 Assalamu alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh to everyone to all the viewers I'm back we back I'm joined by the brother Faraz Abid for another how I learned Arabic story and you guys know how it goes bring you guys brothers and sisters who have learned Arabic who went from the state of not knowing Arabic to the point of knowing Arabic and we asked them how it was and how it was throughout learning Arabic and how it is now that they know Arabic so uh Salamu alaikum warahmatullahi first of all brother Faraz how are you so uh you're calling us from the UK today right yeah from the United Kingdom okay mashaAllah so I will let you I will give you a couple of minutes to first introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about you and in a general way because I will get into the questions later but in a general way where do you where do you learn Arabic and just you know in general a little bit by yourself uh so from Peterborough United Kingdom I learned my Arabic and Islamic studies etc in the United Kingdom I've been to a few are places mainly for holidays but Egypt I went for a bit and I've done a bit of hips and I'm married so yeah okay that's that's a good disclaimer because uh you know the sisters who will see you they will be like oh it's the brother married I want to tell you so uh so okay so you you before you because you told me you went to Egypt you you mainly learned Arabic in in the UK but before you you went to other countries did you actually already learn Arabic and was you able to speak in etc no I mean I wasn't able to speak first um I only started learning Arabic because my dad used to go to classes okay when I was about 14 15 I used to just join him in the classes and listen in and then it I started getting interested in the language and that's when I started off picking it up okay I mean I'm always I'm always amazed uh when uh when I see brothers who started uh I mean it's maybe because when I started learning Arabic myself I was really motivated and I was you know I was determined to learn the Arabic language but in Spain and I always tell these to the brothers we don't have much you know things going on for young Muslims mainly young people who start practicing etc and so I didn't find nowhere to to learn Arabic and the places they were too expensive so you know uh thank god that we have you here to share uh your story today with us so so what was your your age when you when you first got into a class Arabic class I started in the local masters around 13 14 okay um I just used to go because my dad used to go weekly once a week and um because he was interested for his own reasons and then he just bought me along right I wasn't interested first but uh slowly slowly I started uh seeing the importance of uh Arabic and uh the logo right so those studies were like general islamic or it was just literally that day um as in when I used to go when I was young yeah yeah when you first started my first time my dad was learning from these the Madina books those the three level Arabic books he was learning from them and I would just sit in and listen and see what they were doing and so yeah right right now you you know you know that you're about to start learning Arabic and you know that you know you found a class in a place to to learn what was you afraid of uh you know starting out um I wasn't I mean I wasn't afraid of any uh as in because I was younger um and I wanted to do my A levels and go uni do a normal thing but what happened was uh with my uni degree I wanted to do Arabic I wanted to do language with it because some courses have Arabic with the subject and um and it was I saw how hard it was because I used to I used to go with my dad and sometimes I wouldn't go because I wouldn't know I don't know it and um that that's really what I was afraid of because it was laziness as well I think I'm still lazy now so in the beginning you said you wouldn't you wasn't really interested but it was more your father started to push you a little bit then yeah you started to get interested now yeah yeah it was a little bit like that for me as well but I mean it was a when I was younger my father used to to push me to and Alhamdulillah all the Madaris in in Spain all the places where like to learn are either Pakistanis or or Bengalis and my father he would push me to go on Saturday but uh but I was young I didn't like it you know and then I stopped going like when I was 10 maybe and then when I was 16 I started to get interested again so you know thanks to our our parents for trying out yeah for trying okay so um you know once you started to to actually get interested in and uh you know you started to get motivated to actually learn more and more about the Arabic language what was the the thing you desired the most from learning Arabic to to understand it to read it to write to speak all because I used to go I've been in Umrah a few times and what happened Umrah is in Tarawih Salatu Tarawih when the Imam starts crying and the Jama'a starts crying and start crying is all you're thinking what's going on here what happened yeah and I'm just looking at my dad thinking what's what's happening here and I think that's when my dad felt that it was important to learn Arabic as well so um Allah just reveals ways for you to do things yeah that was my turning point as well I remember there was a speaker in in France that I used to listen to and uh this was in my beginnings of starting to practice and he said he said he had a question on on it was the question was basically a complaint about the Tarawih that it was too long and so he said well maybe it's not the Tarawih that is long but maybe it's you that you don't understand it just becomes you know boring basically so maybe what you need to do is is go ahead and learn Arabic and I this this answer you're always stuck in my head and since then I was like okay I need to need to learn Arabic because that that happened to me you know I used to go to Tarawih and it's literally like exactly yeah how many we have now okay we got six we got we got seven okay okay these are the seven to one okay you're just counting the Raka'as exactly the same no so uh so what no you can see the difference as well when you never used to understand it and now our time flies in Slot Tarawih how we just yeah yeah yeah that's crazy you know it's the first time actually when I when I came here to Mauritania I have never experienced praying 26 Raka'as because some of the some of the you know in the in the Maliki Fiqh for example yeah there is an opinion that they say it's 36 Raka'as so here in front of my house they do 26 Raka'as and I have never experienced that but you know they kind of like it's still a Jews I think but it's played in 26 Raka'as and it's three hours but it goes quite fast because you you know you listen into every day to the to the to whatever the the Imam is reading basically you just follow it so it's really nice it makes a difference so okay so once you start learning right and go into class what was the the method you guys used or the book um oh so so the method we used was basically the ustaz would explain the lesson so I was using various books Nahu, Surah, Ajromiyah, Dazim al-Fasya, Ajromiyah, Shalhumiyah, Diyamel, some speaking Arabic speaking books but the way the ustaz would explain the lesson and then what we would have to do is we would go go back and the next day we would have to translate that page so say if it's four lines or a page of Arabic text you would explain that text and then we would have to go go away and the next day would come back with the translation and our best way of explaining it was that yeah was that from Arabic I think by any chance no no no this the madrasa I went to the principal he he had his own text it's called Imdad al-Nahuf, Imdad al-Sarf and um and then yeah and but we used Muqad al-Majromiyah and the other classical texts but he had his own Surah al-Nahuf the principal had his own Surah al-Nahuf so you guys went straight away into into Nahu? he um you know we went straight away into Surah but we did a bit of Madina books for a couple of months first just to get used to the um the the time so Zalika Tilka man and auntie and just to get into that and then straight we went straight into Nahu because it was uh it was boarding I was boarding for um three four years there so I was basically it was nine to five but it was learning nine to five and then in the evenings we would uh do the homework could do the texts and everything either in the next day we'd have that ready so what I'm very curious about what what about the vocabulary vocabulary yeah so uh after every lesson there was around 10 20 words okay which we would have to pick up um so as well as translating or explaining translating that page or the paragraph we'd have to learn the words as well okay um so if there was a if there was a page on uh Zalika Tilka Tanika and Ulaika then we would have to learn some words so to so um so Ulaika Muflihoun Muflihoun um and the sentences with it okay so pick up some vocabulary so it was like learning the Arabic language to understand the Quran kind of thing yeah yeah yeah it was uh it was for sure yeah yeah all for sure okay so um so did you ever came across uh you know the method like do you guys do the Tasturifat as well like for example yeah yeah I remember those days okay I think I think you you guys uh like the Asian communities they actually use this even more like they they go all the way to the have either the haven yeah it was headbanging uh it was headbanging yeah because when I say what when I like vocabulary uh I think the best way to learn it is this way you know yeah using the grid yeah yeah yeah so uh yeah hundred I worked out so so for how long did you study strictly just Arabic strictly Arabic was about two years and then we went into and the Arabic text itself so we went to Arabic texts after two years of studying the grammar okay so so uh so how many aha moments do you have through throughout the process uh I had quite a lot you know after every lesson when you understand the lesson and you can clock those sentences yeah or the first moment you know when you go to Salatu Tarawih and you understand yeah man this is a jamma or this is a plural or yeah this is a fair or yeah yeah I know what's happening here and um you you understand what's going on that's the that's all the moments I had I started having them after learning so when I came used to come back home on the weekends and especially Ramadan I used to be like yeah you know I know I know what he was talking about all the khutbah even a juma so that's the juma so yeah I know what the Imam was talking about and I'll it'll be like that everything starts it starts to click everything starts to click everything starts to come together um especially after um because there's a mission as well Darul Lum Arabic studies is a mission it's uh I've realized that as well because only 10 of us graduated there were 30 of us that started and 20 slowly slowly like some went for personal reasons some went because it was too hard some went because they couldn't board they had to go home they felt homesick so it was and some went because they failed the exam so that's yeah only 10 of us ended up graduating yeah I heard about that Darul Lum I mean it's quite I think it's quite uh quite known in in the UK so so is it like a four-year program or something yeah it's uh it's four years and then you have to we don't have to but you go abroad or you go somewhere else to further your study because obviously the one disadvantage is I think anyway is speaking Darul Lums in UK we don't speak Arabic it's more grammar and more texts and stuff uh but speaking wise that's why they told us to go Egypt to go to Jordan and man and all these other places okay and that's the question that I was I was gonna ask you right now like for you to to tell us without being humble what will you rate your Arabic conversational skills from one to ten um this conversation is about five to six it's not um what happened was after Egypt I come back I'm speaking English all over again and it's like I've forgotten how to speak Arabic yeah but I mean as soon as I go to Arab country it'll take me one two weeks and I'm back into the flow again it's just I don't know why I think it's just that natural it's natural how it's okay it's just yeah it is it is I mean if you look at I remember I remember watching a documentary on on how how the body of the human being works basically and they used to so it was they were testing the capacity of of the human being basically and they were they will give to uh to a person it glasses that has mirrors that are actually crossed so basically when you use your right hand you you actually see yourself using the left hand and so when you want to turn right you're actually into turn left right so the first the first two weeks I think it was it was exactly two weeks like you know the person was bumping himself against the wall and and you know try like making making a mess everyone's trying to pick up the the glass of water but after two weeks uh he was using like you know it was it was by rote it was mechanical you know I mean so it happens as well with my with my language is for example right now I'm speaking in English and and my mother tongue and my native tongue is Spanish however I feel more comfortable speaking English than Spanish right now because uh you know I mean for example I've been married for to my to my wife she's a she's native uh English speaking for almost seven years so right now it's like it you know it became like I speak it every day basically but Spanish if I'm not in Spain or if I don't call my mom or if I don't call my father I don't speak it like that you know I mean yeah so I mean it's the same with with Arabic you know when you when you stop practicing then you just lose it yeah it's been I think four or five years for me now I haven't haven't uh but I've been trying to keep on top of it because I'm teaching here in their part time in the evenings and uh on the weekends I teach in mustard so um they keeps my Quran going but not the texts not the conversation nothing else so uh I got the I got the first bit then you went a bit too fast no I basically said that did you enjoy private classes or or group classes better oh private classes or group classes okay uh it depends you know on the stars mm-hmm group classes are okay but private classes you gain more because you can ask how much you want you get your time is with the teacher and himself or herself um because you're alone mm-hmm group classes are good if you already have learned the topic and you go you used to do every evening we used to sit in a group there's three four of us um we used to like revise over the day what we had gone through there was four of us so if if I never knew something another person another student would have told me yeah yeah that's how you translate this word or this is a better translation and explain the whole thing so I don't think it just depends mm-hmm so um so when you when you went to Egypt where were you in Egypt where exactly did you go uh I went Cairo I was going to go to Al-Azhar I was going to go to Al-Azhar uh but I only stayed for a few months and then I had physical problems mm-hmm I had to come back because my hip had hip problems okay and so I ended up in Cambridge for a year doing studies there for a year mm-hmm so do you get do you get the do you have the opportunity to get into any center in Egypt I have the opportunity yeah I have the opportunity to jump into Al-Azhar um and I think there's a place in Yemen as well um but yeah what you're saying yeah I have the opportunity to jump into that course no and do the um do the full thing now but uh it's been a few years and I ended up getting married in those few years no I don't know you can definitely push you back center no and uh that's it now I feel like I'm I don't know but honestly it's just like it feels like it's far away the studies it's feel like I don't know it feels like I've done them 20 years ago it just that's how it feels no no no so what would you what would you say you are you are able to like with the Arabic you have right now what does it help you to do for example uh I can pick up any texts and I can understand and read them mm-hmm I'm able to understand um some of the stuff in in the and the Quran etc mm-hmm what else um basically when I look at a word when I look at a sentence etc I can pick up more than the average person someone who hasn't studied so I can pick up I'll see the more of the secrets that it opens and message it opens to us no um and is also able to teach as well so it gives you um it gives you a lot of stuff it gives you respect as well I don't know if you notice but like when you come out from learning this stuff people automatically respect you when you go to the masjid and masjid and um and Allah gives you all of that amazing I mean he says in the Quran subhanahu wa ta'ala he says yeah so so uh okay so what do you think it was the hardest part of learning English hardest part right the hardest part was uh keeping on the course there's there was bumps here and there saying you know what this is too hard or something's always pushing you back no um especially when you have to remember everything in arabia you can't forget something it's like as much you're not allowed to get anything you have to remember all of it and uh that's what I think that's that's the hardest thing and also lazyness procrastination oh man I that was deadly uh I've had that all my life I think through all my studies and uh I had to discipline myself especially when I went to darul luma I had to have a lot of discipline and that's the hardest thing I think discipline and being able to keep keep practicing practicing practicing these uh yeah yeah I mean this discipline is because as you might know I have a an online program it's it's uh it's called Arabic like an adab and our main three things like we you know our slogan kind of thing is teaching people how to learn arabic in one year with simplicity discipline and uh focus you know so discipline I mean if discipline is I once read a quote it says it says discipline is the only requirement to master another you know another another thing or another field basically is the only requirement yeah discipline is something that you need to have otherwise you're going to find it too hot yeah but that's with anything that's with anything no okay so what what will you say is um um like how often how often impact how often impact it has had to you your life uh you know learning arabic uh it's made a huge impact um I've become more if you saw me 10 years ago saw me now whole difference my other change discipline has changed I've become more um like calmer more peaceful calmer passion up more because all these texts it teaches you it puts you in your place no it makes you a better muslim and uh and now um what was the question again now I say how often impact he has had in your life and how things are different now yeah now things are very different um like I said I've changed as a person um salah has changed me like going to the mustard here and there teaching especially teaching coming across different students um and arabic in general as well like when I go to turkey Morocco Egypt Saudi Arabia all these different at Dubai you see the different cultures and you can understand different things but um it's had a huge impact it's changed my whole life really now um it's made me better person so going back I just I was actually looking for the quote going back to the to the quote it's actually self-discipline is the only skill required to master any other skill that's what I meant yeah so to end uh this this um this interview I would like to ask you to give an advice uh to the average person that knows and acknowledges the importance of learning the arabic language however for whatever reason they haven't started yet um I would say um again a lot of people asking me this as well I would say that they should find time if they're working or if they're busy find time at least one hour a week or two hours find a private teacher even if it's online uh Skype etc and um do your arabic like that but you need to find a teacher it's hard to um it's hard to start something new with a book if you get like if I it's hard to teach yourself basically yeah yeah so if I if I start and you're holding you say I never knew nothing about Tajweed never knew anything and I started myself I would never get anywhere whereas if I studied it with a teacher for a year and then went on my own way then I would know how to do it and what what to do here and there so at least start with a teacher and that way you can build yourself up afterwards if they want to carry on like that but that would be my advice to find someone in the local city and just get on top of it get on to it it's important what you say find time because a lot of people for many things in life they say they say oh I just don't have time it's not that you don't have time you just don't make time because if you really truly are sincere with you look at what you do when you have when you're not doing what you you know what you what is taking off your time most of the times it's just like you know laying down on the couch or relaxing instagram scrolling things like that you know so making time and it's good as well to busy yourself with something that benefits you uh you know in life so uh so yeah thank you very much for us for making time for us to share uh you know your story and uh and I would like to end this interview by plugging myself and saying that if you watching this and you are interested about learning the Arabic language I would highly recommend you to go down below this video you will see a link that will bring you to my study case in my study case I explain how I went from zero to fluent in Arabic in 10 months with one single book and one single one single hour per day so you guys can check that out there and uh in terms of uh of uh of Akhana Faraz thank you very much again and uh I hope that Ramadan is going is going well as well I hope he wasn't too all right so for all the viewers