We’ve recently had several brothers and sisters emailing and asking for advice on juggling memorisation of the Qur’aan alongside their secular studies. We thought it would be beneficial to share one of the emails we replied to with everyone on the blog in case there are any others wanting advice on the same topic:
Bismillaah was-Salaatu was-salaam ‘alaa rasoolillaah
First thing to do akhi is to make a memorisation timetable for yourself. I always like to structure and plan everything I’m doing because it keeps me organised and motivates me to complete what I intend to do on a daily basis. Set yourself a daily portion of memorisation and if you can’t memorise daily then set a weekly target so that every week you complete a set amount.
If you don’t/ can’t set a daily schedule, it will be up to you to manage your time so that during the week you fit your memorisation in at particular times of the week alongside your uni studies and other activities. This is one of the two most important elements of memorising the Qur’aan. It’s what differentiates a serious student of the Qur’aan from someone who just claims to love it and want to memorise it. So sit down and identify all the moments during your day that you are possibly wasting doing nothing beneficial and can use to memorise instead. Examples:
You’re on the train/ bus making your way to uni - dont just sit there, get your mushaf out and memorise. We spend a lot of time making these journeys and that time is precious. I’m not sure where you live but for me, it used to take me about 25 mins to get from my house to my university. That’s almost 1 hour going to uni and returning home every day. I would always use that time to either memorise or review the Qur’aan alhamdulillaah. Just to motivate you, when I was memorising soorah al-Hujuraat (chapter 49 of the Qur’aan), I managed to do it in one train journey. It is a relatively easy soorah and you will inshaaAllaah see that once you get to it and obviously not every soorah will be the same but no matter how much or how little you do, it still counts towards completing your hifdh.
During uni hours if you have some free time before a lecture, rather than relaxing and chatting away to friends, go to a quiet place and memorise. And please note, sometimes the Muslim prayer room is not the best place for this because there may be people there who will distract and start talking to you. What I used do is go to the silent study area of the uni library.
Dont waste the hours of fajr – these are the best for memorising so get into the habit of sleeping early and waking up early and staying up to memorise. You will notice that you memorise a whole lot more after fajr than any other time of the day. If you can wake up a little earlier than fajr even by half an hour and pray two rak’ah tahajjud (night prayer) then do so and fight with your nafs to make this an ordinary practice because even if we have the most gifted of memories and do everything we can to memorise, at the end of the day all our actions are fulfilled through Allaah’s Will. And if Allaah sees that you are sincere and striving in His way, He will guide you and grant you tawfeeq (success). And there is nothing harder upon the nafs than taking away its pleasures, and when you do take away its pleasures you gain more control over it and discipline it to do what Allaah loves.
I used to also leave very early to go to uni and sit and memorise in the prayer room because after 7am or so it was a bit difficult to memorise at home as all my brothers and sisters would start waking up and the distractions weren’t helpful. So going to uni was a better option for me and alhamdulillaah no one would start coming till about 9am so I would have around an hour and a half all alone to memorise.
The majority of my memorisation whilst I was at uni was done during the holidays particularly the summer break. Utilise these holidays to the fullest. Cram as much into your memory as you can and even if you are not 100% solid on it, you will have a lot of time to review when uni starts. This is because the hours I spent reviewing when I didn’t have holidays was much greater than the amount of hours I spent memorising but I made up for that by memorising a lot in the holidays.
To give you an idea, when I started uni, I didn’t really know how to juggle my studies with my memorisation and I didn’t have any structured plan to organise my time so as a result I didn’t get much done. This got me pretty depressed and frustrated so when the summer holidays came, I went on memorisation overload. I memorised from Soorah al-Fussilat all the way to al-Furqaan. Thats about 6 ajzaa from June to September. It was a lot and at times my brain felt like it couldn’t handle anymore but I just kept going and praying to Allaah to help me. Then when uni started again towards end of September, I spent most of the second year consolidating those 6 ajzaa and when I felt strong on them, I started to squeeze in memorisation back into uni my schedule.
No matter how you memorise, I cannot stress the importance of reviewing. I mentioned earlier that time management is one of the most important elements of memorising. Well, reviewing is the second. If you want to memorise and consistently do so, regularly, or in large bulks at a time like I mentioned, you need to keep reviewing EVERY DAY. Based on the amount of Qur’aan you’ve memorised, divide your reviewing so that every week you complete reviewing everything you have memorised. If you know a small amount then review it as much as you can in one week. When I had memorised juz ‘amma and tabaarak, I would review them both every single day alongside memorising new sections. Sometimes you may not have time to sit and review properly, so try and do it in different ways. The more ways you incorporate the better for you. I personally found the following helped me:
Reading in salaah – prayer is one thing we always have to make time for no matter what, so read what you memorise in your salaah. For example if you know juz ‘amma, start from soorah naba and in each daily salaah keep on reading until you get to soorah an-naas. Then when you finish, start again but this time dont start from soorah naba but start from soorah al-mursalaat if you have started memorising it, even if you only know a few verses and havent finished memorising the whole soorah. You can actually read an entire juz every day in your daily prayers. How? Well this is how I do it. If you pray the five daily prayers along with their sunnahs (the 12 rawaatib), and you read one page of the qur’aan in each rak’ah, you will complete about a juz (and just over that slightly). So in 30 days you complete the Qur’aan. If sometimes you’re in a rush and have to cut your prayer short, then read even half a page in each rak’ah so you complete half a juz a day. You have memorised juz ‘amma now maashaAllaah, if you review that in your salah based on this, you will review the whole juz once every day or every two days.
Don’t ever leave your ipod/ mp3 player behind – As I mentioned to you before, train/ bus journeys are a great time for reviewing. If the bus/train is packed or if you’re walking to the station (or walking anywhere in fact) stick your headphones on and listen and read along. Do this before you go to bed too at night.
Get into the practice of reading fast. I know this sounds a bit odd but you will need to sit with the mushaf and review outside of salaah or via audios, and if you don’t have much time to review or you want to spend more time memorising, then recite faster when reviewing. I don’t mean so fast to the point that you can’t tell if its Qur’aan or jibberish, but a fast enough pace to get you to finish it in a shorter time. For example, when I came towards the end of my memorisation, I started to review 5 ajzaa every day and as I still had some left to memorise, I would read those 5 ajzaa fast in order to make time to memorise what i had left to complete. Back then, I would take about 2 and a half hours to read the entire 5 ajzaa. Now that I don’t have to memorise anything new, I don’t review by reciting at a fast pace and it takes me about 3 and a half hours to complete my daily reviewing. If you listen to Muhammad Muhaisny then you’ll get an idea of how fast id read.
Last advice to you akhi is to find yourself righteous companions who share the same goal with you. If you know someone who is also memorising or who doesn’t mind giving their time to helping you memorise or test you etc, even if this person is not from your closest of friends, I would strongly advise you to stick to him and make him the one person who you spend your hours with. Friends are a big fitnah, even practising brothers may distract you at times, let alone those that are not mindful of Allaah. If you truly want to achieve this goal, then it’s up to you to make the Qur’aan the number one priority in your life and to give your heart and soul into learning it.
And strive to implement the Qur’aan, understand the meaning of what you’re reading and put it into practice and strive to stop yourself from doing anything that displeases Allaah. Living in the west is bad enough for the heart with the many evils you see and hear all around you, so don’t add to this. Because your heart is like a sponge that absorbs what is around it willingly or unwillingly and by nature your nafs will take hold of evil quicker than it will of good so surround yourself with as much good as you can so your heart doesn’t get tainted and diseased to the point that the words of Allaah don’t penetrate it.
Control your tongue, your hand, your sight, your ears etc….and FAST, this may sound unrelated but I believe it is a big help. Fast every Monday and Thursday if you are able to.
And don’t neglect du’aa, pray and pray and ask of Allaah every sajdah (prostration) you make, beg him and implore him to fill your heart with the light of His words. And Allaah is the responder of the callers and His promise is always true, so He WILL answer your call. Do not ever doubt that.
I hope this advice benefits you somehow and I pray Allaah makes the Qur’aan the spring of your heart and makes it easy for you to acquire it.