A Foreign Language Close to Their Hearts

Community News - Community News

Written by Yaman Shalabi, Muslim Link Staff Writer

Thursday, 11 March 2010 13:18

Students Struggle to Learn Arabic at Local Institutes

During his elementary school days, D.C.-native Sulayman Kokayi was the child who always had to struggle and give triple the effort to learn the Arabic language. On several occasions, he was asked to leave the classroom. According to teachers, he was not up to par with the rest of the students.

His solution: transliteration.

It didn’t solve his problem, it just elevated it. He learned that the hard way.

“You will never be able to memorize the Quran!” his third-grade teacher said.

Already behind his classmates and feeling frustrated, the comment stung, Kokayi said. However, his dedication and commitment to learn the language of the Holy Quran was not thwarted. Shocked at such a blatant remark, Kokayi set out to prove his third grade teacher wrong. And so, he moved to Canada and enrolled in a boarding school, Al-Rashid Islamic Institute, where his studies focused on Islam and the Quran.

“It was a pretty good experience; I learned a lot,” said Kokayi. “I was able to mature pretty fast.”

Swept into an intense program, Kokayi’s daily routines and activities began after the Fajr prayer. He focused on Arabic and Quranic studies until the noon lunch break. For three hours after Dhuhr, he worked on his math and English studies. After Maghrib, it was back to Arabic and the Quran, working on the next day’s assignments. He had a little reprieve on Saturdays and Sundays when the school days were cut short.

Immersing himself in his studies, Kokayi was able to get the help he needed from teachers who were “focused on the students,” he said. Teachers often remained after class hours to go over and answer any problems students had. Living within close proximity to the teachers allowed for a more personal relationship, said Kokayi.

Separated into a group based on his skill level, Kokayi started off learning the alphabet, going over vocabulary and perfecting the grammar. He was bumped up and went on to read the Quran proficiently until he finally began memorizing. After completing the memorization of the Quran in 2002, he returned to the area, where he now leads prayers at many masajid.

There is an overwhelming number of Muslims in the D.C. area striving to perfect the language of the Prophet. Locals from all age groups are united to achieve one common goal: learning Arabic.

Nauman Ilias, the director and chair of education at the Muslim Community Center in Silver Spring, Md., presides over the masjid’s Arabic classes, in which he is also a student. The rigorous weekend program has been “a personal sacrifice” for him.

“You wake up on the weekends wanting to spend time with your family,” he said. Consequently, Ilias has given up the joy of being with his wife and children on weekends in exchange for Arabic.

But Ilias and other local Muslims are united on a journey to embrace a language so ancient yet replete with magnificence, radiance and divinity. Why?

It is the language of the Quran.

“There is no better way to fully learn and understand the Quran than in Arabic,” Ilias said. And although this holy text is found in different languages “a lot is lost in translation.”

Kokayi agreed, believing that Arabic was essential in understanding the Quran.

“You are more in touch with the Quran [knowing Arabic],” he said. “The fact that it was revealed in Arabic shows just how great the language is.”

Ali Alatharee, 33, began learning Arabic in 2004 at the Institute of Islamic and Arabic Sciences in America in Fairfax, Va. After it was shut down, he joined an Arabic institution at Dar-us-Salaam in College Park, Md., but the program eventually died down, he said. He finally came across MCC in 2006 and has been continuing his Arabic education since.

A full-time working adult with a family, Alatharee was often discouraged because of the difficulty and sacrifice that comes with learning Arabic. At times he wanted to give up, he said.

“There is no opportunity to practice speaking Arabic in the West as opposed to the East,” said Alatharee. You can learn the concepts and grammar, but having someone to talk to is the best way to master the language, he said. Alatharee would often go home and recite to his children sentences he learned in class. He would repeat them until his kids picked up on the Arabic.

One student living in Maryland is grateful that her parents put her in a private Arabic Islamic school, regardless of her Turkish background. Disappointed with the educational standards at school, she spent four years “being taught Arabic as if she was already expected to know it.” Not until she decided to pursue her education elsewhere did the school implement a program for non-Arabic speaking students. Although for her it was too late.

Converts and non-Arabs are not the only ones struggling to learn Arabic; children of first-generation Arabic-speaking parents have lost their grip on the language, Ilias said. There is an increasing need among Muslims to fully understand the complexity of the Quran and this can only be done by tackling the language of Islam, he said.

Mariam, daughter to first generation Arabic speaking parents from Fairfax, hopes that a better understanding of the Arabic language will help her to better communicate with her family and help her to live independently in Saudi Arabia.

“I can understand Arabic but I have to think about what to say,” she said, regretfully. “English, it’s easy, you can blurt it out.”

She explains that Arabic at her school “was a task needed to get out of the way.”

“Teachers didn’t know how to assign work,” Mariam said. “[We] had more important things to do. Arabic was nothing.”

Mariam still struggled and put in more effort than her classmates did, she said. In class, she would attempt to speak Arabic with the teachers “to make sure it wasn’t going anywhere.” Her teachers would correct her if she spoke incorrectly. To make sure the basics were still engraved in her, she and a friend would jokingly converse in Arabic.

Often, beginners to Arabic don’t realize that with learning this language they are actually learning about a precious culture and invaluable religion rooted in ancient times, explained one Virginia resident.
Tehseen Raza, a volunteer and fourth-year student at the MCC Arabic Language Center, was surprised at the increase in students registering to learn Arabic - between 22 and 25 students signed up in the past three years. A total of 42 students registered in 2010.

“I was first like a parrot reciting what I knew [from the Quran], but now I can dissect it,” Raza said proudly. “People come thinking they’ll learn [to speak] fluently within one year; it’s a long process and you need patience.”

Despite its complexity, Ilias thinks Arabic is a relatively easy language to learn.

“It’s an easy language with many rules and few exceptions whereas English has few rules and many exceptions,” he said.
Apart from Arabic being the language spoken by Prophet Muhammad (SAW), many adherents deem it a necessary and practical skill to have, especially in society today.

“It’s useful,” said Mona from Lanham, Md. “It’s not just a language of the Book but [a language] we use every day. You shouldn’t give up.”

In school, Mona and her friends learned Arabic through songs.

Mona was once called the Deeko (rooster) girl after having to memorize an Arabic song by the name of “Ana Al-Deeko” (I Am the Rooster) for one of her classes. She enjoyed the song so much that after memorizing it, she began reciting it non-stop.

“You feel a form of success and it’s something to be proud of,” she said.
As exams neared, Mona and friends would form little study groups of five people. They created flashcards with a picture of a word and its Arabic spelling. This made it easier to grasp the information instead of having to write the word in English and translate it into Arabic.

According to Ilias, learning Arabic is essential.

“You have Muslims from all over the world speaking the same language when offering prayers to Allah,” he said. “It’s a common denominator among Muslims.”
Now, Mariam’s grandfather hates when she speaks English, she said.

“Araby, Araby” (Arabic Arabic) he yells at her.

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Note: Several names of people and places have been either changed or left out due to requests of anonymity.