16. "What is the relationship between Tajweed and Arabic grammar?"
Tajweed if you do not already know is the science of the proper pronunciation and recitation of the Quran. There is certain nuance principles that the Prophet saw use to apply when he recited the Quran that he learn from Jabir as.His principles are part of the right of the Quran.
And also they have the right bearing on how the Quran is to be interpreted. So, as you are learning to understand the grammar, the vocabulary, this area of the Arabic language. Also at the same time you have to concern yourselves at the measured phase with the tajweed of the Quran. With the principle of tajweed as they apply to the recitation of quran for a couple of reasons.
Number one,it will beautify the recitation of Quran for yourselves because it is a science within it itself which ensure that you are doing justice when you pronounce the word of Allah azzawajalla as they were meant to be pronounced as they were menat to be recited.
And this will give you appreciation and rhythmic beauty of the Quran also that is lost, is not really truly appreciated unless you are a student of science of tajweed. InshaAllah hu taala Bayyinah tajweed program will be a great help to your effort in learning tajweed. InshaAllah hu taala.
[The End]
OK. This video will be the last part of this series. Why am I translating all these videos? Just to fill my leisure time. Hopefully it can be benefited by anyone out there. Hopefully this can also push me up to actively learn Arabic for and find some time to learn it. I love language. I love Arabic language. Sorry if I made any mistake along the Arabic Series. Do listen to the video for yourselves.
Jazakallah. . .
13. "How do I get my family involved?"
This is something that will become so much easier on you if your wife, your children, your siblings are involve with you. Your parents indeed. So, one of the best thing you can do is have them come to Bayyinah program. My job, my collegues job are to get them motivated. To get them fired up to learn this thing together. So now, even if you got them to come to one session. Just the intro session, that's enough inshaAllah hu taala and you let us do the work of getting them fired up, of getting them motivated, that maybe you can't do that, well inshaAllah hu taala we can because that's our job to do so.
14. "What is the relationship between conversational Arabic and Quranic Arabic?"
This are actually two different studies that shouldn't be confused with each other. When you focused on conversational arabic, that does not necessarily mean that you made any significant progress in Quranic Arabic and vice versa.
Somebody may understand the Arabic of the Quran really well, but at the same time not understand much of the coversational Arabic or not even able to converse either.
So if you divide this two things and tackle one problem at a time, you will see better result. My recomendation is take on grammar and the Quran first because it is something you can keep up with on your own. Conversation you may not have enough opportunity to converse with someone at any given time but Quran is gonna come up when you pray, is gonna come up when you recite. So tackle that area first that is why we teach Quran and Arabic frst at Bayyinah because it is the easiest excess to Arabic for the average Muslim.
And then, after that when you have a lill bit of famialirity in that, now you move on to conversational Arabic which has its own benefit because when you learn a conversation in Arabic, you can take advantage of the Arabic lectures, classes, you can read Arabic articles, Arabic books. Things like that. That will come afer you study a lil bit of conversational Arabic.
But in the beginning, focus your energies and your concentration on Quranic Arabic.
15. "Is there anything I can do to significantly boost my progress in learning Arabic and the Qur'an?"
Yes there are. The first and the most important thing you should worry about is your reading fluency, how well and how fast you can read. If you are reading slowly, concern yourselves with that first, become good at reading at a decent fluent level, the very next thing whether you understand it or not, make it a project to your life to give yourselves half an hour, 20 minutes a day, to memorize something from the Quran.
The more Quran you memorise, the better your experience become and in the context of this discussion, the better the understanding of your Arabic becomes. Its easier for you to learn Arabic, when you memorize the best excerpts of Arabic available, and there are already in your head. So, when you learn a concept you can apply it to ayat that you already know, that already been memorized by you and you repeat them often. It's a automatic practice.
If you are serious about learning Arabic, then you better be serious of memorizing the Quran as much as you possibly can also. InshaAllahu taala.
By the way, I would recommed, our collegue have an entire program of tips on how to memorize the Quran in a part time basics effectively. So inshaAllah hu taala take advantage of that and begin your journey to learn and to analyse this book.
10. "When it comes to learning Arabic, where do I begin?"
The place to begin is your intention and your motivation. I tell my students all the time. The first thing you are going to need when you study the Arabic language is motivation and the first thing you are going to lose when you studying Arabic the language is also motivation.
So keep in mind that you are doing this for a really nobel cause. The best motivation you can remind of your self over and over again and you will never on dry are the words of Allah Himself. "We made the Quran easy already. No doubt about it for the purpose of remembrance" Allah says He made it easy.
If that is not a motivetion for a believer I don't know what it is. So keep that as your first point , your starting point by which you continue. This is the firs thing, your intention.
The second thing, focus on the Arabic of the Quran. Instead of focusing on conversation of Arabic from the beginning, which may or may not be a sourec of motivation for you. If you learn the Arabic of the Quran, and you focus on it, its something that you can keep up with easily and something that you see results in immediately when you start reading the Fatihah or Al-Baqarah or something like that because you are able to applied very quickly even on your own. InsyaAllah.
So, start with regular reading the Quran. And study the grammar and the vocabulary applied to the Quran itself.
11. "How do I continue my Arabic studies effectively?"
Here you need to take some consideration. Take some things into consideration rather. The first of them is your time restriction. You have a full-time job. You are a student. You are busy with family. You are busy with many things. To effectively keep up with Arabic studies, dont forces your self into a full time type schedule. Give your self a part time schedule. Ten to fifteen minutes or half an hour a day, an hour every two days. Something like that, something light on you. Something you can keep up with that you can use to continue.
After you have this time problem solved, that you dedicated some times to this study, the second issue you have to consider your self with is the curriculum. More important than the teacher even. I say this because you can have a great teacher but a terrible curriculum, and the results wont be that good because the curriculum doesn't go far enough.
And you can have an OK teacher, not that good of a teacher. But a fantastic curiculum and you will still see significantly a better result. So concern yourselves with a good curriculum and applied it at a given place, the thing that you have to consider for yourselves when you want to continue effectively is measured growth.
Don't think too far ahead. Give your self a limited goal. For example you want to accomplish this much this week. This less and this few words I'm going to learn. This one rule of grammmar I want to learn this week or this few weeks. That's all you concern yourselves with.
Dont be overwhelmed by what you dont know just concern yourselves with what you do know.
12. "How do I know I'm progressing in my Arabic?"
You gauge your progress by reading Quran. You read the Quran from the very beginning or take the Surah you already memorize. You start picking up the vocabulary. You study the grammar. You study the translation. And now you are reading on your own when they are sitting in the Masjid. And you just reciting the Quran and you dont get something.
Now you know you are stumbling about what word you dont get. Concern yourselves with those words. Concern yourselves with developing questions around the part of Quran you dont understand. This will enhance your knowledge of Quran, simultaneously enhance your knowlegde of language. So, gauge your progress by means of checking your comprehension when you sit there and you recite the Quran.
If you understand very little. You make little progress. But, by the next week or the next month, if you understanding a little bit better. You know a lot more on the page about what's going on. You can smell a lot more words now. And there is progress that has been made. So gauge yourselves. Give yourselves a limited goal. A score of passage in the Quran that you concern yourselves with and you focus on them and you see your progress within them and that's how you should gauge your progress.
7. "My native language has a lot of similar words to Arabic, so when I read the Qur'an I get the gist of what its saying. Why should I bother to learn the Arabic then?"
This are very common misconception. When words travel from one language to another they change in meaning. So, in Arabic, if a word is the same and even it is spell exactly the same way as it is in your native language, it is no guarantee that it means the same exact thing.
I give you an example. The word 'Ihsan' in Arabic means 'excellence', 'to do ones best'. In the word 'Ihsan' in the Urdu language for example, it means 'to do one a favour'. A completely different words. Now, the word is use in the Quran and it is use in the Arabic sense meaning excellence. But if an Urdu speaks or read it and says, 'Hey, I know this word, it means favour'. Then they are misunderstanding with the Quran sync.
So just because you have common words from the Arabic language that doesn't mean you actually know the meaning of those words in the Arabic language. Take it a step further, even the classical Arabic, its connotation of certain words are different from those same exact words in modern Arabic.
So, we have to specifically study the Arabic of the Quran.
8. "If I'm already learning Arabic vocabulary, why do I have to learn grammar - especially when I'm already learning the meanings of the words?"
Language is more than just the meaning of words. Language is how words come together and form new meanings. You think about it this way. If you know the word "give" in English, you know what that means already .And if you know what the word "up" means, you know what direction its talking about.
But when I say "give up". It's a completely different meaning. It has nothing to do with "give" or with "up". It came up and form a new meaning that didn't exist in isolation.
So, just because you learn words in the Quran in isolation or Arabic words in isloation, that isn't a substitute or that isn't in itself enough for you to ignore the concept of grammars, expressions,syntax, language that have to be learnt especially when it comes to the book of Allah s.w.t
9. "What's the best translation of the Qur'an?"I get asked this a lot. What's the best translation of the Quran? And I used to have an answer to that. But I can't in all honestly recommend a translation anymore. And I'll tell you why.
In the very beginning of this series of questions I share with you that people say, what's lost in translations? What's lost in translation is so powerful and so monumental in size that if I suggest to you that the translation is going to be justice to what Allah is saying in the Arabic, I would be selling the Quran shortly.
The only thing I can recommend as far for the translation is that the English translation of the quran is recommended only for Arabics students who are trying to figure out what did translator have in mind when he was addressing this particular issue or that particular issue.
So, you look at 4 translation, not one. You look at all of them that you can find, and you look at each of them and see what Arabic principle did the translator address in this translation or what did he failed to address in this translation.
I don't recommend translation of Quran for people that aren't studying Arabic at all. If you want to understand the Quran without being the student of the Arabic language, or being student of tafseer, read the tafseer, read the english tafseer, listen to the syeikh give tafseer of Quran. This is the better way and more productive way for you to learn the Arabic language and learn things about the Quran than just raw reading of translation. InsyaAllah
4. "If the Qur'an is meant for all of humanity, why should we only learn it in Arabic? Why shouldn't it be in all languages?"People ask if Allah made me to be an arab, if He wanted me to know Arabic. I will be born in Arabs. So, its not my problem to learn Arabic because its not my native tongue. The answer to this is historical, you know Muslim, we have learnt the Quran and study it in the original language for a millennium and a half. And as I mention before, the vast majority of people on the face of this earth they call them selves a Muslim but they are not Arab. And even in the non-Arab parts of the Muslim world, Arabic has always be part of our tradition, our base education and our learning. It is only in the last couple of hundred years Arabic has been taken away from the curriculum and become secondary for a certain groups of people.
Otherwise in Muslim civilization, this is a standard component of education. Just like when you study even non-human things in sciences. When you study science, you study physics, you chemistry, you study biology, it's the standard in education. By the time you get to high school. The study of Arabic was the standard second language thought in all over the Muslim world. And that is the historical phenomenon.
So, there is nothing to do with being Arab or non-Arab. It just the language of this religion, the language of this Ummah.
5. "There are Arabs who understand the Qur'an but aren't very righteous, so why do you emphasize the learning of Arabic so much?"This is actually a blinging. You could say, while this person knows about the religion, they know what's right and wrong. But they still don't change the way they behave. So, the issue isn't about being Arab or non-Arab, the issue is practicing what you know and that's not the problem for the people of the language but its the problem for anyone who know something to be true and doesn't follow it.
As far as Arabs knowing the language or not knowing the language, what we were presenting here, isn't that Arabic is the only thing you need to understand or appreciate the Quran or to become a better Muslim. What we are suggesting if you on this role to become a better Muslim, certainly the learning of Arabic is going to facilitate that journey. And its gonna be a key component in your relationship with the Quran. So, you should take it into consideration.
Its not the only requirement, but it certainly one of the biggest one.
6. "If the Quran were revealed today, would it have been revealed in English?"This is actually not a good way of thinking about this problem. You know, we know that Allah speaks and Allah has complete wisdom. An absolute wisdom. He knew the people of this world, what languages they are going to speak and how society is going to change. And He knows with his ultimate wisdom that this is the final revelation.
So, just to even a route to the idea that if He sends something it will be more relevent or more appropriate for this time is to suggest that the Quran isn't relevant and isn't the solution for all. This cut the very base about what we believe in the Quran.
It is a universal guidance that transcend race, that transcend gender, that transcend nation. It's a universal human guidance. So, when we say Allah Azza Wajalla reveal the Quran in Arabic, we dont reduce its to just the Arabs. That He didn't reveal it to doesn't Arabs and they were the one who benefited from it and nobody else is benefited from it
History itself is a testimony against that. And it is only in our time that we find scepticism and even among Muslims of the relevance of the Quran. A question that hasn't occur for more over than a Millennium in regards to this book and this religion is now popping up which speaks up of the less and the lack of integrity and the credential of the question itself.
In this Arabic Series, I will address some common question about Arabic and how to answer them. The questions was answered by Brother Nouman Ali Khan in his video. You can watch the video by clicking on the link.
1."What's the point of learning the Arabic language if there are already so many translations of the Qur'an already available?"It's a very common question. Simplest answer, we have to take into consideration about what is lost in translation. Basically two things lost in translation. Certainly the content is lost, meaning the Arabic language has a lot of words for the same thing. 'Anger' has 10 to 12 different words for it. The word 'person' has 10 to 12 different words for it. Even the word 'human being' you can say 10 to 12 different ways in Arabic. Each one of those ways carry a different connotation. But when I translate them to English, if I use words A, B, C, D or E for human being, the english translation just can say human being. So, certainly something lost in translation as far as contents.
On the other side, there's a matter of style. When Allah speaks in the Quran, He speak in incredibly articulate fashion. It's profoundly creative speech. And when human being translate what Allah says, maybe they can get some of the content but certainly the creativity and the uniqueness of the words is entirely loss.
Just like when you try to translate poetry or song, from one language to another, maybe you can translate the word but you couldn't translate the creativity and the beauty.
2. "If I don't read the Quran or don't understand the Quran in Arabic or don't learn Arabic, am I lesser Muslim? Am I sinful?"
It is actually an inappropriate question. The fact that you are not Arab or you do not know Arabic, even that itself isn't a sin. Vast majority of Muslims that belong to this Ummah aren't Arabs. So, even that itself the lack of knowledge in Arabic is not the problem. The problem however is when one doesn't feel the desire to learn the language of the one who created them.
You know, the question that should be asked instead in this place is "Am I a lesser Muslim if I have no desire to learn this language even when Allah said that He made it easy" . He is the one who himself send the Quran, "with no doubt we make the Quran easy for remembrance". So, if Allah guarantee that the learning of the Quran is easy, then I should be motivated automatically to learn it. InsyaAllah
3. "The Qur'an calls itself clear, so why do I have to learn this complicated language to understand the Qur'an? Why Can't I simply read the translation?" Now, the answer to this question is very simple. It's a confusion between two different words. The Quran calls itself clear and clarifying. The Arabic word is "Mubin" which mean clear and clarifying. But that doesn't mean that it is simple. The Quran does not saying that it is simple.
You know, if there's a very difficult calculus problem and I write a really clear solution to that problem, there is no guarantee that the answer to that problem is simple. But it is a guarantee that it is clear. The Quran deal with complex issues. Sometimes very intricate one. It's response and guidance towards those issue is clear. But it doesnt necessarily mean that it self explanatory is simple. So, the two words shouldn't be confuse to each other.
