Dr. Kasım Kopuz serves as Imam and Director of the Islamic Organization of the Southern Tier (IOST), where he leads religious services, educational programs, youth development initiatives and community outreach.  His education reflects three complementary traditions of scholarship: the classical Islamic scholarly tradition, modern university education in Islamic law, and contemporary historical research. 

His Islamic education began in Rize, Türkiye, where he completed his Qur’an memorization, and studied Arabic and the foundational Islamic sciences. He later studied at the Faculty of Sharia and Law at Al-Azhar University, Cairo, one of the world’s oldest and most respected centers of Islamic learning.  Alongside his university studies, he regularly attended traditional halaqāt (scholarly study circles), where classical texts in Islamic jurisprudence, theology, Arabic grammar, and related disciplines were studied in the traditional teacher-disciple format. Among the scholars from whom he benefited was Shaykh Dr. Ali Gomaa, then Professor of Islamic Jurisprudence at Al-Azhar University and later Grand Mufti of Egypt. Following his graduation from Al-Azhar, he completed the equivalency requirements at the Faculty of Law at Istanbul University and began graduate studies in Comparative Islamic Law at Marmara University.

Dr. Kopuz later continued his education in the United States, earning both his M.A. and Ph.D. in History from Binghamton University (State University of New York), where he also pursued graduate studies in sociology. His academic formation in Ottoman history was profoundly influenced by the scholarship and mentorship of Rifaat Ali Abou-El-Haj and Donald Quataert, whose approaches to state formation, social history, and historical methodology continue to shape his historical perspective.

For more than three decades, Dr. Kopuz has combined religious leadership with teaching and scholarship. In addition to serving Muslim communities as an imam and educator, he has taught at Binghamton University, SUNY Empire State College, Broome Community College, Istanbul Şehir University, Ibn Haldun University, Yeditepe University, and most recently served as Assistant Professor at Marmara University in Istanbul. His research focuses on Islamic civilization, Islamic law, Ottoman history, early Islamic society, Islamic historiography, and the relationship between law, political authority, and society.

Dr. Kopuz believes that the Masjid is not only a place of worship but also a center for learning, character formation, family life, and community service. He seeks to cultivate a community that is spiritually grounded, intellectually curious, morally responsible, and committed to serving the broader society. He continues to build meaningful bridges between the rich intellectual heritage of Islam and the opportunities and challenges of the modern world.