Al-Qasim was born in 1939 in the city of Zarqa in northern Emirate of Transjordan (now Jordan) while his father served in the Arab Legion of king Abdullah. He came from a Druze family from the town of Rameh in the Upper Galilee. He attended primary school there and then later graduated from secondary school in Nazareth. His family did not flee Rameh during the Palestinian exodus of 1948 (Nakba).