The 2024 Islamic Bioethics Conference

Location

Shaykh Mohammed Amin Kholwadia is an internationally recognized Islamic scholar known for his expertise in Islamic Disciplines such as Theology; exegesis of the Quran; Islamic Jurisprudence and Fatwa; interpretations of dreams and Sufism. He is also a renowned philosopher and an authority on the fiqh of Islamic ethics. He is the founder and president of Darul Qasim College in Glendale Heights in the Chicagoland area, the first Muslim college in the USA. His prolific scholarly contributions include academic writings on Islamic Finance; Epistemology; Ibn Arabi’s theory of wahdatul wujūd (under publication), the fiqh of medicine, amongst many other titles. He was raised in England and has traveled throughout the USA and the Muslim world. He is currently directing a large group of Muslim professionals and helping navigate Islamic ethics in the broader American context through the Al-Amin Ethics course, while guiding them through academic projects and interprofessional discourse. His scholarly contributions can be found on darulqasim.org. For a detailed biography about Shaykh Amin, visit https://darulqasim.org/about-us/leadership/.

Dr. Kanwal Ahmed was born in New York and raised in Texas. She went on to complete her medical training at UT Southwestern Medical School. She is currently a psychiatry resident at UT Southwestern. Her academic interests include holistic and Islamically-integrated medicine, interventional psychiatry, medical ethics, and addressing mental health disparities on a global scale.

Dr. Yasir Akhtar was born in rural upstate NY and moved to Pakistan to complete medical school at the Aga Khan University. He completed residency training at Indiana University and served as Assistant Professor of Clinical Medicine before moving to the University of Chicago for basic research in mitochondrial function in stem cells. He completed a fellowship in Vascular Biology and Clinical Cardiology at the University of Virginia conducting research in an exercise physiology lab focusing on mitochondrial dysfunction in diabetes. He currently works in East TN and southern KY as a structural, peripheral, and complex coronary interventional cardiologist with clinical research focusing on percutaneous treatment of endocarditis.

Sara Alattar hails from Chicago, IL. After completing her undergraduate degree in Biological Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago Honors College, she completed her Masters in Global Health from Northwestern University. She is graduating from the Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine in May of 2024. Over the past three years she has studied Islamic Bioethics under the tutelage of Shaykh Amin Kholwadia. She looks forward to practicing psychiatry in the Muslim community.

Dr. Deena Kishawi is a Chicago-born and raised obstetrician and gynecologist chief resident. She has a strong passion to intertwine medicine, religion, and culture in efforts to provide the best care for her patients. She is actively involved in advocacy through the American Medical Association, and has written and passed many health policies within the organization. She is also involved in medical education and has developed a national initiative, HijabInTheOR.com, to make the operating room a more inclusive environment for hijab-wearing patients, healthcare students, and professionals. 

Samer Wahood hails from Burr Ridge, IL. He attended Islamic Foundation School in Villa Park, IL, and graduated in 2017. He studied Public Policy at Brown University, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in 2021. He completed his ḥifẓ of the Noble Qur’an at DarusSalam Seminary in 2022. He has been a member of the Darul Qasim College bioethics cohort since November 2020 and is currently a 2nd-year medical student at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University in Providence, RI. Samer currently serves as a member of the Rhode Island Hospital Ethics Committee. His academic interests lie in Ḥanafī fiqh, dermatology, and biomedical informatics.