Links

For those who have a little bit of understanding about the Arabic language, or wish to deepen their understanding, you may wish to venture into the ArabicGems blog. This blog covers different gems gleaned from the Qur’an based on the Arabic language. Subhanallah, it really helps you realize the miraculous nature of the Qur’an–how every phrase or even word articulates waves of meaning, and how translations don’t even begin to convey everything.

Learning Arabic? Trying to memorize the Qur’an? Then inshaAllah you’ll find this Yahoo Groups beneficial: Qur’anic Word of the Day. Every day, the administrator sends out a word–Arabic and english–as well as references to two ayat in the Qur’an that contain the word (transliteration and translation). Very beneficial mashaAllah. Also, for those new to Yahoo! Groups, they’re like public mailing lists. You can configure your settings so you receive an email daily, or a digest weekly, or no email (and you browse from the site).

If you know your tajweed (Qur’anic rules of beautifying recitation) but feel a bit rusty or need to review them, this website explains it very well. The website helps more if you already know tajweed but need a refresher. It’s very difficult to learn tajweed without a real, human teacher. May Allah accept our reading of the Qur’an as ‘ibadah. Ameen.

Learn all about the etiquettes and adab of du’a here. Highlights include: Make du’a at times of trouble and of joy. Repeat the du’a three times Make du’a in a moderately low voice And remember, with du’a, three things can occur: Allah can accept your du’a! Alhamdullilah. Allah will save it for you until the akhira. Allah will avert evil from you. In any case, you benefit.

One way to learn Arabic is to memorize the Qur’an with a word-by-word translation. emuslim.com provides such a tool. Once you memorize a few (approximately 20-30) verses, you’ll find that other verses become decipherable, and familiar words leap at you everywhere you turn. I recommend this method to everyone–for some, it’s the only way to memorize Qur’an. Related Links: emuslim English word-for-word translation

Islamic-Knowledge.com’s Lessons in Arabic Language website provides an online self-paced course for people to learn Arabic, in Arabic. It follows the famous three Medina Arabic books page by page, and displays translations and transliterations for every word used. Unlike other online courses, this course teaches entirely in Arabic (minus the transliteration), similar to the way they teach Arabic at Al-Medina university. Although more difficult to learn than an English course, it forces the reader to think in Arabic, an advantage not offered by many other courses.

MadinahArabic.com teaches Arabic in the style of the Madinah Book Series, used to teach Arabic at Al-Medina university. The series style caters to English-speakers. The website follows a similar teaching paradigm. The course walks you through the process step by step. They seperate the material into two sections: Arabic Reading Course, which teaches letters, and Arabic Language Course, which teaches grammar and vocabulary. The course offers a self-paced and comprehensive approach.