Tom Facchine – The Comment Section #07 – A Beginners Guide To Islam

			Someone asked if I want to learn about Islam. Where do I begin? Well, that's a big question. And it
has a different answer depending on who you are, what your skills are, and what are your goals?
Okay? Do you want to become a scholar? Do you want to be a student of knowledge? Do you want to have
direct access to our intellectual sort of heritage and the scholarly tradition that you need to
learn Arabic, that's there's no getting around that. If you just want to kind of benefit yourself
and not kind of go through that much trouble to learn Arabic, then you're going to be limited in
what you can do from the English language, because there's not very much in the English language to
		

			be frank, but there's still things that you can do. But again, it goes back to what are your goals
or your goals to understand more about the flip side of worship? Like what what to do? And what are
the sort of different opinions about there? And what is sort of the bounds of the Sharia that are
kind of okay to move in? Or are you someone who's trying to strengthen your faith? Are you somebody
who's trying to understand more the history of the Prophet alayhi salatu salam? So there's not one
answer, right? I would say that for somebody who is an English language speaker, and who is not
really trying to be a student of knowledge or anything like that, then the two things that person
		

			should focus on the most. In addition to the Koran, obviously, everybody needs a relationship with
the Koran, but the Sierra of the Prophet alayhi salatu salam, and understanding Allah's names and
attributes, right? Those are the two most impactful things in my experience. And in my reflection
when it comes to developing yourself as a believer because anybody can quote you a hadith or quote
you and I have the Koran, it doesn't mean that they've understood it. And it doesn't mean that
they're understanding it in the way that the Prophet alayhi salatu salam understood it when you read
the Sierra and you see what the prophet it said, some days, you're getting all of the Koran and the
		

			and the Sunnah applied in action, right. So it's a very, very efficient and dense sort of way to get
yourself up to speed and educate yourself when it comes to a loss found out. I mean, most of
people's struggles in life come from not understanding who a lot is. And we've made videos about
this before. So a person really needs to, if they want an impact in their day to day experience of
faith, their experience of their relationship with Allah or lack thereof, then they need to educate
themselves about who Allah is. And they need to start looking around the creation and trying to find
signs for those attributes and characteristics that Alas, potata has. That's in a nutshell, what I
		

			think, is sort of generic advice without knowing any individual details. That's generic advice for
English speakers, for people who, for English speakers, and people who don't necessarily have high
aspirations for people who have higher higher aspirations than that, then there's no way except by
the Arabic language, you have to learn Arabic. And there's so many tools out there, you know, even
more tools, I had more tools when I started learning Arabic and people that started 10 years before
me and people who are starting now after me have even more tools than I had. So it really is we're
talking about habitus and discipline and you know, these sorts of things with a dog allows for
		

			honey, it's really just about habit, right? Don't get psyched out by how long the road is, all you
have to do is develop the habits, good habits, you work on your Arabic for an hour a day. It's
something that anybody can do almost anybody at least. And so that's the quickest way. It kind of
lulls you into a false sense of security to delve too much into the English language literature
because you're always going to use it as a crutch. Whereas the quicker that you get into Arabic, the
quicker you're able to access, you know, the scholarly tradition that we have and the more that
you're going to be able to understand