By Sheikh Anwar Muhaimin

“Verily, We have sent down the revelation and verily, (it is We), who will preserve it”. [1] With the emphatic statement Allah asserts His authority over the revelation of the Quraan but, more importantly, the preservation of the text throughout time. The process of preserving the Quraan has [primarily occurred through the memorization of its’ contents; the ayaat (verses) and suwar (chapters). This has been true throughout the history of Islam and continues to this day. Over the years many people have inquired from me how they can memorize the Quraan themselves. In response to this inquiry I try to share with people my experiences studying and memorizing the Quraan over the last 35 years. Usually the first thing that I try to help people understand is that they cannot memorize the Quraan on their own. You should, in fact must have a teacher. Even the most sophisticated digital recordings and excellently produced Cds are no substitute for a qualified instructor. I’ll elaborate on the reasons for that in another part of this article.  My first encounter with learning the Quraan actually took place long before I left to go study overseas and it was my reflecting on this experience that helped me understand and appreciate the role on a teacher. In my youth, my friends and I spent countless weekends being taught the Arabic alphabet, going over them again and again under the supervision of an instructor, similar to what countless young children do when they are taken to weekend classes in the masjids throughout the city today. I recall one sister in particular named Sister Mona. Sister Mona was very creative in finding ways to make those letters that were so foreign to us in the beginning stick in our little minds.  She used to come up with “alphabet songs” about the letters and the Arabic language that she would have us sing over and over while she played the musical background on her piano. Later on, after I began to teach Arabic myself, I would come to understand how important the role of sound and recognizing sound is in learning Arabic. The first time I sat down with a teacher overseas in Madina to begin formally learning the Quraan I remember him asking me “do you know how to read Arabic”? “Of course!”  I responded and I proceeded to breeze through the letters on the page before me; ”aleef, baaa, taaa, thaaa…..”,more from memory than recognition. Of course my teacher, while probably amused and maybe a little impressed, was not swayed from teaching me the importance of correct sound and pronunciation as well as letter recognition and reading the letters instead of saying them, a lesson that I have carried with me from then to this day. I should point out here that just because my teacher in Madina ended having to teach me the alphabet all over again, this does not mean that Sister Mona failed in doing that. As a matter of fact, she succeeded in another area of language instruction. My story about her points out that you must be taught the Quraan by a Quraan teacher, Sister Mona was an Arabic teacher. There is a difference between the two styles of teaching. The point that I am trying to emphasize here is that in order for a person to start the process of memorizing the Quraan they should first learn how to read the Arabic alphabet. You cannot and should not separate the two, especially for someone who is not a native speaker of the language.  The reason being is that when you start to memorize you also, inevitably, start to forget. The best way to recall what you’ve already memorized is to review it. And the best way to review is to read what you have already put to memory. If you can’t read you usually end up having to memorize the portion all over again. This brings us to the first “technique” that a student can use to memorize the Quraan; a repeated reading of the portion you are memorizing. This means that you read the portion over and over until your brain begins to register an image of what’s on the page. Now some people do this better than others; some people can memorize things a lot easier than others, but we all have the capacity to do it because we have brains.  Now during this process of reading the person should try to be in a calm, quiet state of mind so that he/she can focus. Without focus there can be no memorization and you will not be able to retain what you’ve memorized successfully. Now one may ask: “how many times should I read the portion before I try to memorize it”? There is no prescribed number of times that you must read your portion, however there is a recommendation in the Sunnah that when we repeat something that we try to repeat it at least 3 times [2]. So repeating the reading of your portion 3 – 7 times is good before you actually start to memorize it.

To be continued…..