Online Quran & Islamic Classes in Chicago

Students in Chicago study Quran, the Dars e Nizami curriculum and the Arabic sciences one-to-one online with Shaykh Hafiz Muddassir, a graduate of Tanzeem ul Madaris Ahl-e-Sunnat (Pakistan) with more than ten years teaching these books. Classes are taught in English, Urdu, Hindi or Arabic.

Chicago’s Muslim community clusters along Devon Avenue’s South Asian corridor and across the southwest suburbs, with some of the country’s oldest Islamic institutions. Families routinely drive long distances for weekend classes that a one-to-one online schedule replaces. Community languages here include Urdu, Arabic and English, and teaching in English removes the barrier for students raised locally who do not read Urdu. Chicago evenings reach Pakistan just after Fajr. Fees are quoted per student rather than published, and a trial class establishes the right starting level before anything is committed to.

Islamic education in Chicago

That shapes what families here actually need. Where a community has deep mosque provision, the gap is rarely access to a building; it is structured one-to-one teaching at a level and in a language the student can follow.

Community languages in Chicago include Urdu, Arabic and English, which matters because most classical teaching worldwide assumes Urdu or Arabic as the medium.

What times do classes run in Chicago?

Chicago evenings reach Pakistan just after Fajr.

Practically, that means after-school sessions for children and evening slots for working adults. US evenings, from EST to PST, fall in Pakistan’s early morning, a window the teacher keeps open for American students.

Daylight saving is handled by moving the slot rather than leaving the family to recalculate it twice a year.

The language problem nobody solves

Parents in the West describe the same situation repeatedly. The child attends a local madrasa, recites well, and understands very little of what is explained, because the explanation arrives in a language they use for family conversation and not for abstract reasoning.

This is not a motivation problem. Asking a British-born fifteen-year-old to learn Arabic morphology through Urdu is asking them to learn two things at once, with the harder one invisible.

English-medium classical study exists precisely for that student.

What can students in Chicago study?

The full range: Quran classes from Noorani Qaida through Nazra, Tajweed, Hifz and Tarjama with Tafseer; the Dars e Nizami curriculum year by year; and the Arabic sciences including Sarf-o-Nahv.

Children commonly start with Qaida or Nazra and add Islamic studies alongside. Adults more often take Tafseer, grammar, or a single classical text.

Sisters studying from home take the same curriculum through the six-year course.

Class formats

Classes run in two formats. One-to-one sessions are built around a single student’s level and goals. Small group classes bring together students at a similar stage, commonly siblings, cousins or friends who want to study together.

Group sizes are kept small deliberately. The value of live teaching is the teacher hearing each student read and correcting them, and that disappears once a class is large enough for someone to stay silent through it.

Nothing is pre-recorded in either format. Recorded lectures remove the correction loop, which is the part that actually teaches.

Teaching children

Children are taught in shorter sessions, with more repetition and a slower introduction of new material than adults need. For a child raised outside a Muslim-majority country, English-medium teaching also removes the quiet embarrassment of not following a class in a language the rest of the family speaks.

Parents are told honestly how the child is progressing, including when the answer is that progress has stalled and why.

This page covers the practical side for parents.

About the teacher

The classical qualification here is a Dars e Nizami graduation from Tanzeem ul Madaris Ahl-e-Sunnat (Pakistan), the Ahl-e-Sunnat board that works with more than eighteen thousand affiliated madaris across Pakistan. Alongside it sit an MA in English, an MA in English Linguistics and an MPhil in English.

Teaching experience runs to more than ten years across these books, with students at every level from a child’s first Qaida lesson to advanced classical texts.

Classes are taught in English, Urdu, Hindi and Arabic, one-to-one or in small groups.

What do classes cost?

Fees are quoted for each student rather than published as a price list, because the honest figure depends on the course, how many classes a week and the level involved. A child taking two Qaida sessions weekly and an adult reading advanced Arabic texts are not the same commitment.

For general context rather than as a quotation: Across online Islamic academies generally, tuition is priced either per class hour or as a monthly block of two to five classes a week, and one-to-one teaching costs more than group classes because the hour belongs to one student. Local currency, timezone and class length all shift the picture, which is why a real number needs the real details.

Message the student’s age, level and how often you would like to study, and you will get a straight answer for that situation. This page covers the question in more detail.

Getting started

Begin with a message rather than a booking form. Age, current level, preferred language of instruction and rough availability are enough for a useful reply.

Level assessment matters more than most families expect. Students frequently arrive believing they are ready for a text they cannot yet parse, and starting them there wastes months. An honest starting point is worth more than a flattering one.

A trial class confirms the assessment in practice before anything is agreed.

Measuring progress

The test is always performance rather than exposure. A student who has sat through a book and cannot read a line of it unaided has not covered it, whatever the register says.

Short checks happen every session, because revision is the first thing in every class. Larger checks happen when a text is finished, by asking the student to explain rather than recite.

This page explains what parents are told and when.

Practical requirements

Nothing unusual. A laptop, tablet or phone with a working microphone, and a corner of the house without a television in it.

For younger children a parent nearby for the first few sessions helps, mostly to settle the routine rather than to supervise the content.

Where connections are unreliable, classes can run audio-only without much loss for recitation work, though text reading benefits from a shared screen.

Ramadan and holidays

Schedules are adjusted for Ramadan, Eid and school holidays. Students often want more Quran time during Ramadan and less of everything else, and the plan flexes for that.

Long summer holidays are a good moment to intensify, particularly for memorisation, where a temporary increase in frequency compounds.

Pausing is always an option, and nothing is charged for classes that do not happen.

Why the order of study matters

The Dars e Nizami sequence is deliberate. Grammar comes before text reading because unvowelled classical prose is unreadable without it. Logic comes before theology and legal theory because those books argue in its terminology on every page.

Students who skip ahead can usually recite rules and cannot apply them, and supervised reading exposes that within minutes. The remedy is going back, which costs more time than starting correctly would have.

This page sets out the sequence year by year.

Growing up Muslim outside a Muslim country

Second-generation students occupy an awkward position: fluent in the language of their country, partly fluent in their parents’ language, and rarely literate in either at the level classical study demands.

That is not a deficiency in the student. It is a mismatch between how the tradition is transmitted and where these families now live, and it is solvable by changing the medium rather than the content.

This page addresses this directly.

What this site does not claim

There are no student numbers, star ratings or testimonials published here, because none have been collected and verified yet. When real students give feedback it will appear with their first name, country and what they studied.

Qualifications are stated exactly as they are: the Dars e Nizami curriculum through Tanzeem ul Madaris Ahl-e-Sunnat (Pakistan), an MA in English, an MA in English Linguistics and an MPhil in English, and more than ten years teaching these books. Nothing beyond that is implied.

Questions of Islamic law are not decided on this site. Pages explain what a science is and how it is studied; contested rulings belong with a qualified scholar who can hear the specifics of a case.

How does the classical method actually work?

Madrasa teaching has a shape that has survived centuries because it works, and almost none of it depends on buildings. A student reads aloud, the teacher corrects at the exact word where the reasoning failed, and the student explains back what they understood.

That third step is the one modern courses drop. Recognition is not comprehension, and a student who nods through an explanation can rarely reproduce it an hour later. Being asked to explain the passage back exposes the gap immediately.

The method transfers to a video call intact, because the essential part was never the room. What it will not survive is being turned into recorded lectures, since the correction loop disappears with the teacher.

Frequently asked questions

Are classes live or recorded for students in Chicago?

Live, one-to-one, at a time that suits your local schedule. Nothing is pre-recorded.

Can my child study in English rather than Urdu?

Yes, and for children raised in Chicago that is usually the better choice. The classical material is delivered in English at full depth rather than in a simplified version.

What time of day do classes run?

Chicago evenings reach Pakistan just after Fajr. Children are typically taught after school and adults in the evening.

Do you teach adults as well as children?

Yes. Adult beginners and adults returning to study after years away are both common.

How do we start?

Message the student’s age, level and preferred language. You will get an assessment and, if it fits, a trial class before anything is agreed.

Last reviewed 29 July 2026 by Shaykh Hafiz Muddassir.