Going abroad to study is full of sacrifices, so it’s important to constantly refer back to the thing that brought you back here in the first place; getting closer to your Creator though studying.

This post has been a long time coming taking over 2 months to write, but not without reason. Firstly, it’s easy for me to say how much I enjoy and benefit from being out here studying the deen especially at the beginning. However, this doesn’t give an honest reflection of the long term nature of what you hope to achieve and it is very hard to judge how effective your time has been out here. I purposely left this post till the last weeks of my stay so I can give a true reality of what it is like to study out here.

Secondly, I have always believed that the reason for coming to a country like this shouldn’t be to study, it should be get closer to your Lord through it and other forms of worship. There is no doubt that studying serves that purpose greatly, but so often I see students out here to learn Qur’an and Arabic but fail to pray Fajr in the mosque or the sunnahs before and after each fard. Moreoever, Egypt is no different to other countries. On the same strees you will find an abundance of saints and devils who can guide or misguide you as your please. If you seek guidance, there is an unreal amount to learn just from sitting in the company of these men of God which no lesson can ever teach you; the experiential reality of what truth faith can give to a person. My hope was to live some of that before talking about any of the studies.

Finally, I wanted to make sure this post was the opus diem of all posts, complete with videos of classes and photos of every detail. I wanted to recreate its reality in the west, to give perspective to those who dream of coming out here as I did. I wanted to do it the Ghannam way!

A slight disclaimer; I tend to always have a positive outlook when I write stuff even for the bad stuff. Although this means that my review may not be as objective as other people’s, I personally believe it’s a far better angle to look at things from! Much of life depends on the perspective you look at events from; if you see the good in everything, you’ll have a lot more fun and joy in life! Sheikh Hamza Yusuf put this beautifully in his book ‘The prayer of the oppressed’ where he was looking at the verse;

He described the verse as an outlook on the perspective of a person; by realising all things come from our Creator, we will see that in His infinite knowledge and mercy that he only wants good for his servants regardless of how it seems to us in the immediate term. But if we fail to see this and instead only see the ‘evil’ of the calamity, it is merely our inability to realise what is going on. I realised this most from my beloved teacher here in Cairo who, upon suffering from a serious heart condition, could only thank Allah for giving him such a reminder to bring him closer to his creator. Please make dua’ for his health!

So, after a long introduction, here we go… Ive tried to make it as comprehensive as possible so apologies for the length. Enjoy!

For me, fajr is the most important part of the day for a student. Many Muslims casually miss praying fajr on time and in congregation – whether at home or in the mosque – and many more miss praying it at its right time altogether. As a seeker of sacred knowledge, your efforts are fruitless if you are unwilling to fix these bad habits. The sole purpose in coming to learn is to get closer to your creator, so what good is it if you disobey His requests to meet you in the mosques five times a day?

Because of this, the timing of Qur’an classes after fajr is a perfect match; the sacred knowledge of the Qur’an should only be blessed to those willing to make the effort to seek it. Egypt is famous for having reciters on every street corner, many of whom hold free classes after fajr salah to those students willing to make the sacrifice. Close to where I live is a large mosque which holds such classes each morning. The Imam is a Palestinian man with the most wonderful voice, capable of moving and shaking the congregation behind him. Each Salah he reads a page of the Qur’an hoping to work through it all with his congregation. The mosque is typically packed with over 200 people despite being 5am in the morning, filled with people from different corners of the world. The most beautiful thing is the Imam makes a genuine effort to get to know his congregation, walking round and greeting people after salah to such an extent that he will recognise a new face to the mosque.

Each weekday morning, I pray fajr at that mosque and read Qur’an to the Imam after. Given the short length of my stay here, I have asked not to read to him from memorisation as that would restrict how much I could get through each morning with him. Instead, I have asked if I could recite directly from the Qur’an in order for him to correct my recitation for each passage. This is then recorded such that I re-listen to it at home and correct any mistakes which I made that day to improve the next day. Initially I was the only one in the mosque who would recite to him, but as the months have gone by, more people have requested to do the same and have begun attending classes.

All my classes were 1to1. I took two classes of 2.5hours each (5hours in total) for 5 days a week. I couldn’t be happier with my time at Sibawayh. Like everything there is always going to be faults, but the overall package is excellent and has been highly recommended by people before me. They are always open to suggestions to improve and change things to suit people’s needs and Ustadh Sayed tries to ensure professionalism in his staff. I once raised the issue of fixing prayer times such that people could prepare for them beforehand and not waste time when they come in. The next day it was implemented as a rule in the institute.

Most importantly though is that you really feel you get value for money and time as they know exactly what they are doing when it comes to teaching. The teaching is excellent and the people at the institute were like my family during my time here. Just trust Ustadh Sayed’s judgements when it comes to what to study and give constant feedback of how you think it’s all going!

This is a video I made for the institute. This gives you an idea of what Sibawayh is like to study and gives you samples of different lessons at the institute. Be sure to click on the videos at the end to get a flavour of what the teaching is like at Sibawayh!

One of the great benefits of Cairo is the wide availability of public classes which people can choose to attend. These cover nearly every topic at different levels of depth and understanding aiming to cater for the wide variety of people which live in the city, and the teachers are all of an extremely high calibre ranging from the Grand Mufti of Egypt to visiting scholars from other countries (such as Habib Umar and Sheikh Noor Al-Deen ‘Itr).

However, there is a downside. As these classes aim to draw in the public, very often you find the teacher speaking in colloquial Egyptian Arabic rather than classical Arabic. This is particularly ironic when the vast majority of the attendees always seem to be Malaysian and Indonesian students whose grasp of the Egyptian dialect is lacking (though they always turn out in numbers masha’Allah!) There are exceptions to this, but most of the local mosques will teach in the ‘language of the people’ in hope of reaching out to the Egyptian locals. However, things are beginning to change as Al-Azhar is beginning to revive itself, requesting all its teachers to speak in classical Arabic in their classes at the University. Perhaps this will spread to other mosques…

During my time here, I have sadly only been able to attend a handful of the public classes largely because I have had to stay and get through my other studies beforehand. This was a conscious choice I made, choosing to focus on a few classes and doing them well rather than spreading myself too thinly and not benefiting overall. Others have chosen to do things differently using the classes at Al-Azhar as their main source of knowledge and perhaps supplementing them with a few classes on the side. The table below gives a summary of the various points on the issue.

This video was taken at a private gathering at a villa of one of a famous person in Cairo. Habib Umar was invited to speak at the mawlid. The event was also filmed by MBC (thought I havent been able to locate the footage yet)

A weekly class after jumu’ah at Masjid Al-Rifa’i. It begins with dhikr led by the sheikh followed by a lesson in Hadith.

It’s easy to assume that coming to the Muslim world will automatically give you the thrust to be a better Muslim. The reality is it’s a lot harder to change old habits than people imagine especially when so many of the general public around you seem to do the same; over sleeping for fajr, not praying in congregation in the mosque and so on. People can become so focussed on studying that they lose sight of the greater objective; getting closer to your Creator. Knowledge in itself is useless unless it manifests in your actions and character.

The blessing of Cairo can be felt when you realise just how many saints and scholars who settled here in pursuit of sacred knowledge. A quick visit around some of the most famous mosques in Egypt such as Sayyidah Zainab, Sayyidah Aisha and Sayyidah Nafeesah will bring to light the large number of the family of prophet ﷺ who are buried in this city. On top of that, great scholars like Imam Shafi, Imam Al-Iz ibn Abdusallam and Imam As-Suyuti chose this city to be their home and burial place. May they all be rewarded Jannah Al-Firdaus – Ameen! Visiting the graves of such people may feel slightly strange to those of us from the west (particularly given some of the behaviour of some of the people who go there), but I see nothing but blessing in going and praying for the souls of the people who gave so much to this deen, aspiring to rise to their status and contribute to this world as much as they did.

As well as this, many of the mosques regularly hold Hadith recitations, Mawlids and other such gatherings for the remembrance of Allah. I have sat in the great halls of Al-Azhar to hear hadiths on the on blessings of our Messenger ﷺ be recited by one of the greatest scholars in that science; Imam Usaama Al-Sayed Al-Azhari. I have visited the mosque and grave of Imam Al-Busairi in Alexandria, author of Al-Burdah Al-Shareefah, to join in the recital of his poem. I was honoured to be invited to a private gathering with Habib Umar for a Mawlid and advice from the great scholar. Each of these has an impact on your sould which you cannot simply get from books. Islam is gained from the chests and hearts of men because it is through their companionship that you learn how to live the words you read. This is why our greatest teacher, Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, highlighted character as one of the most important purposes of his message was the perfection of good character.

A clip taken from the weekly Ba Alawi Mawlid led by Habib Abdul-Kareem

One of the classes which usually takes place in Al-Atraak in Al-Azhar is replaced with Nasheeds in celebration of the Birth of the Messenger ﷺ

Sheikh Usamah Al-Sayed demonstrating true Islamic character as he helps his teachers in and out of the gathering.

A Mawlid in the great halls of Al-Azhar. It begins with the recitation of Qur’an followed by the recital of various Hadith on the Messenge ﷺ.

A nasheed sung in praise of Imam Hussein, grandson of the messenger ﷺ, beside his grave.

As I enter my last month in Egypt, I look back at my time here with great fondness and look forward to enjoying my last weeks here. Life as a student is not easy and studying abroad is not a magic want of guidance; it is full of trials and tribulations and takes much effort and struggle to get to the goals you wish to achieve. My greatest advice is to start from home. If you are serious about studying, you should start before you even come here. The best students I have met were the ones who put the effort in before they came and then stepped up a gear when they arrived.

On top of that, education should never cease. My prayer is that Allah allows me to continue studying for the rest of my life as I have realised there is an ocean before me waiting to be explored. Never put yourself beyond the age to learn and always be willing to think and reflect on new ideas.

Finally, in the words of Waki’ to his student Imam Al-Shafi, “knowledge is a light, and the light of Allah is not given to a sinner”. There is no doubt that knowledge elevates the rank of people before Allah, but realise it is only a means to an ends and not the end goal itself.

I pray this post has been both useful and encouraging to any student seeking to come here in the future. My intention in writing these blogs was to open the west up to the life of modern student of knowledge. I pray to Allah that he purifies this intention and accepts it as an action for Him alone. Ameen.