Nouman Ali Khan – Our 2024 Arabic Intensive Summer Program – Highlights – Bayyinah x ARMER

And what excites me about Aromar and this

campus and the summer program that we're doing

is they actually get to immerse themselves get

and get a first taste of full-on

Arabic immersion with expertise Arabic teachers.

I myself am actually going to be a

student this year.

I'm going to take a test, figure out

what level I'm at and I'm going to

beat myself up in this Arabic program along

with you guys.

I'm in the beautiful city of Istanbul with

the Aromar program organized by Baena Institute.

Myself, I'm a Baena student and I've been

with the Baena, I've been doing Arabic with

the Baena program for almost four years now.

So I'm really grateful to be here that

this experience has been life-changing.

SubhanAllah, it has been so amazing and I

have learned so much and I have acquired

so much information from this program and I

can't wait to take this information back to

my community.

Before I came, we have a WhatsApp community

where we started studying Baena curriculum, different WhatsApp

groups where we even had a group where

we started speaking Arabic but of course it

wasn't like, it's nowhere near this program and

I cannot wait to go back and just

share my experience with my fellow students and

hopefully inspire them to come and join this

program inshallah next year or the following years.

It's probably the only format I can handle.

I can't do light learning, I can only

do high-pressure intense sort of learning.

It's kind of what I do with everything

else so I'm used to that.

I think the more I have a drawn

-out, light, light schedule, the more difficult it

gets for me to keep up and I

just end up falling behind.

So the high productive for me was exactly

what I was looking for.

It was a really great investment.

I mean, I haven't taken a month off

from every activity and just fully dedicated myself

to study ever in this way so this

was a really great investment of time.

I see myself having evolved in a number

of gaps like I mentioned one of them

was poetry, the other one was just my

ability to communicate in Arabic.

I wanted to improve it and I saw

a dramatic improvement in that too but there

are other areas of Arabic and Islamic studies

I want to improve on so I'm probably

going to make this a yearly venture for

myself.

As-salamu alaykum, my name is Saad.

I came to the Romer program from London

in the UK and I'm currently studying.

I almost finished the level four in level

four course here in the Romer program.

I came here, I think, I didn't know

what to expect but I had some ideas

since Saad mentioned that it's going to be

more of an immersion program, more focused on

us producing Arabic like writing and reading.

So when I came here, I was quite

happy to find that the focus here was

not just about understanding stuff but it was

about producing stuff and in the beginning it

was quite tough to kind of adjust to

the, you know, being immersed in Arabic because

we never ever had the experience but, you

know, as time went on and there was

like a lot of things that these programs

tried to do so that we could have

that immersion experience.

I'll just give you one example.

One of the things that we have to

do is to have to sign a promise

that we're going to only speak Arabic from

9am to 2.40pm Monday to Thursday.

So I think that's just one of the

things that really helped us, you know, keep

on embarrassing ourselves with like bad Arabic and

just keep on getting better and everybody was,

actually a lot of people was doing that.

So I think that helped one of the

things and up at this point I think

I would definitely, I can definitely feel a

difference than when I started.

Like we just had our presentation in Arabic.

I've never ever presented in any other language

other than Urdu and sorry English and then

I was just able to very, I was

able to speak and actually surprise myself that,

you know, that happens.

As-salamu alaykum.

I'm Amir Sheikh.

I live in Dubai.

I'm a U.S. citizen born in Pakistan

and from my childhood I've been meaning to

learn Arabic.

So this is my third attempt in learning

Arabic.

We've invested 100 hours over a month long

period to the Aroma Intensive Arabic Program and

what I can say is that I'm really

happy that we're here in Istanbul, Turkey and

putting in this time and effort because from

where I was at the beginning of the

program to where I am today, a week

short of exiting, I really have learned a

lot of Arabic, more comfortable speaking.

Certainly my writing has improved, my understanding has

improved and not being able to speak a

single sentence.

Three weeks ago, we're now making three, four,

five minute presentation in Arabic on various subjects,

your family, what you do during the day,

you know, where do you work and so

on.

As-salamu alaykum.

My name is Hamza.

I came from America.

My age is 23 right now, alhamdulillah.

I came here to learn Arabic to connect

with the Tafsirs from Ibn Kathir and all

the Ibn Taymiyya and I just wanted to

learn more with the scholars but you can't

really do that unless you know Arabic, especially

Fusaha and over here they're teaching you fully

Fusaha Arabic and when I came here I

didn't even know a little bit.

When I did the prerequisite exam, I couldn't

even read the or understand the questions.

Alhamdulillah, now I can understand the questions and

somewhat answer them and completely when people are

talking at basic level, I can completely understand.

Before, I wouldn't be able to understand how

to say my name or anything like that.

Alhamdulillah, it's very nice.

Aroma, I think, I've done previous Arabic programs

in the UK before but Aroma is one

where I think I'm never going to forget

a lot of what I learned here because

the intensive format is something unlike any other.

You really dive into it and you learn

so much just within the first few days

and just being forced into that environment of

not being able to speak English allows you

to really rewire your brain to be able

to instinctively draw on Arabic terms and phrases

very quickly so I think that's something that

to me was the most beneficial coming here.

I think if you want to study Aroma,

go for it.

Dr Ibrahim is amazing here.

He has an amazing ethos that comes with

the whole university and if you're thinking about

it, just make the leap and do it.

You're not going to regret it.

This experience will benefit me heaps in the

future because, first of all, it's improved my

Arabic in terms of understanding and the understanding

of Suhara Arabic but it's also improved my

talking in the sense that now when I

speak in everyday language it's also improved.

I have more vocab to use.

I can talk about more complex conversations.

Before, I could speak Arabic but mostly basic

stuff but now I can like speak about

maybe politics or economics because I have the

vocab now to talk about those things.

Assalamualaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh.

I'm Abid.

I'm from Sri Lanka and I'm here to

study Arabic and the main reason as to

why I came here to study Arabic was

so that I could understand the Quran and

a big part of being a Muslim is

understanding the Quran so to take my Arabic

a bit further I decided to join the

Bayyinah program and alhamdulillah it's turned out to

be very beneficial to me as opposed to

when I first came here week one was

very difficult in the sense where there was

a lot of new content and eventually I

found my footing and alhamdulillah because of the

immersive setting almost all the students here are

involved in Arabic and because of that immersive

setting and everyone kept talking in Arabic and

so on and so forth it really built

up my Arabic vocabulary, my speaking skills and

especially my listening skills so as opposed to

when I first started right now I would

say I'm at a very good spot I

can and I would say this program in

itself is a very good way to start

your Arabic language and personally that's what I

feel because I started in level one and

inshallah I can I will be able to

take my Arabic studies to a further level.

Inshallah.