Shadee Elmasry – Ashir Kirk’s Interactive Tajwid Class
![Shadee Elmasry](https://artwork.muslimcentral.com/shadee-elmasry-150x150.jpg)
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
He was on this with me last time and here he is today Masha Allah,
a shear Adrian Kirk is an old friend from Connecticut. And we
he's he's with us again and it's a pleasure for me to have him
involved in our organization, the even if it's online and not in
purpose and in person, but he is out in Memphis, Tennessee, and
he'll be doing the touch weed and he is a Asha cough touch wheat, he
loves the science of Tajweed and inshallah when you take this class
with him, it's actually going to rub off on you that love of touch.
So let me hand it over to a shear again, let's start by telling us
you know something about when you started off and what was the
school like that you went to in Morocco? What was the what was the
10th Weed life like and the hips life I should say? It's more that
you are living that life of hips every single day all day. Just
hips Yeah. So
so my leg mournful as we get this, we learn from the lens on salam
ala Rasulillah, while Annie or some demon Lila so
yeah, I started. So my 10 week journey started in Syria, and
Damascus, where I spent about four years. And
you know, Syria is known for, you know, their touch with scholars as
well as, you know, the Arabic language, among other things, but
those two are kind of like two of their really biggest strengths, if
you will. And so Tajweed was just like, readily available, like
everywhere, and almost as you pretty much they had to you, I
mean, everywhere, Mashallah. You can find people to teach to tweet.
And one thing that I found that was really awesome, and amazing
about the scholars of Shem was just, they were just so open, and
just so giving with their time, right. And so one example, two of
my teachers, one of my teachers,
my main main teacher, was chef Ennis and hibbity. In Syria. And
then my second teacher was chef, Salman, a nurse, Dr. Samet, a
nurse. And both of them would come to the masjid in the morning after
fajr. And teach for about three hours straight, right after budget
right after the Epcot and everything like that about three
hours straight, anywhere from 75 to like, 100 students who so they
will sit and listen. And keep in mind, you got all these students
there. And, you know, you sit there for an hour, two hours,
three hours, depending on when you showed up or whatever. And most of
it was listening, which was very interesting, right? Why the time,
by the time you started to revive by time you got to read, you only
you might have only read for, you know, maybe five minutes, you
know, 10, maybe at the most if you're like a really advanced
student reading a lot. But that was it. And then the rest of the
time was spent literally listening to other people recite, make
mistakes and get corrected. And that was just absolutely an
absolutely phenomenal experience. And so from there, so you got in
the morning, and the afternoon between like the holder also time,
you could go to their places of work. So Dr. Simon has a medical
clinic, he would literally teach classes at his medical clinic
between patient visits. Mashallah, right? I personally experienced
this myself along with a friend of mine, going there and you wait
until he's available, you go into his office sitting right at his
desk, just open your book, start reading and he'll stop you and
start explaining and so on and so on so forth. If you got a phone
call and pause, take the call if you got a patient Hold on wait a
second God, you do need to do come back continue the class, Chef NS
he owned a a tire shop and children's clothing store. So we
go to his clothing store around the harasser time, same thing in
his office, read to him if he has something to do he do he come back
blah, blah. And then in the evening, around Asia after a short
time, shake ins opened his home up and you could go to his home all
in the same day. You could see him at the masjid go to his shop and
then go to his home in the evening. All just to do to God in
heaven as well and have held well it was it was held with NTP. For
most and some we're only doing two three. And so
the opinions of studying in general in Syria mashallah was the
most amazing experience. I personally haven't seen it
anywhere else at on this level, but I'm sure there are some tools
around the world who probably also do this like the hubba in Yemen. I
know they do something similar. And so that was my journey in
Syria. As for Morocco, you know, they have the modalities it aka
the
The traditional Quran schools, I was in a small town called Kalat
Serafina, about an hour or so outside of Marrakech. And it was,
you know, typical Quran school experience, you know, you memorize
everyday, the only differences they did the board. So we actually
wrote the ads on a board, they call it a load, right in Arabic
Lo, Allah, you write it, the ink is made out of like, you know, a
vert sheep's wool
from a very specific part of the sheep, it would burn it until it
turns into charcoal, and then crumble it into like dust and then
mix it with water, it was actually kind of oily, which was
interesting. And he put a sponge at the bottom of it of a jar, and
pour the ink over the sponge so that you know it would absorb it.
And you made pens out of bamboo that you cut into the shape of
pens, and so on. And then it would make little canals or whatever in
the pendant and to make it absorb the ink. And then the chef would
dictate on you, you will write and then repeat what you wrote to them
and start where he started. And then he would continue. And you
would do like that, then you would pass the board to him. Once you
were finished, he would make sure you didn't make any writing
errors, he would make any corrections, pass it back to you
that you recited to him. And then and then he listened to make sure
that he didn't miss anything. And it was this like back and forth.
Absolutely amazing. Then you would go off and memorize the whole day.
And then when you were finished, you come back, turn the board to
face him and recite.
You know from memory, you made a mistake, you had to go back and
fix it. If not, you washed the board off. And then you let it
dry. And then you started the same process over the next day. And
throughout the day. You just kind of reviewed along with other with
other people. And so that was a bit of my experience and how many
left? Although I have to say I started in the US, which is in
football in Connecticut, so.
So onto the course.
So I can share my screen too. Right? That was Yeah, yeah. So let
me see here
let me see application window.
I think that's the document there. You guys can see my screen.
You guys can see my screen.
Dr. Shetty. Yep, you're good to go. Okay. All right. So first
things first, the course materials.
Oh, sorry. The last thing is, is
here in the US, I studied with shift, shift,
shift from Hamilton OBC.
That was in Ohio, and he gave like each other and stuff like that. So
people familiar with with him in that community up there. That's
where that's where I got the jazz as follows.
So the course materials and the requirements, pretty simple and
straightforward. Number one, you have to already be able to read
Arabic with a certain level of proficiency, right? Doesn't mean
you have to know, you doesn't mean you have to be like, you know, the
most perfect reader and not some stumble or stammer at all
whatsoever. You can have some stammering some stumbling is fine.
But my point is, is it can't be a situation where,
you know, the students still is kind of mixing up quite high
Castro Obama said the sukoon that with this letter, that letter
mixing up letters, you know, it's kind of like, gotta kind of get
that stuff
in order before coming to the class because it will, it will
slow you down a whole lot if you have to kind of
keep up with you know, just finishing up learning how to read
along with, you know, learning to read and how to pronounce
everything and so on and so forth. Right? And so we're gonna, so you
got to have the ability to reorder and proficiently with little to no
assistance at all whatsoever. Insha Allah,
then the next thing is a Earth many scripts Quran. That's the
ones that's like the ones that come out of Saudi, right? Or
anyone that matches that script, right? The reason is, because that
script actually has Tajweed built into the scripts built into the
script. You know, I wish I would have put an example in this
document about that too. But for example,
even the Fatah tan Kasara, tan llama 10. They're written
differently according to what rules should be applied to. So for
instance, those of you have a little bit of background Hip Hop
would have a Titan or Kassala 10 That's perfectly aligned. They're
like perfectly lined up right
They're right there. And then like, if fat and it'll harm, for
example, that the fat titanicus for 10 would be kind of offset it
will not be perfectly aligned to be offset. And these are things
that they did intentionally, to, to help the reader be able to
identify certain rules visually as well, right? And then Obama 10,
you know, so on. And so one has the Dhamma with the line versus
the two bombers, these are all according to the touch rule to
touch weed rules. So the earth manuscript has wheat built into
the script, whereas the, the South Asian script like the ODU, like
script, Persians, or whatever, I don't know the official name for
it, but that one does not have to be built into the script. And so
it really helps to have that with many must have. And when I say
dedicated most half, what I mean is, you want to use the same one.
For all classes, it's just better, you know, it's just better to use
it, you know, just for the sake of consistency, and, you know, pages
and page number of being the same placement of the verses are all in
the same place. So you know, you know, so it's not caused any
confusion, you know, later on, and so I really do recommend a
dedicated must have that you bring to every single class insha Allah
The next thing is I said, bundles of humility, right? Takes a lot of
it takes a lot of humility to really get through to me. It's a
real good
way to like shatter one's neffs and really tame one's neffs why is
that because we start off with the bare bones basics right? And when
you've been doing something for so long, like reciting Quran reciting
Surah Fatiha for example, and then someone says Alright, now let's
start with Fatiha number one, you got to have some humility to be
like, alright, bet let's start with fat. Yeah. Bismillah most
people are like, Well, I think I know fat. Yeah, right. Well, let's
see. Let's see how well you know five. Yeah. So we start with five.
Yeah, you recite that? And we go from there. Right? And so that's
number one. But then if you start to realize, oh, wow, I'm making
I'm making mistakes. I made the second mistake. I made a third,
fourth fifth. Oh, my God, my fatty has all messed up and I've been
Muslim my whole entire life. Relax, it's okay. It's okay.
Right. But you gotta be gotta have a certain level of humility to be
able to,
you know, to be able to handle that you got to be okay with that.
You know what I'm saying? And then finally, just that repetition,
repetition, repetition, go back, do it again. Go back, do it again.
You know, it just takes some humility to do that. And the next
one, I said, Man, patience, right? That's just me like, just being
funny, right? A lot of patience. You got to have a whole lot of
patience. Because it may be that you don't perfect your Fatiha for
months. Allahu Allah, right. I knew that I mean, even even even
Arabs, right? I knew they were Arabs in the in Syria, people who
are Syrian, right, who would be on Fatiha for three and four months
straight before Shabbat let them events, right. So this is not a
thing of you know, anyone has an advantage over the other tidge
Wheat is a science, you don't study it, you're not going to
master it. It's as simple as that. So I don't care where you from, I
don't care what your background is, I don't care what language you
speak. It doesn't matter. Touch wheat is its own thing. Quran is
its own thing. It is unique, Masha, Allah is the book of Allah,
and it needs to be studied, it needs to be studied in order to
understand it, or even properly recite it. So if you don't study
it, you're not going to master it's as simple as that. And so you
got to have a lot of patience, you know, might be a while before you
really get your Fatiha tight. And that's okay. You just got to be
okay with that and just keep it keep it trucking. The next thing
is, you got to have some serious listening skills. You got to
really, really, really, really listen not only to your own
recitation, but to the recitation of others. I always tell people
Tajweed is one of those things. It's one of those subjects that
having one on one with a teacher is not actually like bragging
rights. You know, a lot of people say, Yeah, I got private classes,
wishing someone so it's just me and him, me and her, you know, and
that's it. What would touch me there's not necessarily an
advantage, that's a disadvantage. You want other people in your
touch weak class, you want to hear other people reciting. You want to
hear other people getting corrected, because that helps you.
It actually helps you remember what I said in the beginning, we
would sit there and we'd only read for five to 10 minutes max, but
then the other two hours, three hours was spent listening to
others, and that was the majority of the benefit that we got was
actually hearing hearing others be recite and be corrected. And then
so you know, it's just it's a different you know, it's really a
different a different experience. You have some really good
listening skills. And another thing about the humility tunes
kind of goes back to the humility you'll develop a very keen ear for
good touch me important totally right. And so you got to be able
to be humble enough to withhold and refrain from pointing out that
people have bad taste we because in the beginning, you might not be
able to pick up right you hear somebody have a beautiful voice
touch we use all Jack
thought, right? But you don't know that you just hear the beautiful
voice, you don't have an ear for Tajweed you just have an ear for,
you know, beautiful voices, right? which most of us do, right. And so
all of a sudden, you start studying Tajweed in depth, I
promise you guaranteed, you're going to develop a very keen ear
for for a 10th week, good Ted wheat, imported wheat. And so it's
gonna be tempting to be like, Man, I gotta fight. Here's my stuff.
Oh, man, a guy was messing up all kinds of stuff. He wasn't doing
any color. He wasn't doing any this.
Got it got it got to be able to tone it down. Don't talk about
anybody's touch we
did anybody else, keep it to yourself, keep it to yourself, and
just use it as motivation for you to, you know, kind of stay on top
of yourself. And to help them perhaps use it as motivation to
teach, right? Maybe offer your services to the person and you
know, after you get to a certain level, say, Hey, listen, you know,
I'm doing some test week classes, you want to join this Mala. And so
use it to lift people up not to break people down, not tear people
down. So we got to stay humble and shot a lot throughout this
experience. And last but not least, in terms of requirements
and course material, a great sense of humor. I'm a jokester, I joke a
lot, you know what I'm saying. But then you also have the, the part
of like I said in the video, in order for me to give you an idea
of, of why I'm correcting you, I have to repeat what you say Right?
And so it might sound like I'm mocking you, but I'm actually not
right. And this is no mind you. I'm just teaching the way I was
taught this, how almost all my teachers taught me, they would
repeat what you say, right? And then and then say it the right
way. And so I might say, okay, you don't say you know, F which is F
wadge. Right, f y j not if we're just FYI, Jack, but I'm not making
fun of you. I'm telling you, this is what I hear. Right? And this is
what I want you to say. But then in general, too, I tend to just
joke you know, I poke fun sometimes I'm not picking on
people, I'm not a bully, right. But I just I mess with people once
in a while and my class you know, kind of keeps the keeps everything
kind of upbeat and, and not so dry, you know, but it's just a
part of my personality. If you don't like it, just telling me
hey, man, like we joke on me and I'll just, I'll be I'll joke with
everybody else but you I'll be driving you
the next thing is the goal the goal is getting close to Allah
subhanaw taala right through getting our text weekend tight,
simple as that right, we want to get our test weekend tight,
because we want to preserve the the Quran or contribute to the
preservation of the Quran through reciting it properly as well as
memorizing but for those of us who find difficulty in memorizing
right, then this is one way you can contribute heavily as well is
through preserving the proper recitation and passing that on to
future generations in sha Allah. So
we'll begin with definitions of Twitch we're both literal and
technical history of Twitch we ruling of Twitch we the virtue of
reciting for our stage being as well as etiquette with the Quran
in general, what you should do before to prepare reciting Quran
during the recitation of Quran as well as, after studying the Quran,
which obviously, obviously, Afters, you know, it just means,
like, you know, once you reach a certain level, there's
expectations, but like, or not sort of level, once you're on the
journey, period, once you start it, you know, there's certain
expectations that are upon us, but I'm gonna show you how much time I
got my finish kit? No, keep going, whatever you need to say. All
right, yeah, I'm almost done anyways. So then.
And then once we get past all the, you know, those preliminary
things, you know, that's all important. You know, whenever
studying the Islamic sciences, you'll see a pattern of that, you
know, going over the definitions is really important to understand
what it is that you're studying, right? So that you haven't so
you're not caught off guard, why are we why are we covering this?
Why is he doing that? Why is he nitpicking here? Why is he why
why? Well, when we do all that preliminary stuff, it knocks all
that confusion out and gives you a clear idea as to why everything is
the way that it is. And so the next phase after that class, we
will start with the theory right? We'll start learning the theory
and then applying right away. So the way it's going to be is we're
going to do two classes a week, we're going to be Thursday and
Sunday, right? So on Thursday, let's say for example, on the
first day of the of the week, that we do have the two days, we're
going to study theory, and then the next class, we're going to do
drills to
help us apply the rule that we learned in the previous class. As
we progress we'll be you'll be expected to apply more and more of
the rules that we learned. So say for example, we we learned the
harm in the first in the first week, we're going to learn the
theory right? What is it what does it mean? How to identify
So on and so forth, look for examples in the Quran on our own
kind of split up, you know, take some time for ourselves, find it
in the Quran, share our examples with each other, make mistakes get
corrected, gives us a better understanding, right? Next class,
all right, we're reciting, boom, we're going to try to, you know,
I'm going to hold you accountable for being able to apply that that
rule, right based on our previous class. And then the next time
we'll do let's say, of heart, and then the next application class,
I'm going to expect it the harm and harm, and then the next
application class, it will harm your heart and epilepsy. And and
so each time we go in and build up, so by the time you're
finished, you'll be expected to be able to at least identify as well
as apply at least to a certain level, right? Because everybody's
at different levels, not everybody's gonna be at the same
level with it in this class, right? But at least you're going
to have an idea of how to apply it properly, at the very least, if
not master in sha Allah, right. But you have an idea of how to
apply it. And also you'll be able to identify it right? And so you
just be held accountable for more and more, the more that we learn,
whatever we don't learn, you won't be held accountable for it until
we learn it. But the very, very beginning, we will go back to the
basics just really quickly kind of breeze through right you see in
this chart here that I have this chart with bat, right? This is bat
in 12 different ways, right? First one, you got bat with Fatah.
Kosala dama. Then you have it with the Oh, I missed one Subhanallah I
didn't add one more. So it's actually going to be more than 12.
It's 12 gonna be 15. So we have Fatah Castle Adama do you have
aleafia. And wow, you have the bow was to * preceded by for
tigers, Obama. And then you have the bow with Shedders as well
preceded by Fatshark, Hassan Dhamma. And you also obviously
going to have back with
the 10 win, but Tatanka so turned on by 10. Right. So what's the
significance of this? Why why we got to go back to this, don't we
do this by the neuron here? Why don't we learn this one? We're
like five years old? Yes. Okay, fine. However, you didn't do it.
Most people, not all people some of you might have, but most people
did not do it with necessarily with Tajweed in mind, we did it
with reading the Quran in mind. So it's different, right? So I might
be able to say babby, boo, Babbie, boo, EBIT, EBIT, Uber, EB bat, FB,
a boo and all other variations that can happen to that Ben being
born right. All that was bad perfectly. Try it with the aim.
Right. Some people can say I have no problem. But some people have a
really hard time saying he was with Obama was Kessler. Excuse me.
Some people have a hard time saying Oh,
with with with Obama, right? The iron was dumb. I have a hard time
saying some people can say i Oh, no problem. But then you tell them
say
with sukoon difficulty, I might say no problem. But then I say
yeah, I might have a problem with that one with Sycuan preceded by
Kessler, then you say or I might have difficulty saying that one.
Or I can say all six of those. But then then I say falou Lima UD fi
Ay, ay, ay oh, right. I might have difficulty saying it with with
shed them. So how do we figure that out by drilling ourselves
with all of the letters in all of these various formats to see where
our weaknesses are. So once we are able to identify our weaknesses,
boom, we're able to hone in and Inshallah, fix those things. So
we're not going to spend like, half the semester on that. But I
definitely want to bring it back to the basics in sha Allah. And
most of that will be kind of self study. And you can contact me and
we can kind of, you know, if you need and go over, and so on and so
forth. I can even recreate, I'm sorry, create some recordings of
it. So you can practice with the recordings, and so on and so
forth. Insha Allah, but we will go back to the basics, and we will be
talking about some of them hostage as well. It's not good to just
skip things just because all most of us have done this. No, we're
going to go through the basics. We're going to do Maharjan rules
again. Yes, we're gonna talk about the letters of the throat and the
tongue in the and if you did this, it's okay. Like I said in the
other video with the patent on the podcast with Dr. Shadi if you are
already proficient in this, but perhaps never taught it right or
don't have much experience teaching it use that as an
opportunity to learn how you can teach that material to other
people. Because at the end of the day, why are we studying touch we
only to improve ourselves not to pass it on as well. Why are we
studying Quran only for ourselves? No. So we can pass it on teach it
to our kids teach it to our community members, maybe teach it
to our parents, right? We want to teach as many people as we
possibly can, but we first want to learn it. Learn it ourselves
right? And so you know the promise of sudden said fatal comenta I
lemon for an hour I lemme the best of you. Are those are is the one
who
We'll learn the code for N and teaches it. Right. So in order for
us to be high runners, right or the best of people, it's not
enough for us to just learn it on our own. We got to be ready to
teach it. So yeah, I know this already. Okay, have you ever
taught it? If not, Bismillah? Take notes on how it's being taught and
try to use that in sha Allah.
When teaching others, let me see here, if it's anything else,
right?
Yeah, so everything else I pretty much explained. So that's pretty
much it. So from the left, that's pretty much what our classes gonna
be like, you know, it's going to be basically theory, one day
application the next day. And pretty much simple like that. And
then if somebody had asked to, if, are we going to do any kind of one
on one,
Quran training or anything of that nature? Yes, in sha Allah at the
end of the Application class, especially, we will inshallah have
one on one, you know, between me and various students in sha Allah,
we will have one on one recitation with firstly can recite, and I'll
correct them and everyone else will listen, and you take turns
doing that, however, the class is not that long. So we'll be
limited, right. And so what we can do is some days after we've
studied a certain amount, so that we can focus and hone in on
application, we might, I can dedicate some, like whole classes
from the beginning to just application so as many people can
read as possible Sunday, you might just come on Bismillah let's get
started. Alright, who's here, who's gonna get started boom
Bismillah. Let's start Fatiha. Now as follow up, whatever the case
may be right, recite. And then we're going to go through, just
like that in sha Allah. But we might end there might the last
thing I'll say is there might be days, where maybe only four or
five people can read it, it might be 20 people, 30 people in the
class, right? And might only be like, who knows four or 567 or so
people be able to read and people be able to read this class. And
the next time we'll be in another class, and so on and so forth. So
I think that's everything. If anybody has any questions, you
guys can direct it to Safina society. And I can get back with
him shortly. I hope. So. Thank you very much. And I told you, no one
teaches a two week class that's more energized than a serious two
week class. I remember even taking you you conducted a class on way
to in the car to Boston on Bismillah R Rahman r Rahim.
And a ton of people actually didn't never set it. Right. Right.
They had never actually been taught about the customer and how
deep the customer actually should be. So the shears class is going
to be full of energy. But like he said, it's very most important
thing he said, is that you don't learn to read only when you're
reciting. You learn to read when you're listening as well. So if
there's 10, there, 10 people in the class, you're learning by
listening to their mistakes as well, not just one year reciting.
And this is important for everybody to know, because I
remember myself conducting Tajweed classes in which students would be
sitting, waiting, texting, thinking that that's not part of
the education until and they say I only recited two ideas. Come on,
it's not fair. It doesn't work like that you learn as much by
listening as you do by reciting so that's the most important point
from a shares presentation from that collection. And so now shares
we start next Sunday, but remember, shears class meets
Saturday and Thursday. So your first class will actually be on
the 20 234 25th Oh, Thursday, Saturday, sorry, Thursday,
Saturday, so we start on Sunday, but shears first class will be on
the 25th. Thursday the 25th. Okay, and then meet again on the 27th
Alright, so those are the classes now for us now for us. Your youth
could take the class too. Yeah. Yeah, so Yes, yours class is the
crossover between the youth and the adults. Yeah, son, son,
daughter, mother, father mix. Auntie uncle grandma grandpa,
everybody can go together as long as the person can doesn't stutter
over letters and tissue you got to know you got to know just go
directly to the letters know that to steal at least like really
well, if you stammer, it's alright. But you got to learn
those things like get that like real tight before joining the
class. It'll be an easier experience for you. Okay, thank
you so much for sure. Does that gloves gonna
like themselves? Alright, so a shears class is the crossover
between youth and adults.
Did we freeze or what? Are we good? So a shares class is a
crossover. A youth could take it, adults can take it. Now we shift
over now to