Words of Advice for Arabic Students

Words of Advice for Arabic Students

Introduction to the Arabic Intensive Program

First of all, welcome to Sardar Island. Just very quickly to introduce yourselves to Sardar Island. At Graham College, we run lots of different study courses.

There are various topics. This group of students are predominantly students who are studying our Arabic intensive. I don't know whether you know about the Arabic intensive as well.

So, this Arabic intensive serves as a prerequisite to our Islamic year program, which is a four-year undergraduate program after which students basically study the Arabic. Some graduates who've been through that program are here as well, who actually now teach at Graham College. So, most of the students here are on the part-time program, because Friday evening is their study session, and some of the full-timers have stayed behind.

So, inshallah, what you're doing, your great work, is very, very relevant to them, inshallah. We're doing some specific modules on Quranic Arabic as well. So, some words of nasiha for them.

Don't Undermine Part-Time Study

In just a few brief moments, what I'd like to share with you is don't undermine part-time study. That's really the first thing I'd like to tell you. A lot of times Islamic studies, or Arabic studies in particular, is made to feel like this is an exotic thing, and you're really not going to get anywhere unless you cross some large body of water and sit under some very hot desert, under a tree, and study from a shade where you should be able to see a camel next to you or something.

Until you do that, then you're really not studying seriously. And especially when you see people that have gained some degree of mahara in the language, they're fluent in the language, and they understand grammar well, and when the softness comes out of their mouth, and you're like, you want me to do that? That's not going to happen. And it's intimidating.

Every Expert Was Once a Beginner

When you see someone that's gained a bit of expertise, and it's very intimidating, it's easy to forget that that student, that teacher, at one point was sitting behind a chair like you. And they were having a hard time conjugating the past tense also, especially when they got to the naafiz. And that's what came along.

And I said, there's mangoes also? So they were like, depression after depression. That's what it feels like sometimes in grammar lessons. So you barely conquer one territory, and then, okay, now there's another.

I was teaching my students, and we have a weird structure, so we finish shukla ismi, and there's shukla febi, and they're like, oh. I thought this was it. Can we just end this? Can we not move on? Don't be afraid of the knowledge.

Embrace the Journey of Learning Arabic

Embrace it. In any other subject, if you're a student of physics, or biology, or accounting, or whatever, the next chapter is the next wave of attack, and punishment, and torture, and misery. In your studies that bring you closer and closer to Allah's book, and make you enjoy more and more what Allah is saying in His book, what the words of the Prophet, peace be upon him, are, every time you learn a little bit more Arabic, you know, in the beginning, what's going to happen, you're going to be sitting there in the khutbah, and the khateeb says, alhamdulillah, he's going to come and ask me out.

And salatu wassalamu ala sayyidina Muhammad Rasool Allah. I think it's not for him, for me. It's going to happen.

And that's a beautiful thing. It really is. It's a lot better than you sitting there going, uh, why is the carpet, you know, stitching this way on this side and that way? It's a lot better than that.

Be Patient with Your Learning Process

It's progress. And in the beginning, it will also be frustrating. Because, you know, when you learn a little bit, especially as students that are trying to study sacred texts, you're not at the level of processing that when you hear something, immediately, the first time, you know what it is.

You know, when you're reading something, you can take your time. If I open the mushaf now, and I read, okay, I don't understand the word, but I think about it, is this a verb right now, and what is this? But I have a few seconds to figure it out, maybe even a minute. Maybe then I look at a translation and figure it out.

Eventually, I get to the answer. When you're standing in salah, the imam waits for you, or he just keeps going. You were on alhamdulillah, he says Allahu Akbar.

Right? And it can get frustrating, like I'm never going to get there. But you have to be patient with yourself. You really do.

Don't Compare Yourself to Others

And you cannot allow the ocean that lies ahead of you, of Arabic knowledge, to intimidate you. I'm not getting anywhere. We haven't done anything.

Don't compare yourself to anybody else. Not even to your teacher. Don't compare yourself.

Compare yourself to your own self from the week before. From two weeks before. That's the only one you have to compare yourself to.

I actually, I say that as a matter of fact, even when it comes to acts of worship, and you know, our day in general. You don't compare yourself to other people. In Ramadan, you feel like this guy did so much better than I did.

That's not the healthy approach. Was this Ramadan of mine, the only competition was between this year's Ramadan of mine, and last year's version of me in Ramadan. Which one came out better? Have I progressed at all or not?

The Story of the Physician Student

I have a student in our full-time program, last year, a really, really close friend. I love him to death. He's a physician. You know what that means.

You're a terrible student. Especially because he works in the ICU. So he has to, and he misses class, and then the student misses class, the teacher gets upset, but he comes back and says, I saved two lives by the grace of Allah.

What am I going to say? No, you should have been here doing all of that. I can't say anything. That actually has a legitimate excuse.

He's saving lives. Terrible, terrible student. Everybody, if I would compare everybody else's progress to 100, his would be a 20.

Right? At the end of the year, and the guy, you know, went to work part-time so he could do this program, and he's sacrificing time away from wife and kids, and putting all this time in. But if you ask him, he's the happiest guy at the end. He didn't even graduate.

He's happy. You know why? Because him at the beginning, and him at the end are two different people. He may not have progressed 1,000 miles, but the fact that he went 100 miles is a big deal for him.

And he's ever grateful. He's so happy that he had that opportunity. And that's going to be some of you.

Don't Let Others Intimidate You

Don't let other students, there are some students in class that are very annoying, I'm sorry, but they're very annoying. They answer everything. And they think everybody will love them because they answer everything.

What's the answer to that? And then they raise their head and answer it. Why do you raise your head then? Right? And then they answer, and then they answer, and sometimes the teacher doesn't realize, so

they say, oh, you know what, they get it, so everybody gets it. And you're not making friends that way, let me tell you.

Just a little bit of social advice. You are making sworn enemies. If your car is scratched up outside with keys, you'll probably trace them back to vehicle car keys from the student badge because you're making everybody else's life harder.

But even then, you shouldn't say, well, he gets it, I don't, I guess they're smart, I'm dumb, that's life. Let's move on. No, no, no, no, no.

Ask Questions and Overcome Your Pride

When you don't understand something, you have to get over your pride. You have to get over your embarrassment, and you have to tell the teacher, you know, the last ten minutes, you left me. You weren't even here.

We need to go back because the fact that you made time, even hard time, to study something, you have to give your teachers a hard time too. Sorry, guys. But you have to give them a hard time.

You have to ask, you have to ask, you have to ask. You have to ask, you know. And these are attitudes of healthy students.

It's All About Attitude

And I tell you, most people that study Arabic don't last. You know why they don't last? It's not the knowledge, it's the attitude. It's all attitude.

You just have to have the attitude, I don't care what happens, I'm going to progress. Whether it takes me four times the time, we call them in America, we call them super seniors. Guys that come back every year. You know. But they become more super as the years go by. So they eventually do get it.

They eventually do get it. You know. That's the attitude you have to have.

I'm in it for the long haul. I'm not in it to finish this program, get this class over with, get this book finished, you know, be done with it. You're in it for life.

Make Learning a Lifelong Commitment

That's a decision I made for myself maybe 12 years ago. I'm just going to study. I don't care about credentials, I don't care who I study from, I'm going to study.

Whether I find somebody to study with, if I find someone, well and good. If I can't find someone, so what? I'm still going to study. I'm going to do 20 minutes a day.

And I've kept that habit alive, alhamdulillah, until now. To keep going. And the more you study, the more you realize, your teachers will tell you, the more you realize, man, I don't know anything.

I don't know anything. And when you feel like you know something, then you're at the verge of discovery that you're absolutely ignorant. But you haven't realized that yet, so you feel like, yeah, I understand. Hold on. Yeah. I understand.

I hear somebody say that, I was like, yeah, that was me like eight years ago, yeah. That's nice. But you're about to crash into a wall, and when you wake up, it'll be beautiful.

Because the moment you feel like you understand something (وَفَوْقَ كُلِّ ذِي عِلْمٍ عَلِيمٌ - 12:76 Quran) you run into somebody, a scholar or a writer, a teacher, who shows you that same ayah that you've read a hundred times. And you say, did you think about this? Did you see this? Did you see that? And you're sitting there like, oh, wait, what? Comes again? That ayah?

No One Has Complete Command Over the Quran

What's the last thing I'll share with you? Just about that. None of us will have, in Urdu we say, (کسی پر غلبہ پانا - kisi par ghalba pana) in Arabic, to cross over something.

But to have command over a subject. To have command over a subject. Come to terms with the fact that maybe you'll have command over some concepts of Arabic, some vocabulary.

You and I will never have command over Quran. It'll have command over us. We won't have command over Quran.

No matter how much we study.

The Story of Dr. Fadl Saleh Hassan Al-Rahim

I mean, one of my favorite stories to share for students is a person I consider a teacher. I've never met him.

I pray to Allah that He gives me the opportunity to go meet him and maybe even invite him to come meet our students. It's Dr. Fadl Saleh Hassan Al-Rahim. He currently moved back to Iraq.

He's from Iraq originally. And he had a TV show actually going on in Sharjah, in Sharjah Park, called Namasaz Bayaniyya. And this show was basically people calling in and saying, how come Allah uses this word in the Quran over here and that word over there? How come this ayah says this and doesn't say that? Etc.

People asking like nitpicky microscopic questions about every ayah. And he goes, he collects the questions, then next week is a hadakah on the answers. This word is just doing this here.

And had it been any other word, it would have been short of perfection. And let me show you why. This guy is absolutely brilliant.

Absolutely brilliant. Right? And so in one episode, instead of answering people's questions, he told the host of the show, actually today I want to share with you an ayah that I had a question about. You can imagine the difference between random people calling in and asking questions about Quran and the teacher saying, I've had a question too.

Right? So he goes, this is one ayah. Its complexity, its perfection, its depth has baffled me for about two years. For two years, I've been trying to figure out its perfection.

The Linguistic Miracle of a Simple Ayah

The host of the show, who's no joke himself, he's a PhD in Arabic, he goes, what ayah is this? This must be like some, maybe the ayat of inheritance or something. What's he going to draw upon us? He goes, (لَا خَوْفٌ عَلَيْهِمْ وَلَا هُمْ يَحْزَنُونَ - Quran 2:62). And the host looks at him like, man mushkid feehata ya saizi?

What's the big problem here, sir? What's the complexity? So simple, so straightforward.

لَا خَوْفٌ عَلَيْهِمْ وَلَا هُمْ يَحْزَنُونَ. How many times have you heard that before? This scholar says, it took me two years to figure out the depth of this ayah. Not in a tafseer point, from a tafseer point of view, not even from a thematic point of view, just the language of the ayah.

Why is there an islami? Why does it say لَا خَوْفٌ? It doesn't say لَا خَوْفٌ وَلَا مَا خَوْفٌ. وَلَا لَا خَوْفٌ لَا يَخَافُونَ.

Why the second وَلَا عَلَيْهِمْ وَلَا لَهُمْ. وَلَا لَا عَلَيْهِمْ خَوْفٌ لَا وَلَا هُمْ يَحْزَنُونَ.

Why not just وَلَا يَحْزَنُونَ؟ وَلَا لَا خَوْفٌ عَلَيْهِمْ وَلَا خُزْنٌ عَلَيْهِمْ. وَلَا لَهُمْ حُزْنٌ وَلَا يَحْزَنُونَ.

He came up with 30 variations that could have been said. 30 alternatives that could have been said. And he explored the implications of all of them, discovering that each one of them are flawed in one way or the other.

And the only one left, the diamond in the rough, 40 لَا خَوْفٌ عَلَيْهِمْ وَلَا هُمْ يَحْزَنُونَ minutes he explained the linguistics of this one ayah. I tried to take notes on that lecture.

I think maybe 20 times. I start listening. 5 minutes go by.

My jaw drops. I just keep listening. I'm like, oh.

Like literally, I can't keep going. I can't just keep writing. It's too powerful.

It's too amazing. And you realize at that point, you know, this is a book. This is an ocean of treasure and wisdom.

The Infinite Depth of Allah's Book

That the believer, it's a grace, it's a mercy of Allah that we're never going to be able to say, I got it. I have it. Now I can move on to other things.

It's not going to happen. It's just not going to happen. So the same thing goes with your Arabic studies and your Deen studies.

Make it a regular, consistent, part-time part of your life. And don't procrastinate. Don't say, yeah, I'll get more serious inshallah because pretty soon I'm going to drop everything.

I'm going to pack my bags and I'm going to become a bodybuilder. And look, if you're a lazy bum now, you'll be a lousy full-time student. If you don't know how to use your time now, you don't know how to make the most of it now, that will reflect entirely on what kind of full-time student you're going to be.

Entirely. People that put their work in ahead of time, get a lot out of it. People that don't put their work in ahead of time, and by the way, if you do put your work in ahead of time, and then Allah gives you the opportunity to be a full-time student, (وَالرَّاسِخُونَ فِي الْعِلْمِ - Quran 3:7) It's going to be awesome.

You're going to go further than anybody else. Because you're going to value that opportunity. You used to try to scrape time out from your day to get a little bit of studies in, now Allah has opened the entire day for you to study, you're going to be flooring the car, literally.

You're going to be going on leaps and bounds. But until then, if you don't value what you have now, you won't be able to value it later on. All you have is now.

Closing Prayers and Gratitude

May Allah make your studies easy on you, and easy for your teachers. May Allah make you a source of pleasure for your teachers, and not a test of their patience. And even when they test their patience, or you test their patience, may Allah make them better teachers because of it.

Thank you so very much for this opportunity. Again, I'm very honored and happy to be here. One of the places I was excited to come see was the Brain College of Al-Halal.

Good efforts, anywhere they may be, I feel a kind of solidarity with them. Alhamdulillah, there's no such thing as, for us, there's no such thing as competition. It's all cooperation.

It's just all ships sailing side by side towards the same destination. It's all in this. That's how we have to see it.

Whether we're on this side of the Atlantic or that side. At the end of the day, we're just all trying to make struggles, to maybe have something to be able to say before Allah. And I pray Allah accounts all of us in

that effort.

Thank you so very much for this way more than five minutes.