How to Arrange Your Studies: Laying the Foundations
This is the fourth in a series of articles on how a student ought to arrange their studies, drawn from a seminar delivered by Shaykh Talal al-Azem. You can watch the full seminar here: How to Arrange Your Studies of Islamic Sciences
Effort alone is never the standard for a student. Method is.
The Danger of Studying Without Understanding
Imam Zarnuji (Allah have mercy on him) put it plainly: If a student fails to strive hard in understanding, and slackens and fails to understand time after time, he will grow accustomed to not understanding, and come to think it normal. [Taʿlim al-Mutaʿallim]
Eventually the student will not grasp even the simplest questions. Study, meant to sharpen the mind, ends up dulling it instead, a perverse outcome for something meant to do the opposite. Attending lectures a student does not understand is, if anything, worse. It compounds the problem.
Hours spent traveling, sitting, and “learning” in name only. The student walks away with little, or with nothing at all beyond the ability to name books and scholars.
Commentaries Are Not the Enemy
None of this means commentaries or super-commentaries are to blame. Imam Sajaqlizada authored many himself. His concern is sequence, not substance.
These works still need mastering, but only after a student has encompassed the foundational questions of a science first.Students stray for two reasons. The first is misordering: beginning a discipline before mastering its prerequisites. A student is left dealing with material they cannot truly follow.
The second is misallocated effort, neglecting the sciences a community genuinely needs while pouring disproportionate time into niche questions of little real benefit. The same malady shows up in modern university research.
A Fitting Approach
Imam Sajaqlizada has a better approach, a message any sincere student would be glad to receive. The beginner should start with instruction in foundational faith (iman), and this holds equally for a child who has reached the age of understanding and an adult newly come to the religion.
This is an active process between teacher and student, shaped to the child’s ability or the adult’s readiness. Faith comes first. It is the lens through which a person sees everything else, themselves, the natural world, and their own purpose in existing. A clear lens brings the bigger picture into focus.
A clouded lens leaves a person able to notice particulars while still missing, or misreading, what they add up to. Faith is about understanding the meaning of there being no God but Allah and Muhammad (Allah bless him and give him peace) being the messenger of Allah.
It is not mere memorization of the testimony. Where the beginner goes from here, once the foundation of faith is in place, is the subject of the next article.
Learning to Read the Book of Allah
After faith, the second step is correct recitation of the Quran, taught by a teacher whose own recitation is sound. This continues until the child completes the whole Quran.
Reciting the Quran is not the end of a child’s education. It has to sit inside a bigger framework. Children, even at four or five years old, often ask genuinely deep questions, and they deserve real answers.
The purpose of this recitation, after all, is to give the child the ability to engage with the Book of Allah itself.
Protecting the Child’s Belief
Third comes the study of detailed articles of belief according to Ahl al-Sunnah wa al-Jamaʿa, again pitched to the child’s age and ability. The goal is protective: so that a child does not, at ten or twelve, stumble across some far-fetched idea with no basis and end up pulled off course by it.
This is not the same as the detailed study of theology. It is a real, working understanding of the essential articles of faith, enough that a child cannot easily be talked out of them.
Character Before the Rules of Prayer
Then, immediately after belief, comes the mandated measure of ethics. This does not mean prayer itself is delayed. A person’s actions, speech, and physical conduct happen constantly throughout the day. Grounding character delves into actions of the tongue and actions of the limbs.
Then Comes Prayer
After character comes the fifth step: prayer. Belief, character, and prayer together are often covered efficiently by particular epistles that lay out what a person in any given state needs to know.
This genre was common in the later Ottoman period, running from the 15th century through his own, the 16th. His example is Imam Birgivi’s Turkish Risala, likely the well-known Risale-i Birgivi. Prayer is something the vast majority of people, aside from the very young, will have to perform.
A Primer Before the Rest of the Sciences
One step remains for the beginning child whose native tongue is not Arabic: a primer in Arabic vocabulary. A student about to spend years studying texts written in Arabic needs the vocabulary to meet those texts on their own terms.
Malcolm X worked through the dictionary from the beginning, memorizing it entry by entry. He credited this exercise with much of the strength behind his later skill as an orator. [Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X]
What Imam Sajaqlizada has to say about the adult beginner is the subject to come.
Related Articles
How to Arrange Your Studies: The Author – Why does one’s learning journey require structure? First in this series.
How to Arrange Your Studies: Knowledge Carries Moral Weight – Knowledge is never a matter of mere utility. Second in this series.
How to Arrange Your Studies: Why Students Trip – Some students put in years of sincere effort but never reach the heights of mastery. Third in this series.
