 Bismillahirrahmanirrahim. As-salamu alaikum warahmatullahi wa barakatuh. Welcome back to this program in which we are exploring real issues that face various members of our communities. In some of the recent programs, we were discussing some of the challenges that are faced by new Muslims, that is to say, converts to Islam, especially those of the more recent variety, hence the phrase, new Muslims. However, of course, people who adopt Islam are not the only people who face challenges within the Muslim community. There are many people. Indeed, there is a diversity of people within the Muslim community. Each person and each group has their own special needs, which, inshallah, we can find ways to accommodate. One group of people we haven't discussed yet is those who don't have as deep of an understanding about Islam as they like. Now, this may involve the new Muslim. There may be some new Muslims who don't necessarily have a firm foundation, even in some of the basic practices of Islam, such as how to pray or how to fast. It may also be a returning Muslim, someone who perhaps did not get a religious upbringing growing up, someone who may be a bit embarrassed to tell people at the mosque that they don't know how to pray or they're not quite sure what they're not supposed to do in the month of Ramadan, and maybe someone who wants to learn how to recite the Holy Qur'an but never had the opportunity growing up, and so forth. This group would also include those people who do have a good handle on the basics, so they're not going to be feeling embarrassed that maybe there are certain things they don't know, like what is the way that you calculate the prayer time. However, they would like to deepen their knowledge about Islam. So we've basically got two layers here. We have layer one, who has what you might say a need for Islamic literacy, the things that you really need to be a practicing Muslim and member of the community, and then you have a second level, regardless of religious origin, ethnic origin, and so forth, who would like to expand their knowledge. Now, communities vary quite a bit worldwide with respect to what kind of services we offer in religious education. However, I think it's safe to say that while I know some individuals who work very hard to put together programs of religious education. Can we just put a parentheses here? Programs of religious education. A program or a system is different than an individual. There are so many dedicated individuals who take out their time personally to try to teach people how to recite the Holy Quran, to try to teach people about tafsir, hold fiqh sessions in their homes, and do their part to contribute to the growth of knowledge and spreading their own knowledge within the Muslim community. May Allah reward them. This is an excellent service. Perhaps you are doing that. Perhaps you are thinking of doing that. Do not hold back your opportunity to contribute, earn thawab, and make a difference in people's lives. However, the impact that a person can have is limited. When you actually have a system, so you have classes that are regular that anyone can sign up for any time of the year. You know the classes are going to be there this year, next year, the year after. When you have a textbook, when you have a curriculum, and when you have a set plan for how you're going to fill the educational needs of the community, it becomes so much easier. Now one way where I think in general, in countries where Muslims are minorities, so you're not going to be learning about Islam in a state school, one way we've done well, we've made some strides with respect to weekend school or madrasa for children. And there's quite a range. There are some weekend schools where you do have to proverbially reinvent the wheel of your teacher, write your curriculum, write your new lesson plans, and so forth. However, there are some communities which do nowadays, alhamdulillah, this is very good. They have a standardized curriculum. They have standardized textbooks. And it's available for everyone. You can nowadays access it on the internet. You can download the worksheets, the workbooks. And so because there is a system, and the system is shared in many places around the world, this makes it easier to actually serve the needs of the community. So ideally as a long-term plan, and inshallah those of you involved in planning for your communities in the mosque board and so forth can perhaps bring up this issue, as a long-term plan, it's good to have adult education as well for those of us who are either teenagers or adults who either do want to learn the basics of the Islamic heritage, Islamic practice, Quranic recitation, and so forth. And also those of us who want a deeper education. And inshallah this will continue to thrive. However, I'm going to be honest, insofar as such a system is not available, the individual who wants to learn more has two possibilities. Number one, they can sulk. Yes, you can look around and say no one is providing what I need. So I'm just going to sit around and not learn anything because no one is teaching me. Now there is a valid point. It is difficult to become self-educated. However, who is going to be harmed in the end? Well, it does harm the community actually, but in the end you're the one who's going to be harmed. So this is one of these areas where you just have to look at the reality and say, well, if the community does not have the facilities to provide the educational services that I need, or maybe they haven't had the planning yet to provide these services, then I need to educate myself. And there are so many resources available nowadays in the English-speaking world in particular about Islam that were not there, say, 20 years ago. So it is possible to learn a great deal about Islamic thought, Islamic practice, Tijweed, and so forth, or on a recitation, simply through what is available online in terms of books, lectures, and so forth. And so I would encourage everyone to do that. Many people do. And you have to take responsibility for your own learning, especially in cases where there isn't a system to go through. Now in some places there is, and that is definitely very beneficial. Now back in the olden days, maybe not the really, really olden days, but 20 or 30 years ago, if your primary language was English, your Islamic education would be characterized by the fact that you would take whatever you could get because there was so little available. Even if a book was horrendously translated and very difficult to understand, and maybe not really relevant to the issues that you were concerned about, you would treasure that book because it was so rare. It was so hard to get. This was before the internet. This was before personal computers at all. It was before digital libraries like alislam.org, which you could probably spend a lifetime reading. And it was definitely before online lectures and Islamic satellite television. We didn't even have satellite television back then. So the problem in those days was getting access to information, getting access to a translation of the Holy Quran, if you wanted to learn Arabic, getting access to a grammar book or a teacher. If I may wax biographical, just to show how much things have changed in the past couple of decades, when I learned to read Arabic, it was from a grammar book written in 1935 that I found, for some reason, at the library. Nowadays, alhamdulillah, there's classes, there's modern books, there's software. There's a lot of ways to facilitate this. However, some people now face the opposite problem. There's so much information available. What do we do? Where do we begin? How do we know which information is reliable? Here are some tips to help you maximize your use of the available resources to either get a good introduction to Islam or else to broaden and deepen your Islamic intellectual understanding. And inshallah, in the future, we will discuss aspects of learning about Islam that go beyond the intellectual, because learning is not only about, especially learning about religion, it's not only about what comes in books. However, it is definitely an important component. One thing to consider, or what analogy you can use, is imagine you're going to write a research paper. Imagine you're going to write a research paper on Islam, for example. Whatever your subject, whether it's biochemistry, genetics, astronomy, history, the way you approach a research paper is largely the same. You first try to learn as much as you can about the subject in general. If you're writing your college or university research paper and you only read one or two articles or listen to one lecture on cellular development or whatever you're writing about, your professor is going to be very unhappy and they're going to say this is not a research paper, it's missing a basic criteria. So one of the most basic pieces of advice you can have is simply to try to expose yourself to as wide range of materials as possible. Now on a practical level, if you are the listening type, because people do vary, some people learn better by listening, some learn better by reading, we can look at ourselves and see whatever works best for us in our circumstances, this may mean listening to a wide variety of lecturers. I find in general most people do have specializations and specialties that they really excel at. So for example, some lecturers might excel at discussing Islamic history, which you'll benefit from a lot, but you may also benefit a lot from someone who excels at discussing ethics or interfaith issues or social issues and so forth. And this helps us get a very well-rounded picture of Islamic thought and the Islamic heritage. And of course the same thing goes for reading. So simply exposing yourself to a diversity of sources will help you get a very comprehensive and well-rounded understanding of what is there in the Islamic tradition. Now simultaneous with the vast amount of information we have today, and which is even expanding as we speak, is another problem that technology has brought upon us. Yes indeed, back in those olden days, when I was so excited to get my one book about Islam, it is true we didn't have a lot of materials, but we had more time. There was no cell phone or mobile phone, no internet. I had a lot more time to read that book on Islam. Many of you may be very busy today, and you don't have time to pursue your Islamic education. You might think there's so much available, but when am I going to read it? When am I going to watch it? When am I going to listen to it? Alhamdulillah, if you do have access to certain technological devices, one of the things you can do is multitask. Now I am not attempting to advertise any devices, but let me just say that something like this is inordinately helpful. To tell you a secret, most of the religious lectures I listen to are not done when it's simply dedicated listening, sitting at home or somewhere else listening. Instead, you can put them on a device like this, or a mobile phone, or a recorder, it's like in the olden days we used to use cassette tapes, whatever works, and you can take advantage of your time. Now perhaps this is because I'm female, but I tend to do a lot of listening to religious lectures when cooking and cleaning, because these tasks don't always require a lot of brain work, so your brain is free to pay attention to the lecture. For some people it might be when driving, or when taking the bus. If you're taking the bus, you can also either with a device or even with the old fashioned method of using a book, take advantage of the time to increase your Islamic education. So even if you don't have the dedicated time every day to do nothing else but study, you can oftentimes take advantage of aspects of your daily life, whether it's a bus journey, a train journey, lunch break at work, whatever it happens to be, to try to expand your knowledge of the religion. So this in brief is some of the ways we can take advantage of what we have nowadays to increase our intellectual understanding of Islam. Now of course I do want to emphasize that the long term goal our community really needs is to have procedures for Islamic education and to have systems and institutions. Alhamdulillah we do have many that are forming throughout the world. There are online institutions that are available now which you might wish to explore too. However insofar as you don't have access to that there's a lot you can do on your own. And the most important thing is to be confident that you can and will develop your knowledge. Do not be intimidated by the ocean of resources. Do not be intimidated by how complex and confusing it may seem at first just to dive in and inshallah Allah will help you and also reward you because there is a great tawab for trying to learn more about Allah Ta'ala and what he has willed for his creation. Insha'Allah see you next time. Wassalamu alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh.