Between Hills and Minarets:The Making of Professor Inam Ul Haq

The story of Professor Inam Ul Haq begins not in lecture halls or interfaith councils, but in the mountain air of Abbottabad—a town shaped as much by quiet discipline as by beauty. Nestled in the lower Himalayas, Abbottabad has long occupied a distinctive place in Pakistan’s intellectual geography. It is neither a political capital nor a commercial hub, but a town where education, reflection, and restraint have historically mattered. Military academies, missionary schools, and traditional madrasas coexist there, producing a culture where order and inquiry live side by side.

For a young student of religion, Abbottabad offered something rare: a setting removed from ideological noise, where learning unfolded patiently. Here, Professor Haq received his early grounding in Islamic education, entering the traditional madrasa system at a time when such institutions were still closely tied to classical pedagogy rather than modern polemics. The ʿĀlim curriculum, with its slow immersion into Arabic grammar, Qur’anic exegesis, Prophetic traditions, jurisprudence, and ethics, shaped not only his knowledge but his temperament. Learning was not rushed; mastery was earned through repetition, humility, and companionship with texts.

Yet Abbottabad, for all its serenity, was never meant to be the final horizon. Classical Islamic education has always been itinerant, carried forward by travel—from teacher to teacher, city to city. For Professor Haq, that journey led southward into the great intellectual artery of Punjab.

Lahore and the Culture of Scholarly Plurality

No city in South Asia has carried religious and intellectual plurality as visibly as Lahore. Often called the cultural capital of Pakistan, Lahore is also one of its deepest scholarly reservoirs. For centuries, it has hosted Sufi shrines, seminaries, colonial universities, and reform movements—sometimes in harmony, often in tension. To study religion in Lahore is to encounter Islam not as a single voice, but as a conversation across schools, methods, and sensibilities.

It was within this wider Lahore-centered scholarly ecosystem that Professor Haq pursued advanced studies, including his education at Shah Waliullah College. Named after Shah Waliullah of Delhi—one of the most consequential Muslim thinkers of the eighteenth century—the college reflects a reformist yet classical tradition. Shah Waliullah’s legacy emphasized reconciliation: between reason and revelation, law and spirituality, unity and diversity within Islam. His influence permeates institutions bearing his name, shaping generations of scholars who are trained to see difference not as deviation, but as a feature of intellectual vitality.

At Shah Waliullah College and later through studies connected to the University of Karachi and the International Islamic University, Islamabad, Professor Haq deepened his engagement with Islamic law and theology. He attained a Master’s-level equivalency in Sharia, grounding him firmly in jurisprudence while exposing him to comparative legal reasoning. Importantly, these years coincided with a period in Pakistan’s history when religious discourse was increasingly politicized. For many students, this era narrowed horizons. For Professor Haq, it clarified a vocation: to protect religious learning from being reduced to ideology.

Migration and the Reorientation of Vocation

In 1982, Professor Haq migrated to the United States, carrying with him not only credentials, but an inherited ethic of scholarship shaped by Abbottabad’s discipline and Lahore’s plurality. America did not replace his intellectual foundations; it reframed them.

At Drew University in New Jersey, he completed a Master’s degree in Humanities, entering a world where religion was studied not only as truth-claim, but as history, culture, and lived experience. Seminar rooms replaced study circles; footnotes replaced marginalia; debate replaced deference. Yet rather than experiencing rupture, Professor Haq found continuity. The humanities demanded what classical Islamic education had always required: careful reading, ethical seriousness, and accountability to sources.

This dual formation—traditional and modern, Islamic and humanistic—would become the defining feature of his career.

Education, Community, and the Ethics of Institution-Building

One of Professor Haq’s earliest major contributions in the United States was in Muslim education. He established and served as Principal and Director of the Islamic Foundation School in Illinois for twelve years, helping shape an institution that sought to balance religious identity with civic responsibility. This was not merely administrative work; it was moral labor. At a time when Muslim communities in America were still negotiating visibility and belonging, schools became sites where faith, citizenship, and ethics had to be reconciled daily.

Over the subsequent twenty-five years, Professor Haq taught Islam and Muslim world studies at multiple universities in the Chicago area, eventually serving as Professor of Islam and Muslim Advisor at Elmhurst University. His classrooms reflected his own journey: rooted in tradition, open to questioning, attentive to human complexity.

Interfaith Engagement and WCMIR

What distinguishes Professor Haq’s career is not only teaching, but bridge-building. His association with the World Council of Muslims for Interfaith Relations (WCMIR) reflects a long-standing commitment to dialogue grounded in integrity rather than dilution. WCMIR’s work—bringing Muslim scholars into sustained conversation with leaders of other faiths—resonated deeply with Professor Haq’s formation. Abbottabad had taught him discipline; Lahore had taught him plurality; America had taught him coexistence.

Through WCMIR and related initiatives, Professor Haq engaged Christian, Jewish, and other religious thinkers not to negotiate theology, but to humanize it. His work emphasized that interfaith dialogue is not about erasing difference, but about cultivating moral literacy across boundaries. This approach also informed his service on interfaith boards, human rights committees, and advisory councils, where he consistently advocated for dignity without defensiveness.

A Scholar Shaped by Place

To understand Professor Inam Ul Haq is to understand the places that shaped him. Abbottabad gave him stillness. Lahore gave him complexity. American universities gave him critical distance. Interfaith platforms like WCMIR gave him a global horizon. In an age when religious scholarship is often pulled toward extremes—either insularity or spectacle—Professor Haq represents a quieter lineage. His work reflects the conviction that knowledge matures slowly, that faith need not fear conversation, and that pluralism is not a threat to religion but a test of its ethics. Between hills and minarets, classrooms and councils, his journey remains guided by a simple principle inherited from his teachers and refined by experience: that learning is most truthful when it leads to humility, and faith most credible when it seeks understanding rather than dominance.