About International Islamic College, Leicester

What the College is

The College is a young institution with an old subject. It exists to make serious Islamic learning available to people who are not going to leave their lives to get it: sixth-formers, university students, people in work, parents. That means evening classes in a masjid rather than a residential seminary, and it means teaching in English from texts that are read, memorised and examined in Arabic.

Its registered office is 19 Church Street, Oadby, Leicester LE2 5DB. Teaching happens where the students are — at present at Masjid Fida, 9 Osmaston Road, Leicester LE5 5JN. The College is constituted as International Islamic College UK Limited, a not-for-profit company limited by guarantee registered in England and Wales, number 16790844. Its articles prohibit distributing profits to its members: everything it takes in goes back into the teaching.

What you can study here

The College is organised into four institutes. The Institute of Qur'an covers memorisation, tajwīd and the readings. The Institute of Arabic Language covers naḥw and ṣarf through to reading primary texts. The Institute of Islamic Sciences covers ʿaqīdah, fiqh, ḥadīth and tafsīr. The Institute of Traditional Mutoon and Ijaazaat covers the classical memorised texts and certification in them.

The College's flagship programme is at-Taʾṣīl, the Foundation Diploma in Islamic Studies: one academic year of evening classes in Leicester for brothers and sisters aged sixteen and over, Monday to Wednesday from 8 to 9pm, running from 21 September 2026 to 16 July 2027. It covers ʿaqīdah, fiqh, ḥadīth, tafsīr and Arabic across a hundred contact hours, and costs £40 a month for eleven months plus a £50 end-of-year examination fee — £490 for the year, plus books at cost. If you want the long version, there is a plain guide to studying Islamic studies in Leicester.

The College also runs an ijāzah programme in Qur'anic recitation with connected chains of transmission, and the National Qur'an Competition, whose 2026 edition drew 333 entrants from across the United Kingdom and Europe and held its finals in Leicester in August 2026.

Who teaches, and who checks the teaching

The College was founded by two people. Ustadh Emran Ahmed is Founder and Chief Executive, and teaches the Foundation Diploma. Shaykh ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq at-Turkmānī is Founder and Head of Scholarly Affairs; the Diploma's syllabus and standards are supervised and reviewed by him, and he is also the Academic Lead to whom academic appeals and complaints about teaching go, independently of the teacher.

Above the teaching sits al-Majlis al-Istishārī, the College's scholarly advisory council: a standing body of senior scholars consulted on the College's curricula and standards, so that what is taught is answerable to people who are not employed to teach it.

What the College is not

There is an older and much larger institution called International Islamic College in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. It is a separate organisation. This College has no connection to it, no campus outside the United Kingdom, and no shared history, staff or governance. If you were looking for the Malaysian institution, this is not it.

This College is not a university and does not describe itself as one. It is not registered with the Office for Students, and it does not award degrees. It is not an awarding organisation regulated by Ofqual, and it is not accredited by any accrediting body.

The Foundation Diploma is the College's own award. The College is independent: the award is not a regulated qualification, is not accredited, and carries no university credit.

Accreditation, said plainly

The College intends to become accredited, and has published the route it means to take rather than hinting at one. The pledge attached to that roadmap is simple and binding on the College's own copy: it will never claim a stage before it has reached it.

That is why nothing on this website says 'accredited', 'validated', 'degree-awarding' or 'recognised' about the College's current provision. When any of those becomes true, it will be stated here with the name of the body and the date.

Getting in touch

The office is at 19 Church Street, Oadby, Leicester LE2 5DB. Write to info@theiic.uk, or call or message 07436 436363. If you want to apply for the Foundation Diploma, the application form takes about five minutes and asks for no documents; the next step after it is a short conversation with the teacher.