes from a religious traditional hanafi family.

He memorized the Qurʾan 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 Sharīʿah. He is currently completing his masters degree.

After graduating from Madinah, he returned to South Africa where he had been teaching Fiqh and Tafsīr weekly classes in Durban since the summer of 2007 and says he is still a student of knowledge – and will always be!

Sheikh Bilal joins our academic team as an instructor and as the academic head of the Students Guild and has quickly become a favourite of AK students around the world.